How many startup founders aren't technical?

I'm curious how many startup founders out there aren't technical, in the least bit, aside from knowing the very basic processes of putting a site together and launching it. Do some founders just hire a small competent team and work closely with them, or do almost all founders do a large majority of the work themselves?

Most of the successful startups I have heard of have one or more technical person(s) in the very core team. I'm yet to find a tech-startup which had only non-technical co-founders though non-technical co-founders creating a successful startup won't be surprising as it mainly depends on the nature of the startup. Depending on your business idea, just external technical help by hiring some technical guy or assigning the technical work on contract to someone may be sufficient.

Having a tech co-founder who has good knowledge of tech stuff will definitely help with the crucial decisions related to technology about which a non-technical person might have no clue.

Having said that, I'd add that having clarity of thoughts and being visionary is more important for the success of a startup than having technical skills.

More often then not at least one of the founders of a tech startup is technical.

However, there are certainly successes where the idea / business / sales / marketing guy has an idea and just hires someone to create it for him.

Software / websites or any online service is never a build once and sit back an collect the $. It needs to change as user feedback comes in, as new ideas come up, as you better understand your offering and what people want. To be that agile it helps to have developers close by and part of the team and really IN IT. That's why it would help to have a technical co-founder.

But I've been contracted to build systems for a lot of people. It works, and certainly can be done. So if you find the right people and have money you can get it built :]