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"I would say having a technical CEO has a positive order of magnitude improvement on the outcome, and liklihood of a liquidity event and the size of that liquid

by edanm 10y ago

"I would say having a technical CEO has a positive order of magnitude improvement on the outcome, and liklihood of a liquidity event and the size of that liquidity event, in my experience." Interesting assertion. Lucky for us, there are plenty of statistics available. So instead of going with gut feeling, do you have any sources to back this up? (Genuine question - I'd love to find out whether this is actually true). "Unfortunately, there is always a tendency to believe your own PR, believe you know more about things than you do[...]". While you make this point about CEOs, how do you know you're not talking about yourself as a maker? Note: I'm not against your point, but I think the hubris of "makers" vs "everyone else" is just another example of people thinking their ingroup is the "right" and "successful" one.

20yrs_no_equity 10y ago
I'm not aware of any statistics that qualify the CEOs of startups based on their background. Maybe you could do a rough pass based on degree program. My assertion is purely based on my experience, but it's not just anecdote- I've worked for 2 dozen startups and have visibility in to 3-4 times that. > how do you know you're not talking about yourself as a maker? This is a good point, and it gets to what my real point is: Culture. The issue is not lack of skills or integrity it's a different culture. The culture of making things is different from the culture of running a 1950s era light manufactory. The latter is the "management" that most business people are taught. IT's woefully out of date. And it's predicated on the idea that you're stamping out the same parts over and over again. Tech is cutting edge and thus more of a craft than a manufacturing enterprise. Engineers know this and so they know what to optimize for. Business people it seems can't or won't accept this. They always want to know the date. IT's like its the only thing they care about. IF you ask an engineer to estimate something where the spec is a vague two sentence description they won't over-estimate themselves and think they can predict the time. Business guys, for instance, never seem to understand why you won't give them an estimate (which becomes a deadline, they don't seem to understand that estimates are %50 wrong if the are given correctly.) this is because their culture is coming from a land where it takes exactly the same amount of time to stamp out a widget and predicting how long it will take to make 50 widgets is a no-brianer.

by edanm 10y ago

20yrs_no_equity 10y ago

I'm not aware of any statistics that qualify the CEOs of startups based on their background. Maybe you could do a rough pass based on degree program. My assertion is purely based on my experience, but it's not just anecdote- I've worked for 2 dozen startups and have visibility in to 3-4 times that. > how do you know you're not talking about yourself as a maker? This is a good point, and it gets to what my real point is: Culture. The issue is not lack of skills or integrity it's a different culture. The culture of making things is different from the culture of running a 1950s era light manufactory. The latter is the "management" that most business people are taught. IT's woefully out of date. And it's predicated on the idea that you're stamping out the same parts over and over again. Tech is cutting edge and thus more of a craft than a manufacturing enterprise. Engineers know this and so they know what to optimize for. Business people it seems can't or won't accept this. They always want to know the date. IT's like its the only thing they care about. IF you ask an engineer to estimate something where the spec is a vague two sentence description they won't over-estimate themselves and think they can predict the time. Business guys, for instance, never seem to understand why you won't give them an estimate (which becomes a deadline, they don't seem to understand that estimates are %50 wrong if the are given correctly.) this is because their culture is coming from a land where it takes exactly the same amount of time to stamp out a widget and predicting how long it will take to make 50 widgets is a no-brianer.