71–80 of 253 posts
And even still, sometimes things get built and never turn into a real business precisely because of this hubris. And 99.9% of the time, the ones that DO grow over time would have grown much much faster if "the business guy" had been there all along.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s funny how many people think their ideas are truly brilliant and warrant a massive amount of respect. Anyone who’s worked as an engineer for awhile knows that ideas are a dime a dozen, they are rarely unique, and are about a millionth of what needs to be done to succeed
What is needed in your opinion? EDIT: I say this as an engineer who is putting his notice in tomorrow to found a startup EDIT EDIT: Thanks guy, this is along the lines I'm thinking. I'll be competing with companies like Asana, Monday.com, and ClickUp. I worked in a consulting environment for two years and these tools could never be adopted despite the org size growing to 1000+ people in my larger team. It was a big p…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s funny how many people think their ideas are truly brilliant and warrant a massive amount of respect. Anyone who’s worked as an engineer for awhile knows that ideas are a dime a dozen, they are rarely unique, and are about a millionth of what needs to be done to succeed
What is needed in your opinion? EDIT: I say this as an engineer who is putting his notice in tomorrow to found a startup EDIT EDIT: Thanks guy, this is along the lines I'm thinking. I'll be competing with companies like Asana, Monday.com, and ClickUp. I worked in a consulting environment for two years and these tools could never be adopted despite the org size growing to 1000+ people in my larger team. It was a big p…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s funny how many people think their ideas are truly brilliant and warrant a massive amount of respect. Anyone who’s worked as an engineer for awhile knows that ideas are a dime a dozen, they are rarely unique, and are about a millionth of what needs to be done to succeed
What is needed in your opinion? EDIT: I say this as an engineer who is putting his notice in tomorrow to found a startup EDIT EDIT: Thanks guy, this is along the lines I'm thinking. I'll be competing with companies like Asana, Monday.com, and ClickUp. I worked in a consulting environment for two years and these tools could never be adopted despite the org size growing to 1000+ people in my larger team. It was a big p…
So in theory it makes more sense to team up with someone with that skillset than partner with another engineer but then one of you has to give up on the thing you're good at to do founding sales which you may-or-may-not be inclined to do.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s funny how many people think their ideas are truly brilliant and warrant a massive amount of respect. Anyone who’s worked as an engineer for awhile knows that ideas are a dime a dozen, they are rarely unique, and are about a millionth of what needs to be done to succeed
What is needed in your opinion? EDIT: I say this as an engineer who is putting his notice in tomorrow to found a startup EDIT EDIT: Thanks guy, this is along the lines I'm thinking. I'll be competing with companies like Asana, Monday.com, and ClickUp. I worked in a consulting environment for two years and these tools could never be adopted despite the org size growing to 1000+ people in my larger team. It was a big p…
Of course a lot of things need to right, beyond that point. I use the patent rule as a guide to make sure that the right people get credit where credit is due, when an idea reaches the market successfully.
The reason, I tend to think, why business-focused co-founders might be less valuable than tech-focused co-founders in a tech company is, in my experience, that all founders surface their own biases in how their companies are designed based on the comfortable experiences of their past; and you need those biases to lean toward the tech in tech companies, because tech can automate anything per the previous paragraph.
I've seen this surface subtly: "Yeah, Stripe integration to take money makes sense, but its just not a priority right now. Sales can handle invoicing." (it never becomes a priority because once you give DepartmentX that responsibility they'll fight to defend their turf).
I've also seen it surface less subtly: A VC-backed software startup with mid-eight figures of funding, all the investors thought the company was selling software, but it turns out the salespeople were never trained on that, and were instead told to only sell white-glove services, using the software, from another department. "Bigger contracts" etc. Engineering leadership was oblivious to this happening for at least two quarters, because who knows, users were still signing up, "sales handles the invoicing", they weren't tracking the right things, maybe some layer of intentional deception. Chicken & egg "the software doesn't sell" "you weren't even trying to sell it". Engineers are expensive -> Engineering layoffs. They're now a zombified services company, who took on 70 mil in venture capital to sell software, with zero full-time software engineers. The CEO's professional work history? Selling services of this exact kind for some provider for twenty years. They took rocket fuel to start a bonfire, and it blew up the block.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Very typical. I've run into cases where an "idea guy" basically says "you do all the product and tech half, I'll do marketing and strategy." Which is dumb, because sometimes I'm legitimately better at the strategy half too. Generally these people want ridiculous equity splits of that nature. It's worth anyone technical's time to build skills in strategy, marketing, finance, etc. The technical co-founder always gets s…
> worth anyone technical's time to build skills in strategy, marketing, finance, etc. This leads to jack-of-all-trades types. Good non-technical folk exist. They’re just not easy to find for obvious reasons (same as good technical founders who can see the forest for the trees). A good technical founder dilutes their comparative advantage e.g. negotiating with suppliers and prioritising payments ahead of a close.
For those reasons, the best business cofounders in my experience, are former salespeople (for b2b startups), demand generation marketers (for b2c), and product managers.