Ask HN: What is the most crucial knowledge a non-technical founder should have?

Re:Ask HN: What is the most crucial knowledge a non-technica... by rcaught on Monday July 13, 2015 @10:56AM (#9878469)

A non-technical cofounder of a tech company should (in my mind) be set on a path to being technical (whatever that means - there are always people that know more, and always people that know less).

You can spend your entire career labelling yourself as non-technical, but that is not a reflection of your skill, it's a reflection of your attitude.

Have a willingness to learn and be humble with what you do know. Stop being a something or a non-something. Just be the best you can be with every challenge that crosses your path.

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Re:Ask HN: What is the most crucial knowledge a non-technica... by sunir on Monday July 13, 2015 @09:00PM (#9882230)

That's just semantic framing. Non-technical is a word used from the point of view of engineers, the primary audience on "Hacker" News, who naturally value technical skills the most.

You could reframe the engineers as being non-revenue. Because businesses exist to generate revenue, suddenly they are less important than the business people. Plenty of Silicon Valley companies value revenue-side personnel more than engineers, like Oracle, Salesforce, Intuit.

True. Engineers should learn sales and marketing. Business people should learn how to code. But at the end of the day, having enough depth and expertise on your team to cover your bases is what's required, and really that requires specialization.

I'm a compsci who's a CMO now, so I understand people in the different roles.

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