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Help request: How to find programmers for a startup

theplanis.com

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Re: Help request: How to find programmers for a startup

#11
In some sense, hiring engineers is like selling. In both cases, you need to convince them that you've got something that they want. Neither group cares about what you need/want.

Two related points.

If you can't "sell" an engineer, why are you sure that you can sell to your proposed customers?

While developing your pitch, be sure that you'll be happy with folks who want what you're offering. If it's not unique, you'll lose the good ones to folks who offer "more".

Re: Help request: How to find programmers for a startup

#13
Stop using the word "engineer". There isn't such a thing as a "software engineer", it's a made-up business/defense-dept. term. Software engineers don't seem to be recognized by professional engineering certification body nor should they be.

Just call them computer programmers or software developers but treat them with respect, don't treat them like code monkeys.

Re: Help request: How to find programmers for a startup

#15
If you're the first technical person in a company, you're either a founder/co-founder or an chump. I simply not only refuse to answer emails from "business guys" who "came up with the next great idea and are looking for an engineer to build it", but I also will not even consider funded start-ups that don't have technical co-founders: it's safe to say, that they will lack true technical leadership and their engineer team will be composed not of people who wish to work in a start-up, but of people who have nowhere else to go.

More often than not, if you look at successful technology companies even the "business guys" (the CTO and even the CFO) often have an EE/CS/Math/Physics degrees and have, at one point, have held technical roles. Engineering/math/natural sciences act as "brain gymnastics" which come in handy in any role which requires fast, analytical thinking.

That being said, in enterprise software having a strong sales team is often more important than having a strong product. Ideally, you'd want to have a founder who had worked in roles such as field sales/application engineer/sales engineer/consultant and has a Computer Science background: this way they will understand both the technology involved and the acute pain the target customers experience.

For consumer Internet, however, "sales guys" are only needed when you have something to sell (e.g. a critical amount of impressions in an advertising-supported site). The canonical examples (Craigslist, eBay, Google AdWords/Overture) are brilliant in that they're self serve: you don't need a large sales force to sell them.

Re: Help request: How to find programmers for a startup

#16
post #6

I'll throw in some more advice: if you're going to start a company w/o a technical person, pick an idea that allows you to pre-sell. Enterprise applications are a good, because it's not uncommon to get commitments from buyers before the product exists. If you can do this, it demonstrates two things to prospective developers: 1) The idea/market has legs 2) You can pull your own weight

I wouldn't start an enterprise software company w/o a technical person either. A non-technical sales person from an enterprise company won't be aware of the acute pains the customer's IT/engineering departments have. They'll be able to make sales pitch, but given an equal sales pitch by Oracle/IBM/SAP and a start-up-you-never-heard-of, which one (as a non-technical manager) would you choose?

As I've said earlier, the best person to start an enterprise software company would be an applications engineer/field sales engineer/professional services consultant from either a large or fast growing enterprise software company.

Not only will they know how to sell, they will also understand the technology, be able to program well enough to create a prototype, be interview developers, know how to support the customer, deal with the end-users and know most importantly what the end-users want (best enterprise software is the enterprise software employees are begging to install).

Re: Help request: How to find programmers for a startup

#18

also, buzzword-laden mass emails sent from business school students to engineering student email lists are real turn-offs :) if you're a business school student, i'd advise to get some friends who are hackers to read over your recruiting emails before sending them out.

If they had hackers as friends, they wouldn't need to send out recruiting emails. Most of the time your first hires are your friends. If you can't convince a friend to be a cofounder, how can you ever expect to convince a stranger to work for you?

Re: Help request: How to find programmers for a startup

#20
My opinion: make it clear that they will not be drug tested nor do you care about how they may choose to relax in their free time. This will set you apart from many large corporate environments as well as indicating that you value a programmer's productivity rather than their conformity.
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