The Soft Skill Renaissance
And the Role of the Non-Technical Founder
The non-technical co-founder got a lot of press this week. First, Jessica Livingston spoke about the role of the non-technical founder at YC’s Female Founders conference. The non-technical co-founder, she opined in her keynote, is responsible for all things non-technical—including tasks like grocery shopping and errand running.
Of course, no comment goes unanalyzed when related to the topic of women leaders in the technology sector. So Marianne Bellotti, co-founder of Exversion, wrote a rather comprehensive critique of the conference, highlighting Ms. Livingston’s focus on the non-technical founder and the gender biases associated.
To get a male founder to admit he doesn’t write the code his startup depends on you have to twist his arm. With a female founder it’s the second sentence out of her mouth.
Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit and now coding evangelist/angel investor, also threw his ideas into the ring. And here is where we see the views of Silicon Valley coming into play.
The reason I’ve gone across this country encouraging people to code is because in the internet age, makers have all the power.
It should come as no surprise that Silicon Valley and the tech startup scene prize hard technical skills above most others. Without those abilities, very little would ever be built. But we’ve reached a point where many startups don’t only require incredibly large amounts of hard skills (look at One Month Rails, Lyft, or Rent the Runway for examples of technology companies that don’t revolutionize technology, but rather utilize technology to revolutionize another industry). Instead, they require both the talents of ideators, designers, marketers, and salespeople to complement engineers and developers’ work. More and more, technology innovators, like Google, are saying they need more people who have strongly developed these skill sets. Yet according to Mr. Ohanian, the people who focus on their soft skills, also known in the technology industry as non-technical skills, hold no power whatsoever.
His views don’t differ much from that of the rest of Silicon Valley.
Ms. Livingston made it seem as though non-technical founders ought to do menial work so that their co-workers can focus on ‘important’ things. Future president of Y Combinator, Sam Altman, has echoed this statement saying that all non-technical founders need to learn how to hack—yet that sentiment is barely flipped. Techies are encouraged to talk to people, but there’s no real emphasis on developing business abilities much beyond that. And it’s not uncommon to receive negative reactions to the word non-technical from technologists both inside and outside of startups.
So why in the midst of this call for non-technical people to build their programming ability, am I harkening a Renaissance of Soft Skills? Because so is Google.
Last June, in an interview with the New York Times, Laszlo Bock, Google’s senior VP for People Operations, discussed the five characteristics that Google looks for in potential hires. They are, as summarized by NYT columnist Thomas Friedman, below.
- Leadership
- Humility
- Collaboration
- Adaptability
- A love of learning and the ability to relearn
It is of course still important to have a solid technical understanding, even as a non-technical founder. There is no reason for a non-technical founder to be unable to use HTML or Github. But the technology world needs to start looking beyond the engineering bubble and recognize the importance other skill sets as well.
None of the above abilities necessitates an ability to program in Java or calculate bizarrely difficult probabilities. Rather, they require an ability to learn and adapt to new situations with a positive attitude—and this ability is a soft skill that can be applied to any industry, technical or non-technical.
Yet, fewer employers than ever believe that college graduates and other entry-level candidates have developed these professional abilities. One study conducted by Workforce Solutions Group at St. Louis Community College cited that 60% of employers feel that new hires don’t have the ability to effectively navigate through the workplace. And another study conducted by Adecco explains that 44% of respondents cited soft skills, such as communication, critical thinking, creativity and collaboration, as the area with the biggest gap.
It’s not uncommon to hear a technical founder scoff at the need for someone specializing in business and people relations. As Bill Aulet explains in this TechCrunch article, technologists have become obsessed with building things and forgotten that startups are, above all, about acquiring and sustaining customer relationships. No lines of code can replace the incredible instinct of an experienced manager or a copywriter’s unique voice.
I’ve now watched a number of founders flounder, trying to find their brand, their customer, or their voice. The Keep Building It mentality takes over and anything that doesn’t require more lines of Java or another CAD design suddenly seems like a waste of time.
The non-technical founder ameliorates many of these problems though. While an engineer can focus solely on developing the product and pushing updates, the non-technical founder can dedicate all energy to learning about customers and improving the product’s overall direction. This is not to say that a technical founder cannot also accomplish sales, marketing, or other business-side goals. However, at critical moments, it may be best for each side of the business to have a clear leader tackling individual problems in a specific sector rather than juggling both technical and non-technical issues.
The technology world needs to stop putting down the non-technical founder. Supplying the team with caffeine is a shared responsibility, not one that only belongs to the non-technical founder. As much as San Francisco startups love to focus on their technology, they also need to remember that they are businesses. And a technology company without business people is simply a technology with a cap on users and growth.
So technologists and startup founders, what does this mean for you?
Technologists should not abandon their hard skill sets and study the classics. Nor should non-technical founders forgo basic technical education. But the technology industry does need to recognize that if they continue to belittle soft skills, the talent will disappear. And technology businesses cannot function without business acumen.
So startup founders, both technical and non-technical, take it upon yourself to learn leadership techniques, develop strong team abilities, and ensure that you can write an email or a blog post easily, concisely, and effectively. Soft skills may not start your company, but they will sustain them.
And non-technical founders, split the grocery shopping trips with your technical co-founder. They could probably use a break.
