Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Gootee: Non-technical co-founders make excellent early QA testers

Ralph Goody · Startup Technology - Technical Founder Advice · Y Combinator · Oct 10, 2018 · at 42:17

Ralph Goody, CTO of PlanGrid, discusses how technical founders can productively collaborate with non-technical co-founders in the early days.

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“If you've got someone that's really non-technical, and I'm not saying my co-founder is really non-technical. I'm sure she can use a computer. But you know, if it's really non-technical, this is an amazing testing opportunity for you. I mean, I remember I would write this software and I'd be so happy about it and I'd hand it to her. And as soon as she touched it would break. I mean, I don't know what she did. She shook the iPad, she rotated it three times, but she had a way to break the stuff I wrote, and that was amazing for testing in the beginning, so that's one way to engage your non-technical co-founder.”

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Assertion Not checkable as stated
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Assertion Contradicted
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“Used some off-the-shelf computer graphics knowledge to write the first Blueprint viewer that ever ran on mobile.”
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“We always try to balance it between engineering, like, a year ahead of time, but not maybe three years ahead of time, which is a trade-off.”
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What-if
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