Business Cofounders are a Dime a Dozen
joshuavolz.com
Business Cofounders are a Dime a Dozen
1–10 of 38 posts
Re: Business Cofounders are a Dime a Dozen
#2The 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 business is as common as people that think they can hack because they installed wordpress on a shared host.
Just like there aren't that many great hackers there aren't that many great business people. If you find one you'll know right away because he comes with either money or customers. Great business people are worth their weight in gold. Just like great hackers. Unfortunately the two don't often meet.
Re: Business Cofounders are a Dime a Dozen
#3Theere'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 product is NOT the hard part(except the rare case where there are real technical challenges). Building a business is the hard part.
If you really think about it, most startups don't fail because their code isn't good enough. They fail because the founders are absorbed in engineering and neglect the business parts like marketing, monetizing, and so on.
I'm kind of on both sides, as a hacker who's better at the business/marketing elements, so I have perspective into attitudes on both sides.
I may be taking a risk making this comment on Hacker News, but I think in some places, it's actually coders who are a dime a dozen. People who can actually build and grow a business are much harder to find.
Re: Business Cofounders are a Dime a Dozen
#4I 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) There is zero evidence that they have produced a deliverable for the project. Not even a Powerpoint deck or a napkin.
3) They have no conception of what the BATNA for a talented engineer sounds like. My way to discourage them quickly without being impolite is to quote my consulting rate, which typically causes sputtering.
Re: Business Cofounders are a Dime a Dozen
#5"Business Cofounders" in the HN context implies that these people should be of real value. Perhaps the title should have been "Business Cofounders are a Dime a Dozen".
Re: Business Cofounders are a Dime a Dozen
#6Theere'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…
I live in India and from my perspective, everybody is a dime a dozen, until they think hard and work hard to distinguish themselves.
Re: Business Cofounders are a Dime a Dozen
#7Theere'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…
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.
Re: Business Cofounders are a Dime a Dozen
#8Theere'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 hackers.
My point is that you are right to say that building a business is the hardest part, but you are wrong to suggest that "building the business" is something separate from "building the product", or that success in the former does not crucially depend on the latter.
Re: Business Cofounders are a Dime a Dozen
#9I'm a software engineer. After spending a few years in Silicon Valley, I have also have met many "business people" who'd pitch me their great idea and try to recruit me.
Now here is the tough question (for engineers): yes, we have the superior ability to execute any idea because we can code. But are we actually going to? This might be generalizing, but most fellow engineers I met prefer working for a stable paycheck -or- prefer hacking a prototype project that never ships. And pet projects started by the above mentioned people (without that business person who pushes them) never get to see the world -- even if the prototype website, iPhone app, etc. is finished, they spend no effort on marketing and give up when no users come.
Again, this is generalizing. There are many examples of hackers who have built very successful ventures (Google, Facebook, et cetera.) But my general observation makes me sad -- many engineers just don't seem to make good founders. What can be done in the engineering community to make hackers more "business-minded" or "shipping-minded," so to say?
Re: Business Cofounders are a Dime a Dozen
#10To the list of things business cofounders could bring, I would also add "deep domain knowledge." For example, if it's a site on selling foos to wumpats, you'd better have spent all of your years before bschool in either the foo industry, working for wumpats, or hopefully some of both.
As a tip, though, I usually just ask bschooler-types a few basic questions like 1) how many foos are bought today 2) how do wumpats make their purchasing cycle (i.e. enterprise, individual, etc.) 3) who are the existing competitors in this space... Most bschoolers, despite having these questions drilled into them over and over during their 60k/year schooling, don't bother doing the legwork to investigate them before looking for a "technical cofounder."