starting a startup

[rainonacongadrum]

This is a quote from Paul Grahams's essay "How to Start a Startup" ( http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html )

"In a technology startup, which most startups are, the founders should include technical people. During the Internet Bubble there were a number of startups founded by business people who then went looking for hackers to create their product for them. This doesn't work well. Business people are bad at deciding what to do with technology, because they don't know what the options are, or which kinds of problems are hard and which are easy. And when business people try to hire hackers, they can't tell which ones are good. Even other hackers have a hard time doing that. For business people it's roulette."

This quote seems a bit discouraging for those of us who aren't experienced programmers. How much weight do you attach to this quote (especially the bit about business type people not being able to hire qualified hackers because they don't know who is good)? How hard would it be to familiarize oneself with programming enough so you're able to at least speak/understand their language, if only generally? Does it mean that all people wanting to create a startup need to be hackers? (Surely it would help but it seems like Graham is saying it's a must.)