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Why Waiting for a Tech Co-Founder Might Kill Your Startup
Published May 26, 2025 · 25 views on YouTube
Do you really need a technical co-founder before you start building?
Not always. In this panel discussion, the speakers argue that “I need a CTO first” is often an excuse non-technical founders give themselves to avoid starting, not a real blocker. If a founder has a clear product vision, they can often make progress with an individual contributor or a product manager instead of holding out for a full technical co-founder.
What question do founders skip before hiring?
The panel says founders rarely stop to ask how much technical help they actually need in the early days. Many non-technical founders default to believing they need a CTO before they can build anything, when in reality a product manager who can handle discovery, system design, and functional design may be enough to get the team moving.
Can you validate an idea with ChatGPT before hiring an engineering team?
Yes, according to the panel’s example of a lawyer specializing in Mexican immigration law who wanted a chatbot to replicate his legal interpretations for clients. Rather than immediately staffing a CTO and engineers, the panel pushed him to sit down with ChatGPT first: feed it his interpretations of the laws, provide examples and use cases, and write a system prompt as an exercise — testing the idea for the cost of a $20-a-month ChatGPT subscription before committing to a full technical hire.
Why do non-technical founders feel intimidated by AI tools?
The panel suggests it’s less about actual difficulty and more about perception. Someone skilled at logical thinking, like a lawyer working through legal interpretations, is often well-suited to structuring a system prompt or working through the exercise described above. The speakers want founders to feel more empowered, noting that what can feel like an intimidating, expensive “black box” requiring hundreds of thousands of dollars a year is often just one accessible step away.
Full video transcript
What is a question you wish more companies asked you before they even went about hiring a process? Is there any questions that people just tend to skip over that you wish they would consider first before going and hiring a role, US-based or not?
Let me answer quickly this one. One thing that I think people mistake is how much they need in the early days. I think if you have a really good idea of what you’re building and the product roadmap, you can get away with hiring an IC, an individual contributor, and making it happen. A lot of times, especially non-technical founders, they come to us and they say, “I need a CTO first.” They’re like, “I need a CTO first before I can build my team, before I can build my product.” And I don’t think that’s always right, because if you are a founder and you’re non-technical but you have a very clear vision of what you want it to do, you probably need a product manager before that — just work with a product hire, a product manager that can help you build out the discovery, do the system design, do the functional design, and then have the team build that.
But I think too often they hang their hopes on this idea that “I need a technical co-founder.” Now, they might need a technical co-founder, but a lot of times when we’re talking to people in the early days, their vision is very clear and their desire is very clear. And so now it’s just time to execute. It’s not so much a question that they should ask, but it’s an excuse that they’re giving themselves so they don’t just get started.
Along those lines, sometimes I’ll talk to somebody who has this great idea for deploying AI within their organization. Let’s say a good example is a lawyer that I spoke to recently who excels in Mexican immigration law. He helps expats from all over the world become or purchase properties in Mexico, become residents or citizens, and so on. He’s got a very unique take on how to navigate Mexican immigration law and wanted something like a chatbot or a ChatGPT to do it.
Along those same lines that Jacqueline just brought up, although his vision was less clear, all he could express was, “I want a chatbot that kind of replicates my answers and my interpretations of these laws for customers to help them, and I’m going to need to hire like a CTO and an engineering team to help me build out all these things.” And believe me, we’re happy to staff a CTO and engineers for this team, but that’s just not really the way to go about this. Even though it doesn’t necessarily help our own business directly, what we want to do is help people.
What I had to push back on, along the lines of what Jacqueline was saying, is: before we get you a technical co-founder and a CTO, why don’t we sit down with ChatGPT or whatever tool and actually feed it some of your interpretations. Here are the laws, here’s my interpretation, let’s give it some examples, let’s give it some use cases. And then, as an exercise, let’s write a system prompt that will help somebody with this, just using ChatGPT for $20 a month. Why don’t we start there and go through that exercise?
I wish people were a little less scared of the technical aspect. I suppose some of this stuff, with a little bit of thought and a little bit of strategy, is actually very accessible to somebody like a lawyer who’s good at logical thinking and getting to the heart of a matter. So I’d love for people to feel more empowered that way. Sometimes it hurts me to see that the stuff we’re talking about here is just one person away, and for someone next to me it might be a complete, intimidating black box that they feel like they need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to access. And that couldn’t be further from the truth.