Note: Please read this post till the end. I found something interesting after writing this.
A few years ago, I was catching up with a friend. Talking about life, projects, and work.
I asked about the company I remembered him working at, and he said he had left. He spent over an hour going into the details of what happened.
Basically, she would find engineers, make them ‘CTO’ with the promise of equity and high salaries, then get them to build a version of her idea. She’d use this MVP to raise money, then start a fight with the technical founder to get them to leave without any equity or salary for the work done.
It turns out that he wasn’t the only one. Over the past three years, I have heard similar stories from other engineers, and as I write, I know of three other people who have had the same experience with the same founder.
And this isn’t new. I have been in and around startups long enough to see this happen so many times in various eras of tech. The ‘Uber for x’ era, Web3 era, ZIRP era, etc
With the current AI boom and excitement to build new startups, I’m concerned that a new batch of technical founders would get burned in the same way.
Pulling from my experience participating in incubators, building and working, and investing in early-stage startups, here are 4 types of non-technical co-founders to avoid.
1. The chairman-dictator.
When your co-founder consistently makes important decisions without informing you*.*
This is one of the most common signs that you have the wrong co-founder. They rarely ask for your opinion on things and often take important business decisions without informing or consulting you.
They speak to you like you’re a team, but their actions show something else. They also tend to avoid signing agreements with you, and if they do, it’s on unfair terms, totally managed by their own lawyer under strict conditions.
The danger with this kind of co-founder is that they most likely don’t see your relationship as a partnership. They see you as their first employee who just happens to work for free. It’s the most common situation I’ve come across with startups, and in most cases, they force their technical co-founder(s) out of the company once they have enough money to replace them. If you dig deep, you may find that you’re the fifth ‘CTO’ that they’ve had in the past year.
2. The Name-Dropping Nobody.
The one who knows everybody but knows nobody.
This is another common founder type that I’ve come across. They claim to have deep industry experience and a strong network, but it somehow never translates into opportunities for the start-up.
Almost every session with them involves them boasting about their deep industry knowledge or having dinner with Bill Gates, but there isn’t much proof of any of this.
This kind of co-founder is dangerous because a lot of technical founders often look for co-founders who have strong connections or deep domain knowledge. Partnering with a ‘Name-Dropping Nobody’ could end up being a waste of time for them.
PS: There’s nothing wrong with not having connections. Just don’t lie that you do.
3. The Passenger.
Do you remember being on group projects at school, and there was always someone who didn’t do anything but showed up at the final presentation?
Our next founder-type is who they grew up to be.
While you’re building the MVP, this ‘co-founder’ doesn’t really do anything. They just check how far you’ve gone and keep sharing more feature ideas. They constantly miss deadlines for agreed deliverables on their side, and when they do deliver something, it looks like it was written by ChatGPT 5minutes before your meeting.
In some cases, this person has multiple technical ‘co-founders’ working on various projects and is just waiting for one of them to show promise. In other cases, they’re sitting safely in their 9–5 job and looking for a sure thing to join without having to commit to anything. They’re not putting any effort into building anything, so they have nothing to lose. This is why you should avoid them.
I once met a guy like this. He used to send me messages every 3 weeks to find out how things were going, then he’d disappear again.
4. The one who thinks they’re Steve Jobs
They think they’re a visionary, but often aren’t.
They don’t measure anything, they don’t research anything, and they don’t talk to users.
They spend more time shopping for turtle necks and learning buzzwords than actually doing any work.
What makes this type of co-founder so dangerous is that they think they’re better than everyone and don’t listen to feedback. They think they’re the messiah of the tech industry and act accordingly.
They have a high tendency to derail projects as they constantly bring up new features and want everything to be perfect before launching anything.
Finding a good co-founder is a lot of work, especially when it’s your first startup. It’s as delicate as finding a life partner because they can have a similar impact on your life. Sometimes your prospective co-founder is all the archetypes I listed above in one person. If you meet this person, please, run!
Interesting Note
After writing this post, I sent the draft to a few friends to help me edit it, as I always do. One of my friends replied to tell me that her sister is currently dealing with another company where she was hired as a founding VP of technology and asked to build a team of engineers to build the MVP. They have now received investment using that MVP, and the company has now requested that every member of the engineering team reapply for their current jobs, including her, the founding VP of Technology.
Again, this is not new. I have seen it many times and will probably continue to see it. I hope this post helps you avoid the wrong co-founders.
PS: A lot of technical people are not so innocent either. Maybe I’ll write a different post on the kind of technical founders to avoid. Drop a comment if you’d be interested