Naval Ravikant explains why startup founders should be able to code

Naval Ravikant gave the following advice to a startup spending $25k outsourcing product development to external developers:

“You guys should be coding from the start. Web and mobile startups are so competitive right now. You have to assume that anything you’re doing, there’s a team of 2-4 dedicated, hardcore hackers working 24/7 on something extremely similar.”

He continues:

“If you have this iteration loop where you have to submit something to someone else and they have to come back to you. Then you’re like ‘no, it wasn’t quite right’ because a lot of stuff was lost in translation, you’re going to get 1-2 cycles per day at best. Meanwhile, that other team is getting 20 cycles per day. It has gotten so intense now that non-coding founders and startups are having a really difficult time adding value at these early stages.”

Full video: Forbes “Start-Ups: Don't Outsource Coding“ (Mar 2011)