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Tech Deciphered · Nov 3, 2025 · 42 min

70 – AI as a co-founder

Can AI be a co-founder? Do you need a technical co-founder, any more? How about a business co-founder? What can AI do for you as co-founder? Will this become the “brave new world” of start-ups, small and medium businesses? For this and much more discussion, a no BS perspective on AI as a potential co-founder.Our co-hosts:Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmittNuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedroOur show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Bertrand SchmittIntro Welcome to episode 70 of Tech DECIPHERED. Today, we'll talk about AI as a co-founder. Can AI be your co-founder? Do you need a technical co-founder anymore? Or do you need a business co-founder anymore? What can AI do for you as a co-founder? Will this become the brave new world of startup and small businesses? Nuno, what's your take on this topic? Have you started seeing that for early stage startups, the AI co-founder? Nuno Gonçalves PedroYeah. We start seeing this notion of people now—"Oh, I could be a single founder." I mean, single founders have existed for a long time. We'll come back to a little bit the taxonomies of founding teams. But definitely, is now a little bit of a trend where people are like, "Well, I don't need a co-founder. I'm just going to go do my own thing." Normally, the case is made more for, "Oh, I don't need a technical co-founder. I can vibe code and put some stuff together and go through things." As we go through the episode today, I think we'll go into the details on why technical co-founders might still matter and why there are certain areas of technical founding that might not matter as much where AI can really be your co-pilot, so to speak. The Classic Case for Co-Founders But maybe let's start with what is the case for co-founders? Why do you need to have a co-founder? Why can't you just do it yourself? Historically, there's been really sort of an angle where there's sort of these two entities in the founding team. Right? The business founder and the technical founder. The business founder is the person that runs business related activities. If you're doing, for example, enterprise software, SaaS, et cetera, your business co-founder is responsible for go-to-market like hiring sales—in particular, at the beginning actually being the person who does sales, establishing partnerships, creating and managing elements that are more related to admin with the help maybe of third parties around finance, et cetera. The business founder is more the person who's focused on the business aspects of the company, which would be go-to-market, which includes sales, channel partnerships, marketing, et cetera. Might include, as I said, the admin side, et cetera. Then the technical co-founder is more focused on elements that are connected to the technology stack, development of the code base. If it's just software, development of software, could be more on the product side as well, someone who's more of a product manager, et cetera. That's why you need those two entities. Because you need these two entities, so to speak, these two people. Because you need someone who has more knowledge of how to develop a code base, how to get it off the ground, how to develop the MVP, the minimum viable product early on. On the other side, you need someone who figures out: how do we get this thing to market, how do we actually deploy it, how do we monetise it, how do we create partnerships if they apply. That's why we've had this classic case for founding teams. Now just to be very clear, it is also true that we've also had single founding teams for a long time. We have companies that have been founding only for one person. But at the end of the day, the ethos has been, let's have two co-founders, one on the technical side at least and one or more on the technical side and one or more on the business side at the very least. Bertrand SchmittThat's true. That's what you have typically seen. Maybe, going back historically, maybe the most famous example of this technical co-founder plus business co-founder has been the founding team of Apple—Steve Jobs with Mr Wozniak. Steve, on the business side; Woz, as he was called, on the technical side. That has been that maybe that's reference point for all of Silicon Valley for decades. At the same time, it has not been true for every successful company. If I take HP, for instance—if I remember well, they were both technical co-founders: Bill Hewlett, Dave Packard. If you take Microsoft, Bill Gates had, in some ways, a lesser co-founder, but both were technical. Paul Allen was technical like Bill Gates. Nuno Gonçalves PedroI would say Gates was more incredibly technical, but he became a business