Comment by joshstrange

Companies are never a “if you build it, they will come”-type of thing. You need sales/marketing/etc (and that can all be one person). Sometimes you can have engineer/sales/marketing/etc all in 1 person but it’s rare.

It’s incredibly common (in and outside of tech) to see someone who is really, really good at 1 (or more) things but sucks at other skills needed to run a successful business. A prime example is someone who can make amazing food but has no clue how to run the other aspect of a restaurant/food business. I have first-hard exposure to this phenomenon.

Maybe you don’t want to raise funds, maybe you don’t want to do sales, maybe you don’t want to talk to clients, maybe you don’t want to be alone in an echo chamber.

There are many valid reasons to partner with one or more people that don’t write code to form a company.

I run my own company, I do everything (some of it badly) and I’d absolutely entertain the idea of bringing on someone who enjoyed and was good at sales and managing clients. I can do both those things and I think I’m above average at it but I don’t enjoy doing it. It stresses me out and feels like a chore. I don’t want total isolation from my clients but I’d love a layer between us. Someone who can say “no” or “our platform doesn’t support that” without feeling stress or low-level guilt or agreeing to add features for free. Someone who enjoys reaching out to new perspective clients (all of mine essentially fell in my lap).

Bottom line good engineers often are not good at the other things needed to build a successful company.