Spencer Fry, a startup founder, writes about bootstrapping, marketing, product shipping, and what non-programmers contribute to startups.
Commenters praise his post on what non-programmers can do at a startup and reference it when discussing early-stage roles and team building.
1. Don't do an MBA to do entrepreneurship. You would be far better off finagling your way into a job in an early stage startup, seeing what's going on and getting experience in a company without lots of structure and procedure. See spencerfry's take on what even someone who's not overwhelmingly technical can do in a startup[0]
2. If you do an MBA, do an accelerated one [1],[2]. If you're considering changing because you've plateaued in your professional growth you may just need a change of area and that's where MBAs are good, but if you have a Masters already you've spent enough damned time in college without doing more than is absolutely necessary.
3. UChicago has a CS Masters that I believe is more welcoming to students who don't fit the traditional profile for people wanting to do CS. I imagine it's pretty brutal though.
[1]http://spencerfry.com/whats-a-non-programmer-to-do
[2]http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204251404574344594232539808.html
[3]http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/st_mbamainchart_20090910.html
Assuming you want to find a technical co-founder you will need to bring valuable skills to the table. If you have truly amazing ideas this could be maybe 50% of what you bring to the table, but more likely your ideas will be 5-10% of your contribution, because once you get going on an idea you are going to need to iterate and at that point you need everyone to be bringing ideas to the table.
The essence of a pointy-haired boss is someone who has a lot of ideas (which may be good or bad), but is so entrenched in middle management that they have no idea how to actually get things done. As an engineer I love when people have great ideas, but I hate when I'm the only one working 16 hour days because the non-technical folks think their job is to tell me what to do then wait til it's done.
What constitutes valuable contributions? Well, I think Spencer Fry said it better than anyone else around here ever has: http://spencerfry.com/whats-a-non-programmer-to-do
Many successful startups have been founded by teams of 2 or 3 people and often one of them is a non-technical person. Heck Steve Jobs is no coder himself - http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2006/10/5672.ars. Even when you just get started, there are plenty of things for a non-programmer to do - as Spencer Fry has elegantly laid out - http://spencerfry.com/whats-a-non-programmer-to-do
I think the value is in finding someone with complementary skill sets, so that you two can "fight back to back" as I like to say. If you're introverted, you want someone who can sell to customers, investors and talk to the press. If you're disorganized, you want someone who can keep all the numbers together and keep projects moving forward. If you've got no design sense, it would help to find someone who can push pixels and has a sense of artistry.
In general, I'd focus on finding a legit person, rather than finding someone who has a "good idea".
Asking "why wait for articles" is like saying why use tutorials or guides for anything at all? Why not just learn it all by doing it yourself? Besides, I think there's a bit of a strawman here. I'm not saying I'd like to avoid consulting to pay the bills.
There is a lot of value in learning from other people's experiences. Spencer Fry has a fantastic article on the topic of bootstrapping in general(http://spencerfry.com/how-to-bootstrap) but I'd really love to see somebody get down to the nitty gritty financial details of dollars in vs. dollars out - the holy crap, how are we going to pay rent in 2 months? stuff - in the stages of a startup that hasn't yet reached ramen profitability.
Comparing this with his original post[1] is a fantastic illustration of how the business aspect of a growing startup isn't necessarily an issue of scale, but of the role itself. In the earlier stages, his job was to do whatever didn't involve firing up a terminal. Write some copy, take a phone call, etc etc whatever it took to keep the developer's happy and focused. Now managing something like payroll, contracts. and the rest is a whole new ballgame. Its great to learn from his ability to adapt.
Thank you, Spencer. You're an inspiration to aspiring tech Entrepreneurs out there too stupid to program ;)
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[1] http://spencerfry.com/whats-a-non-programmer-to-do
Hi, checkout http://spencerfry.com/on-focus
Besids that article, what to do in this situation obviously depends on your context of-course. Make sure you a 360 degree view of the situation, the pros and cons of either decisions. The regrets that either decision might bring. I always advice people to think about the regret minimization framework when making major life decisions.
Also the hypothesis is success could come by either route but the "by-product" has higher probability and a shorter road to product. Please try and validate this assumption as soon as possible, just so your not building castles in the air and taking a decision on unfounded hunches.