bradleyjoyce [dot] com

The recent hubbub regarding Facebook poaching engineers from Google and  Google’s huge counter-offers, as well as Facebook poaching from Foursquare and buying startups as “talent acquisitions”  has got me thinking about Technical Cofounders vs Hiring Developers. Dave Albert wrote a good piece recently that covers some good points as well. My main point is this:

There are always greener pastures for highly skilled engineers/coders, so if you are the non-technical co-founder, you need to spend a lot of time finding the right technical co-founder who has the vision to go long-term with you.

If you’re paying a developer to help you build your project chances are good that:

• A big company like Facebook could make them an offer that is just too good to refuse. You don’t have that kind of money to compete.
• Another startup with more funding can give them a more comfortable salary with some nice stock options
• They could get bored with your project and move on to something more interesting
• a pretty large list of other scenarios could take place where you can’t offer a sweet of a deal.

If your startup is going to be really successful, you need to find someone who truly has the founder’s spirit. That they’re in it to win it, no matter what, and $3.5 million in stock from Google is going to sway them from attempting to make their mark on the world. This person will, no doubt, be very hard to find but it will be well worth the struggle. This person will be one of the most valued assets of your company. The irony of this post is that the consulting arm of my company builds web applications for clients that are, in general, startups without a technical co-founder/team, but it gives me a front-row view into many of the difficulties these startups have if they choose to never bring in a technical co-founder. Even in the case of my company, I’m always urging our clients to bring on someone else as soon as possible. We’re often a great fit for getting them to their MVP quickly, but we certainly won’t, for a variety of reasons, be the right people to build their entire vision over the complete course of the company’s life. While there may be occasional acceptions, you will almost always be better off spending the time it takes to find the right technical co-founder with a shared vision and a passion to see it through. This person is much less likely to be tempted by the greener pastures that are just about every where else you look.