Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why the notion here that to be an entrepreneur, you have to be a hacker.

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 24 posts

Why the notion here that to be an entrepreneur, you have to be a hacker.

#1

Post by vintya »

I'm a bit puzzled by the notion and expectation by Y Combinator & folks on this forum that you absolutely need to be a "hacker" to have any shot at being a good entrepreneur. Even the application form for startup school asks you about what systems you've hacked in the past.

I am a fairly intelligent guy, if I can say so myself, who somehow ended up in computer science, ended up going to grad school but realized later on that my true interests and calling really lie somewhere else. I'm not a hacker so to say and I don't particularly enjoy programming - certainly not to the extent that I could have orgasms doing it and spend countless hours just doing it for fun. I look at it as a means to an end, do it to get my job done and happen to be decently good at it. I'm in the process of launching a site here and have already launched a beta version of it in India (our initial target audience). I learned RoR/AJAX/CSS and all else associated with deploying it in my spare time (my day job is a systems one with C coding). I truly enjoy the process of taking an idea from concept to launch and building a successful business around it. I spend much time thinking and working on it, learning about all aspects from the engineering to the business side. I've been working on my idea for over an year and half now, all in my spare time, riding many ups and downs and persevering through.

But please explain, why this ridiculous idea that to be an Internet entrepreneur, you should just absolutely be in love with programming & hacking anything and everything to death!

Re: Why the notion here that to be an entrepreneur, you have to be a hacker.

#3

Post by icey »

It's not that you have to be a hacker, it's that you should be able to justify yourself with contributions.

The "YC Way" rejects idea men in favor of people who get things done.

To paraphrase Linus, "Talk is cheap, show us results."

By the way, if you picked up a framework and built a business on it, you're close enough to being a hacker.

Re: Why the notion here that to be an entrepreneur, you have to be a hacker.

#4

Post by tstegart »

Part of the reason is because YC concentrates on web companies. From their website: "Though we fund all types of computer startups, we're especially interested in web-based applications. We've been thinking about that problem longer than anyone else, and by now can visualize much of the space of possibilities."

Re: Why the notion here that to be an entrepreneur, you have to be a hacker.

#5

Post by gills »

I suspect (ok, I know from current experience) that it helps, when you have just a small team (or a lonely solo adventure, in my case) and you're living on ramen, to have at least one founder who is enthusiastic enough about the technology side to actually make progress even in a perfect storm of morale-killing events.

Re: Why the notion here that to be an entrepreneur, you have to be a hacker.

#6

Post by vintya »

My point is this - the barrier to entry and delivering a decent web product/service has come down a lot over the years. With frameworks such as RoR, countless online articles that literally spoon feed ready made solutions to common problems, stumbling blocks, and an above average intelligence, one can build a good enough web service these days.

Sure, building something state of the art requires true "hacking" skills and genuine creativity and intelligence - but how often do you really see such web companies these days? Most ideas are simple, some downright silly, and only a few that are products of intelligent hacking. Do you agree?

Re: Why the notion here that to be an entrepreneur, you have to be a hacker.

#8

Post by vintya »

pg wrote: post #7

why this ridiculous idea that to be an Internet entrepreneur, you should love programming Empirical evidence.

Programmers or hackers don't build companies. Yes, they build a product or a service - the best ones can create magic. But it stops there. You need smart enterprising people who understand the bigger picture and the ecosystem, how different pieces of the puzzle fit together, how to make money out of all that stuff that's been built. You need the idea men, and the executioners. It's so wrong I believe to make programming or hacking skills/smarts/history the most important qualifying criteria for being accepted to YC, or the most important indicator of potential success.

Re: Why the notion here that to be an entrepreneur, you have to be a hacker.

#9

Post by pg »

vintya wrote: post #8
pg wrote: post #7

why this ridiculous idea that to be an Internet entrepreneur, you should love programming Empirical evidence.

Programmers or hackers don't build companies. Yes, they build a product or a service - the best ones can create magic. But it stops there. You need smart enterprising people who understand the bigger picture and the ecosystem, how different pieces of the puzzle fit together, how to make money out of all that stuff that's been built. You need the idea men, and the executioners. It's so wrong I believe to make programm…

Google suggests it's safe to start with hackers.

Re: Why the notion here that to be an entrepreneur, you have to be a hacker.

#10

Post by icey »

vintya wrote: post #8
pg wrote: post #7

why this ridiculous idea that to be an Internet entrepreneur, you should love programming Empirical evidence.

Programmers or hackers don't build companies. Yes, they build a product or a service - the best ones can create magic. But it stops there. You need smart enterprising people who understand the bigger picture and the ecosystem, how different pieces of the puzzle fit together, how to make money out of all that stuff that's been built. You need the idea men, and the executioners. It's so wrong I believe to make programm…

"Programmers or hackers don't build companies."

You should drop a line to Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, Jeff Bezos, Bill Joy, Dean Kamen, Ray Kurzweil, Jeff Hawkins, Larry Ellison and Bill Gates to let them know about that. I don't think they've gotten the memo.

[For purposes of congruency in this thread, I had Woz in here as well as he was a founder at Apple, but removed him from my list.]

Post reply on HN