When does it make sense to have a technical co-founder?

Technical co-founders, while important, are hard to come by. However, there are certain startup ideas that are technically challenging and requires very specialized knowledge, and there are many other ideas that are more of a business model innovation. In the latter case, a technical co-founder may not be important initially.

Here’s a question on Ask ACE, an online Q&A platform for startup topics, that addresses this issue. Responses from mentors follow:

Question

Does it make sense to look for a technical co-founder, or should a business-centric founder look for a vendor or hire a technical team instead?

Answers

Lim Song Joo, Founder & CEO at BWG Consulting Pte Ltd:

It depends on what the idea or business concept is about. You have to look at your original business concept and decide how much of the workload you can effectively shoulder. Having a team member or building an effective team can accelerate the progress of the business roadmap, as well as providing a good sounding board to test and improve the robustness of the concept. It is natural for a business-centric founder to create a very positive spin on the business external potential in terms of marketing, strategies, pricing, etc. However, an investor will look at how robust is the core team (delivery & execution), never the leader or the business idea (opportunity) in isolation.

Therefore, having someone as part of the management team (or co-founder) to shore up the technical side of the business will be a definite plus. As the business model gains traction, the benefit of having an internal technical team will further increase the core value of the company and give confidence to the client (or investor).

Hiring a vendor to support your weaker area technically may be an alternative to give the business a quick leg up instead of building and learning from scratch.

Again, the choice is dependent on how crucial is the technical aspect to the core of the business. Should the need as defined require hiring an outside vendor the mgmt should look at supplanting a staff to learn from or acquire the knowledge from the vendor to ensure continuity.

Michael Nielsen, experienced supply chain management professional. Currently Regional Operations Manager (India / ASEAN) for Caterpillar Logistics Services, Inc:

It depends on the situation. If the company is looking at creating a novel product which can be done with a technical co-founder it might be better to do it in-house. If the start up is e.g. to create a new homepage for online shopping, there are so many good vendors and technical teams which can be sourced to support the creation of same.

This would enable the founder to focus on business development and at the same time know he would be having variable costs on the development of the homepage potentially reducing start-up costs.