"... Can a startup entrepreneur not be a coder? ..."
Yes. Mitch Kapor was underestimated and you can use this to your advantage. He was seen as a novice non-tech in his Startup, recognised this & profited from it. Read about Mitch Kapor ~ http://www.kapor.com/bio/ and I've written more about this here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/2296168310/
How is Kapor a non-coder? He was writing software throughout all of his early endeavors. He didn't outsource development of Visiplot and Visitrend.
I'm having a hard time imagining how Kapor could possibly be considered a non-technical/non-coding founder. He may not have gone to school for it...but most of us didn't learn to hack in school (if you didn't know how to hack until you got to school you obviously don't love computers enough to be a hacker).
So, sure Kapor hired additional developers, and his genius probably lies more in his dealings with other people than computers, but he was clearly a hacker from very early on, and one certainly can't hold him up as an example of an entrepreneur without any technical ability.
I'm not trying to say he has no technical ability. I'm saying that in this case an Entrepreneur succeeded in spite of what is considered by many to be the prime requirement of Entrepreneurship. The current mantra is, "if you are non-technical, give up". If anything, Kapors success came more from his insight into human psychology than the his technical ability to code ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/2348902846/
Yes. Mitch Kapor was underestimated and you can use this to your advantage. He was seen as a novice non-tech in his Startup, recognised this & profited from it. Read about Mitch Kapor ~ http://www.kapor.com/bio/ and I've written more about this here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/2296168310/