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Business Cofounders are a Dime a Dozen

joshuavolz.com

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Re: Business Cofounders are a Dime a Dozen

#21

Post by ced »

patio11 wrote: post #4

I get approached from time to time by people who think I'd be the perfect person for implementing their Big Idea. (That should be red flag number one, since if I'm the best you can do, you clearly don't have good skills at identifying programmers.) Almost universally: 1) They want full-time effort out of me (often, in the exploitative sense of "full-time"), but they're not full-time on the project themselves. 2) Ther…

if I'm the best you can do, you clearly don't have good skills at identifying programmers.

Aren't you underestimating yourself?

Most businesses don't need Knuths. They need "smart & gets things done". By my reckoning, you're way ahead of the average HNer (and myself) at this game.

Re: Business Cofounders are a Dime a Dozen

#22

Post by ryanlchan »

I'm always surprised by the hard lines people draw between technical and business cofounders. 'Technical founders' mock the business side's naivite and reject the notion that any less than 50% of the work in building a business is programming. 'Business founders' think they have all the right stuff and see 16 year olds building facemash or yousquare, then assume anyone can program with a book and an afternoon.

Truth is, if you can slot yourself into one of these classifications that easily you're probably not going to be a very good startup cofounder. A startup requires people to wear lots of different hats, with some being in the technical side and others being on the business side. While normal people, aka business and technical founders, can wear one, maybe two hats at a time, start up founders need to be 12 headed hydras.

I'm not saying that there's no specialization on a startup team; it's necessary. But how will your programming ninja respond when an investor asks about how your branding fits the specific niche you're targeting? Or what will the business dude say when questioned about what stack you're going to deploy on?

Maybe it's time we stopped thinking about business/technical cofounders and started evaluating people as startup cofounders.

Re: Business Cofounders are a Dime a Dozen

#23

Post by jlees »

My issue with both of the articles, true though they are, is they don't represent the partnership model that most often succeeds: you know, people who are actually friends, who work together and trust each other.

The blind "hello, please believe in me" model seems commonly believed in, but I've yet to hear of tangible cases where it actually worked. (business person recruiting techie at an event).

Re: Business Cofounders are a Dime a Dozen

#24

Post by jlees »

il wrote: post #19
jpcx01 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree here. I learned long ago that if I built something that I thought was cool, it didn't turn to dollars. The best hackers absolutely need to find a great business partner. Unless they can wing it on their own. But personally, I hated the doing all the BS it takes to bring a product to market. I just want to build cool shit.

That's why a business guy and a hacker is the best team. I love creating new marketing strategies, building campaigns, writing sales copy and doing customer development. But writing code bores me...I hate slogging through coding and debugging whenever I have to do it.

il, I'm the same, but I think it helps to at least be on that side of the fence - a hacker turned to the dark side - than be the proverbial "Here are my mockups in PowerPoint, now build me a website" clueless/exploitative 'business guy'.

Re: Business Cofounders are a Dime a Dozen

#25

Post by jlees »

mlinsey wrote: post #8
il wrote: post #3

Theere's obviously a lot of parasitic business "idea guys" who don't know about technology this article is talking about. At the same time, there's a lot of business guys who can bring real, tangible value in terms of strategy, customer acquisition methods, marketing, finances, etc. I think there'a huge misconception that all it takes to build a company is a couple hackers who can build a product. Building the produc…

Building a business requires quick iteration on ideas. Quick iteration requires building products quickly. One of the qualities that separates good and bad hackers is speed. Not many startups fail because their code isn't good enough, but many startups fail because they run out of time to find the right product because they haven't been executing quickly enough. Lots of those startups might have been saved by better…

Look at some of the customer development stuff that's come up recently, though; I've seen companies with very very little actual code/product (in some cases, none!) iterate extremely quickly through wizard-of-oz smokescreens and the like.

I agree that fast execution and the ability to turn around and change what you've done (some hackers I know are very change-resistant, note) is important - that's why my last startup didn't do as well as it could. But a lot of that could have been saved with more customer-development methods as well as faster, better code.

Re: Business Cofounders are a Dime a Dozen

#26

Post by hungh3 »

euroclydon wrote: post #13
il wrote: post #3

Theere's obviously a lot of parasitic business "idea guys" who don't know about technology this article is talking about. At the same time, there's a lot of business guys who can bring real, tangible value in terms of strategy, customer acquisition methods, marketing, finances, etc. I think there'a huge misconception that all it takes to build a company is a couple hackers who can build a product. Building the produc…

Building and growing a business often require that a person be able to go without making any money for a quite a while, so by definition, these people are rare. I don't think people with the talent to grow a business are that rare, but people with the talent and a conducive life situation are. And actually, even building a technically mundane product is quite hard, but more for the same reasons building a business is…

absolutely agree. I think your take on the "conducive life situation" is cool.

Re: Business Cofounders are a Dime a Dozen

#28

Post by alexdmoore »

Great points on both sides. I think a top in the world business person is as helpful for a company as a top engineer, but this doesn't have to be a co-founder. It can an advisor or later hire that has a transformative effect on a business.

Also I would point out consumer internet business people might not be able to have the same impact as a top bd person for an enterprise software company as ES companies have greater needs on building real sales organizations while consumer internet relies on marketing a social phenomena.

Re: Business Cofounders are a Dime a Dozen

#29

Post by bconway »

ced wrote: post #21
patio11 wrote: post #4

I get approached from time to time by people who think I'd be the perfect person for implementing their Big Idea. (That should be red flag number one, since if I'm the best you can do, you clearly don't have good skills at identifying programmers.) Almost universally: 1) They want full-time effort out of me (often, in the exploitative sense of "full-time"), but they're not full-time on the project themselves. 2) Ther…

if I'm the best you can do, you clearly don't have good skills at identifying programmers. Aren't you underestimating yourself? Most businesses don't need Knuths. They need "smart & gets things done". By my reckoning, you're way ahead of the average HNer (and myself) at this game.

Most businesses don't need Knuths. They need "smart & gets things done".

This can't be said enough. I so often see people get caught up on which technology, framework, or paradigm is right for a given idea (or worse, constantly revise them) that they get slowed down dramatically, or in extreme cases, deadlocked. I do it myself from time to time. Start by grinding something out and going from there.

Re: Business Cofounders are a Dime a Dozen

#30

Post by lars512 »

mixmax wrote: post #2

The three things listed (money, promise of money and connections) are exactly what a business founder should be able to deliver. Along with customers. Paying customers. Before you launch the product. If he (or she) can't deliver that, then you've found the business equivalent of a scriptkiddie that promises a business person he can build the next Google from a wordpress install. People that think they are good at bus…

Before customers even, business founders can offer the credible promise of customers. The credibility comes from some sort of market validation. They should be able to convince you that a good execution will actually get traction, and help discover discover early that product X is not what people need/will pay for, but close variant Y is what should be focused on instead.

In my very limited experience, non-technical partners have vaguely done this, but haven't clearly communicated what they're doing or how it contributes value. I think they imagine that I share their background, and automatically understand and value their actions. With no shared background, poor communication, and only a short relationship with them so far, the trust isn't there to really value their work.

My mistake has been looking forward too much to what a product will be, and thus aiming for more than is reasonable in a small, fixed timespan. This inevitably means I can't achieve what I aim for without investing significantly more of my time than the non-technical partner, which makes me feel like I'm getting a bad deal. I have to learn to aim more minimally, and estimate more generously.

It seems that both types of founders need to communicate a lot, and invest more in the personal relationships outside the venture. All that communication will build the trust which eventually makes things flow well and happen efficiently.

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