Correction: Andrew Mason actually is a programmer. He built Groupon in Rails.

Also, as the other commenter pointed out, Mark Pincus's co-founder Justin Waldron is a programmer, but Zynga's probably a bad example anyway because Pincus was very much an accomplished entrepreneur with a lot of resources at hand prior to founding Zynga.

Incorrect, at least one of Zynga's co-founders (Justin) is a programmer -- though he's probably not doing much of that anymore. One of the common misconceptions is that Zynga has only one founder ... it actually has many.

But I get the point you're making and it's still valid.

Fair enough but both of them are highly technical people. Not programmers but that's not the yard stick that I put down here.

Additionally it's not a good idea to use critical successes like that to extract any kind of lessons from. Groupon won the business plan lottery and found a real need in the market that wasn't being served. Zynga rode the coattails of facebook.

Obviously i'm not dismissing those companies accomplishments. The founders are idols to me.