Non-programmer founders: learn code first, find tech co-founder(s) after?
Through these, I noticed that most of the non-programming/business/MBA types seem to have the lowest success rate as original founders (unless they already had tech friends/acquaintances) simply because they depend so much on finding a tech cofounder to build it first, and that's assuming they can persuade prospective tech cofounders to drop their own ideas to join theirs.
Another common method I heard of was to pay a team of developers to build the idea, but I haven't heard much success stories from these kinds either. There's networking events to match people up as well, but I might be limited to networking events at my university since I'm still a student with little formal experiences; and since it's winter break for us now, I'll have to wait until spring semester for the networking events anyway.
Overall, it seems that finding a good tech cofounder can take a good while, if at all. Therefore, I decided to learn coding first to at least build a rough prototype, which I could hopefully use to pitch to prospective cofounders along the way. One reason is so that I could at least be learning and working on something in case I don't find someone until six months later. The second reason is because, since I come from a business and psychology background, I felt that it'd be useful to better understand tech business from the programmers' perspective. And lastly, in some ways, it's also about the credibility of how seriously I want to pursue my idea, because it seems like most of the business types with just ideas but no technical understanding are taken the least seriously.
I'm aware that it seems like I'm going the long way (though I actually think I'm taking the short route), but I'm pretty patient when it comes to long-term benefits, I have a strong habit of self-learning things, and I'm pretty confident I have time because I doubt many, if any, competitors could work on this idea since it draws heavily on a field-specific knowledge (psychology, neuroscience, behavioral economics, etc). Or perhaps most of all, I just plain don't want to let the idea die without it ever being given a chance just because I don't have a tech cofounder yet. (And admittedly, I want to do it because if I start putting time and efforts into it, I have less of a reason to drop it later down the road if I get frustrated.)
So what I want to ask is, how successful do you think this route could be for non-programming people? And by success, I’m referring to at least getting the first prototype out and attracting a good tech cofounder.
Who else have gone this route and how did turn out for them?
(Sorry for the wall of text!)
*Correction: maybe it's not right to call myself a complete newbie to programming since I took AP Computer Science (basic Java programming) back in high school and learned some rudimentary HTML and CSS in middle school. So the fact that I have some idea of what to expect probably helps.
Today I'm a full stack programmer, graphic designer and business guy. These traits give me a major advantage where I can build out web services, mobile and voice applications. With my finance background I can also structure financial contracts, etc. I often act as CTO for startups taking a significant position in the early stage.
I say this to encourage you to keep walking the path. You will gain a major competitive advantage, especially without a CS degree.
One caveat: with your growing capabilities comes more opportunities. These opportunities can distract you. Stay focused on execution. Just my two cents.
I can't nail down exactly why, and I'm just a single data point.
As for coding, part of the reason I'm not hiring a developer is because I don't have the money, so I'm making it up with having a lot of time and effort to spend.
In terms of stage, I'm pre-mockup at the moment since the last 2.5 months were spent on researching and designing the psychological framework before I could get started on the technological parts. It took up a lot of time but necessary since there was no previous framework for guidance.
I don't have a visual mockup yet, which I plan to start working on next week, but I do have a very fleshed out textual description of what was needed for the prototype to work.
My take on the matter is to learn just enough tech to be almost dangerous. Or put another way, you need to understand enough about technology to (a) understand that it is hard. This alone will make you a better manager/cofounder. (b) be able to sift the wheat from the chaff. The problem with business only types is that they are more likely to pick 'coders' who promise the earth than those who can deliver.
Learning to code is great. Learning a lot about the various technologies out there is great. Building simple programs is great.
That said, programming is hard. You will not be a great coder in 6 months, or a year. If your problem is non trivial you will need far more knowledge than you can pick up in a year of dabbling.
I suppose my point is that you need to balance the need to come up to speed with technology with the need to actually deliver a working product.
I'm also aware that my coding skills will never outmatch someone else who probably started when they were 12 or something, at least not in a year. At the back of my mind, I know that programming will be hard, but at the front of my mind, I think my ignorance would probably be very useful for pushing me into something I can't turn back on.
I wrote the business plan/financial statement, I figured out the features and had wire frames made up, contracted out the graphic design and then the front end code, incorporated, business license/tax paperwork, set up a landing page, started pre-launch marketing via twitter, etc. In all I spent ~$5000, 14 months and 1 false start before I my (tech) partner.
Yes this initial code will be messy and not scalable. But after you zero in on the right working model it will be easy to hire good programmer(s) to rewrite the entire thing from scratch!