Technical Co-founders Now Endangered! Should you Stop the Hunt?

What is a Technical Co-founder or rather, who is a Technical Co-founder?Let me tell you with the following scenario (which is real most of the time!).

You have an awesome and world changing idea. What better way to execute it than do a startup? Wait, how will you execute it? You immediately think of those Geeky coders in class who were instrumental in meeting deadlines of those so-called practical assignments and fun to hang out with. They are the perfect contenders for filling that technical position as they have the ability to realize the “idea” and you cannot imagine any reason whatsoever for them to refuse to work on the “idea”. Then ,reality strikes! 80% of them refuse and the remaining ones are already working on their own idea.

In short, Technical Co-founders are seriously in short supply. They are so scarce that people have given up on finding one and instead, are learning to code themselves. Kevin Systrom, Instagram (Recently bought by Facebook for $1 billion) was one among those who took to coding himself and how! Dennis Crowley, Founder of Dodgeball (acquired by Google in 2005) and Co- Founder of Foursquare is another great example of how learning code might indeed be the way ahead.

In fact, there is so much demand to learn code that it has given rise to a new niche market of free code learning. Startups like CodeAcademy, Interviewstreet, Pyschools and Udacity are filling this niche and have been a huge success.

It's ironic that, at the time when being a non-techie engineering student has become a trend, students and professionals from other background are learning it with so much reverence. The reason behind so much interest in learning to code is quite simple. Technology is penetrating every sphere of life and writing code is now doing things, which would not have been possible before. Every next idea you will have would require a technical founder and not finding one would be a pretty lame excuse to let that idea get away.

Being a student gives you the luxury of ample time and energy, which at present, is seriously lacking in the professional world. If there is any chance that you can be bitten by the entrepreneurial bug in near future (you are hanging at SS so I believe you have a very high chance of getting bitten : D) you should definitely work on improving your practical technical skills by yourself. This is probably one of the best times to actually be able to do this if you know where to look. There are many quality sites and startups out there, which aim at helping you improve your skills in any technology on the face of earth. Prominent among them is Stackoverflow(It is one of those sites where top coders around the world hang out and are always ready to answer your coding queries if you have put enough work on it). You just need a laptop, a working Internet connection and the will to succeed.

- Manav Goel

Do you believe otherwise? Let us know what you think!