I really think society has built some weird narrative that if you did a technical undergrad, you arent fit to run a small startup. Ycombinator busts this myth constantly, and actually prefer technical founders.
Cynical view is that technical founders who don’t know who business work are easier to manipulate into bad decisions for their business, as long as VC makes money.
I think it’s more of a realism vs optimism take - deeply technical people focus on what can go wrong, because they know better. Which is a good thing for a technical person - the best CTOs are great because they prevent implosions, not because they’re naive and optimistic
It’s not a “narrative” - technical-minded people tend to be more realistic/pessimistic, which has severe implications on company growth.
It matches my personal experience (the most technical CEOs I work with consistently underperform) and the industry averages (the majority of the companies that make it big have CEOs who aren’t deeply technical).
That includes YC to- from Coinbase to Dropbox, the CEOs are hardly strong technical people (some have CS backgrounds, but they don’t really have a career as accomplished technical individuals and aren’t exactly know for their incredible CTO careers).
