Business co-founders in tech startups are less valuable than they think

Summary

If you know me, you know I love tech, business and startups. Thus, I always find a way to get involved in the startup community. Over the years, there is one person I tend to meet more often than not in gatherings. It is the non-technical guy who wants to build a tech startup. The business founder. Erik from TV show Sillicon Valley. Once they know I’m a software engineer and we get into the specifics of their projects (I ask a lot of questions), the majority of the stories follow the same arc. I had idea for A, for reason B I do not have technical co-founder, and I have tried solutions C - D. Currently, still trying with E but it’s a painful slog. … *insert hopelessness, despair, frustration* I have found there are significantly more business guys looking for tech guys than the reverse. But… why is that? The truth is simple. The reason they struggle to find a cofounder is because they are not as valuable to the startup endeavor as they think they are. Read it again. They are not. But if that’s you, that’s okay! There are ways to address that. This is what I’ll get into here so keep reading to see the conclusion. Skewed Lenses = Bad Vision One of my good friends told me he recently jumped ship from a startup heading for the wall. When I asked for the reason, he told me: “The CEO is some ex-McKinsey consultant who’s never done anything but thinks he’s hot sh*t because he raised a $1M pre-seed. He was impossible to work with so I left.” A common observable thread in this persona is the tendency to have too much ego go unchecked, causing their perception of people and value creation to be skewed. What I mean is, they will see themselves as the reincarnated Steve Jobs with the belief their force of will can overcome all. The Alpha Fake Steve Jobs, asserting dominance on video call. They will seek to dominate the relationship and be the alpha top-dog as opposed to equal partners who trust and respect each other deeply. As you can imagine, this is highly unattractive to sk...