Slides from a talk I was invited to give in Edinburgh - details about not only why you should start an Internet venture, but some suggestions for how to not fuck it up, and just a few things the non-technical founder should be doing.
As the name would lead you to believe, it’s about giving thanks
The first ppl to believe in us after our parents
My team
The community
The most important part about this talk…and the one thing I can guarantee you’ll need to do in order to succeed (get rdy to write this down)
Working from one dataset
I hope so, because then I’m going to take all the credit for your success. But you going at it alone is going to be difficult. At some point, you’re more than likely going to need a co-founder, but what’s most important is not that you have one, but that you have the RIGHT One.
Choose wisely, but there’s good news, because most – if not all - of you in this room are programmers
You have the power, and can learn a lot of the business side- no MBA required
Don’t choose your editor by its logo alone
If there’s one big disconnect between programming and non-programming cofounders
It’s that a day could be spent staring at a computer screen that results in a few flashes of genius that solves a very complicated program. Like most arts, it could be a nap that inspires you.
Contrast that with the non-programmer, who sees typing on a keyboard as being directly related to productivity
It’s easy to imagine the nonprogramming cofounder as useless
It’s easy to imagine the nonprogramming cofounder as useless
Cannot under value cheerleading, esp given how many startups fail because they simply quit