When finding a technical co-founder for your mobile-web startup is a horrible idea

Steve Wozniak was the technical wizard behind Apple's early success.

Here’s a typical problem. Your background is in business and you want to do an Internet company because the cost of starting up is extremely low and you think that you have a great idea.

The unique challenge of finding good technology people is endemic not only in Asia. It happens everywhere, including Silicon Valley. While Google, Facebook and many notable technology companies are putting in top dollar for the best engineering talent, most founders in start-ups don’t have that kind of resources.

The challenge of finding the best technology talent is exacerbated in Asia, since these people are viewed as a support arm and is something that can be outsourced to programmers in India or China.

Here are some considerations as to why you should or should not find a technology co-founder.

Why do you want a technology co-founder?

Perhaps you have a background in business, be it a basic degree, an MBA, or you might have a CV that gives you some credentials, for example, being a Goldman Sachs banker, a McKinsey consultant or a business executive from a prominent company.

Although you want to build a mobile-web startup, you realize that you do not have the technical knowledge to execute on the idea. So you have to talk to people who have access to software engineers or mobile-web developers and hope that you will find this person who might support your crazy ideas and magically solve all your technology problems.

Even if you do find this person, a fallout could occur a few months later, especially if the guy thinks he can do this better than you. You’d be back to square one. So, how do you ensure scenarios like this don’t occur?

Before I get to that, let’s take a step back and focus on the first question: Should I recruit a technology co-founder for a mobile-web startup?

That’s actually the wrong question to ask. You should take another step back and determine whether the idea behind your startup is or isn’t a technology business. A useful guide to help you answer the question is this article by Alex Payne, co-founder & CTO of Simple. With his note as a guide, I extracted the following questions which you, the business person, should answer before you start seeking a technology co-founder:

1. What are the features of the product you are planning to build for your idea?
2. Can you build a set of mockups of the product?
3. From the mockups and features, are there any similar products out there which you have seen deployed?
4. Do you have a set of hypotheses for customer validation which you can experiment, collect and analyze data?

If you have not answered the above questions carefully and honestly, you will end up like most people who have come to me for advice.

They usually come to the following conclusions: (a) the product is impossible to build because the technology is not there yet, (b) the product can be built because there are existing case studies of similar start-ups with sites having the same features, (c) the product can be built but require some tweaks of the features which may or may not be possible, depending on which platform it is built on. Usually, most people fall within the group where their ideas have the same look and feel as the existing mobile-web apps out there.