guy. I think that was part of the secrets of Microsoft early on. He was very business-savvy in some ways. He was very technical. Until this day, I think he's extremely technical and extremely intelligent, but he was definitely very business-savvy. Bertrand SchmittHe was able to wear two hats in some ways. If you think about HP, it's probably a similar story. When we talk about the one-person founder alone by himself, the question would be, is it a technical co-founder or business co-founder or a mix of both? Someone who can do both even early on or who learned to do both pretty quickly. Probably, Bill Gates would be a good example if we assume Paul Allen was less critical. Nuno Gonçalves PedroYeah. I think that's a good point, and you went back to one of the OGs like Wozniak and Jobs. I'd say Jobs was business clearly, great marketeer, et cetera. But he was also very deeply involved in product. Interestingly enough, think maybe not as involved on product early on as he became later on with NeXT and then his second coming, so to speak, to Apple. Where you get much more involved in product management and how products were deployed. But to your point, he wasn't a technical co-founder. Clearly, that was not the role. I think if we look at some of the great success like Google, Sergei and Larry were both very technical. I guess they brought in Eric Schmidt very early on to be the CEO. But at the end of the day, the definition of founders in Silicon Valley, maybe we'll come back to that later, is at least you need to have technical founders early on. Then maybe the business people will come along or maybe one of the technical people will go more onto the business side. But you need to have this duality of role that you, Bertrand, we were just talking about. Someone who either becomes more business-savvy, more business side, but definitely someone who's more on the technical side. I think that's how the Silicon Valley has emerged over the last many decades. Right? Bertrand SchmittYeah. It's interesting you brought in the story of Google with Eric Schmidt because you could argue they brought him in as a CEO, but he used to be CTO at—was it Novell? I forgot. Nuno Gonçalves PedroNovell. Yeah. I think he was CEO of Novell at some point. Yeah. Bertrand SchmittHe was CEO at some point because I was going to say, clearly, he has also a technical background. Able to do the business side. No question. But he was also coming from the technical side. Nuno Gonçalves PedroHe was definitely technical at the beginning of his career, and he was also at PARC, Bell Labs, and a variety of other organisations. He was in software engineering at Sun Microsystems, to your point. Then he became the CEO and chairman of Novell. But he is a technical guy by background, for sure. No doubt. He has a PhD. But he was brought in to be the CEO. He was brought in to be more the business guy. I think, very honestly, Silicon Valley loves the story of actually the technical CEO. The person who has at least very product or deep product knowledge and understanding of technology, so it doesn't get bullshitted necessarily by the rest of the engineering team, so to speak. Now there's notable exceptions to that. There are companies that were built very heavily on people that were incredibly business-savvy and very much on the go-to-market side. But, again, justifying why you have co-founders, why you have the technical person and the business person at the very least early on in the structure of the company. Bertrand SchmittIf we look at more recently, of course, we have the exception of Elon Musk starting and running so many companies in parallel. Some he didn't technically funded. He was early on investor, took over very quickly. But he's also an interesting example of a very deeply technical person with very strong business acumen, obviously. That's another example. Do you have examples of many successful companies just started by a very business co-person in the tech industry? Obviously, outside tech, it's a different story. Yeah? Nuno Gonçalves PedroNot a lot, but I feel like in the enterprise software side, there are people that have managed to be great at doing it because they are amazing at building sales teams, and amazing at then building engineering teams around them. I'm not sure I can start giving as many examples as we've given on the other side of people that did have a very strong technical background so to speak. I don't know if he's a technical guy. I do think he had the bachelor's in electrical engineering. One guy is David Duffield. He was the guy who founded PeopleSoft and then later on founded Workday. Bertrand SchmittYeah. I was looking for him, actually. Nuno Gonçalves PedroDavid Duffield, to my knowledge, I think he has a bachelor's in electrical engineering and then MBA....

