The death of the tech founder: pure technical cofounders no longer have a place
dbasch · x · 2026-09-30
dbasch argues the old split of "technical cofounder + business cofounder" is gone: today there is only one kind of founder — someone willing to face the market and grind through the unglamorous work.
He uses a friend who is brilliant at solving hard technical problems but refuses sales, user conversations, and social media: the prototypes pile up, nobody tries them, and the startup never gets off the ground. If you're raising VC to build a growth company, getting attention is the job description.
His takeaway: the value of a purely technical contribution has collapsed compared to 10-20 years ago. Grind or GTFO.
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