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Can AI be a co-founder? Do you need a technical co-founder, any more? How about a business co-founder? What can AI do for you as co-founder? Will this become the “brave new world” of start-ups, small and medium businesses? For this and much more discussion, a no BS perspective on AI as a potential co-founder.Our co-hosts:Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmittNuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedroOur show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news
Subscribe To Our Podcast

Bertrand SchmittIntro Welcome to episode 70 of Tech DECIPHERED. Today, we'll talk about AI as a co-founder. Can AI be your co-founder? Do you need a technical co-founder anymore? Or do you need a business co-founder anymore? What can AI do for you as a co-founder? Will this become the brave new world of startup and small businesses? Nuno, what's your take on this topic? Have you started seeing that for early stage startups, the AI co-founder? Nuno Gonçalves PedroYeah. We start seeing this notion of people now—"Oh, I could be a single founder." I mean, single founders have existed for a long time. We'll come back to a little bit the taxonomies of founding teams. But definitely, is now a little bit of a trend where people are like, "Well, I don't need a co-founder. I'm just going to go do my own thing." Normally, the case is made more for, "Oh, I don't need a technical co-founder. I can vibe code and put some stuff together and go through things." As we go through the episode today, I think we'll go into the details on why technical co-founders might still matter and why there are certain areas of technical founding that might not matter as much where AI can really be your co-pilot, so to speak. The Classic Case for Co-Founders But maybe let's start with what is the case for co-founders? Why do you need to have a co-founder? Why can't you just do it yourself? Historically, there's been really sort of an angle where there's sort of these two entities in the founding team. Right? The business founder and the technical founder. The business founder is the person that runs business related activities. If you're doing, for example, enterprise software, SaaS, et cetera, your business co-founder is responsible for go-to-market like hiring sales—in particular, at the beginning actually being the person who does sales, establishing partnerships, creating and managing elements that are more related to admin with the help maybe of third parties around finance, et cetera. The business founder is more the person who's focused on the business aspects of the company, which would be go-to-market, which includes sales, channel partnerships, marketing, et cetera. Might include, as I said, the admin side, et cetera. Then the technical co-founder is more focused on elements that are connected to the technology stack, development of the code base. If it's just software, development of software, could be more on the product side as well, someone who's more of a product manager, et cetera. That's why you need those two entities. Because you need these two entities, so to speak, these two people. Because you need someone who has more knowledge of how to develop a code base, how to get it off the ground, how to develop the MVP, the minimum viable product early on. On the other side, you need someone who figures out: how do we get this thing to market, how do we actually deploy it, how do we monetise it, how do we create partnerships if they apply. That's why we've had this classic case for founding teams. Now just to be very clear, it is also true that we've also had single founding teams for a long time. We have companies that have been founding only for one person. But at the end of the day, the ethos has been, let's have two co-founders, one on the technical side at least and one or more on the technical side and one or more on the business side at the very least. Bertrand SchmittThat's true. That's what you have typically seen. Maybe, going back historically, maybe the most famous example of this technical co-founder plus business co-founder has been the founding team of Apple—Steve Jobs with Mr Wozniak. Steve, on the business side; Woz, as he was called, on the technical side. That has been that maybe that's reference point for all of Silicon Valley for decades. At the same time, it has not been true for every successful company. If I take HP, for instance—if I remember well, they were both technical co-founders: Bill Hewlett, Dave Packard. If you take Microsoft, Bill Gates had, in some ways, a lesser co-founder, but both were technical. Paul Allen was technical like Bill Gates. Nuno Gonçalves PedroI would say Gates was more incredibly technical, but he became a business guy. I think that was part of the secrets of Microsoft early on. He was very business-savvy in some ways. He was very technical. Until this day, I think he's extremely technical and extremely intelligent, but he was definitely very business-savvy. Bertrand SchmittHe was able to wear two hats in some ways. If you think about HP, it's probably a similar story. When we talk about the one-person founder alone by himself, the question would be, is it a technical co-founder or business co-founder or a mix of both? Someone who can do both even early on or who learned to do both pretty quickly. Probably, Bill Gates would be a good example if we assume Paul Allen was less critical. Nuno Gonçalves PedroYeah. I think that's a good point, and you went back to one of the OGs like Wozniak and Jobs. I'd say Jobs was business clearly, great marketeer, et cetera. But he was also very deeply involved in product. Interestingly enough, think maybe not as involved on product early on as he became later on with NeXT and then his second coming, so to speak, to Apple. Where you get much more involved in product management and how products were deployed. But to your point, he wasn't a technical co-founder. Clearly, that was not the role. I think if we look at some of the great success like Google, Sergei and Larry were both very technical. I guess they brought in Eric Schmidt very early on to be the CEO. But at the end of the day, the definition of founders in Silicon Valley, maybe we'll come back to that later, is at least you need to have technical founders early on. Then maybe the business people will come along or maybe one of the technical people will go more onto the business side. But you need to have this duality of role that you, Bertrand, we were just talking about. Someone who either becomes more business-savvy, more business side, but definitely someone who's more on the technical side. I think that's how the Silicon Valley has emerged over the last many decades. Right? Bertrand SchmittYeah. It's interesting you brought in the story of Google with Eric Schmidt because you could argue they brought him in as a CEO, but he used to be CTO at—was it Novell? I forgot. Nuno Gonçalves PedroNovell. Yeah. I think he was CEO of Novell at some point. Yeah. Bertrand SchmittHe was CEO at some point because I was going to say, clearly, he has also a technical background. Able to do the business side. No question. But he was also coming from the technical side. Nuno Gonçalves PedroHe was definitely technical at the beginning of his career, and he was also at PARC, Bell Labs, and a variety of other organisations. He was in software engineering at Sun Microsystems, to your point. Then he became the CEO and chairman of Novell. But he is a technical guy by background, for sure. No doubt. He has a PhD. But he was brought in to be the CEO. He was brought in to be more the business guy. I think, very honestly, Silicon Valley loves the story of actually the technical CEO. The person who has at least very product or deep product knowledge and understanding of technology, so it doesn't get bullshitted necessarily by the rest of the engineering team, so to speak. Now there's notable exceptions to that. There are companies that were built very heavily on people that were incredibly business-savvy and very much on the go-to-market side. But, again, justifying why you have co-founders, why you have the technical person and the business person at the very least early on in the structure of the company. Bertrand SchmittIf we look at more recently, of course, we have the exception of Elon Musk starting and running so many companies in parallel. Some he didn't technically funded. He was early on investor, took over very quickly. But he's also an interesting example of a very deeply technical person with very strong business acumen, obviously. That's another example. Do you have examples of many successful companies just started by a very business co-person in the tech industry? Obviously, outside tech, it's a different story. Yeah? Nuno Gonçalves PedroNot a lot, but I feel like in the enterprise software side, there are people that have managed to be great at doing it because they are amazing at building sales teams, and amazing at then building engineering teams around them. I'm not sure I can start giving as many examples as we've given on the other side of people that did have a very strong technical background so to speak. I don't know if he's a technical guy. I do think he had the bachelor's in electrical engineering. One guy is David Duffield. He was the guy who founded PeopleSoft and then later on founded Workday. Bertrand SchmittYeah. I was looking for him, actually. Nuno Gonçalves PedroDavid Duffield, to my knowledge, I think he has a bachelor's in electrical engineering and then MBA....

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