7 ms·

You know, there actually is a lot of value in good business people. Problem is, it's really tough to identify someone who can do business and someone who can ta

You know, there actually is a lot of value in good business people. Problem is, it's really tough to identify someone who can do business and someone who can talk but can't. I think about this a lot. I'm now thinking the fastest way to figure it out is (tactfully) ask them how much money they've stacked up in various endeavors. The university teaches a lot of things, but those don't necessarily translate into stacking up money. If you're technical and want a business guy, figure out if he can stack up money. A pretty good predictor of that is how much money he's stacked up in the past.

baguasquirrel 16y ago
Stacked up money for himself? For the company? For the company for a few quarters? I agree with you, definitely. Finding good business folks is as hard as finding good programmers. Really damn hard.
- lionhearted 16y ago
  > Stacked up money for himself? For the company? For the company for a few quarters? I was thinking in an entrepreneurial/self-employed/self-directed/sales context... funny, I didn't even think about someone who did it on a corporate level. No information is perfect for decisionmaking, but the closer the past success is to what you're looking to do, the better. That said, I've found some people just have a knack for getting money, and it's good to work with those people. As a side note, I was just reading this earlier - I'd recommend it, there's a whole education in here on having a knack for getting money if you read it slowly and think through it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent#Non-musical_projects http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent#Non-musical_projects
  - Natsu 16y ago
    Did I read that right? Did he really win a lawsuit against Taco Bell for them selling food for using his name? One would think that selling "50 cent tacos" wouldn't cause undue confusion, but....
    - lionhearted 16y ago
      I think they sent out a press release asking him to change his stage name to "79 Cent" to jokingly promote their new discount menu and it got picked up by some newspapers.
  - GVRV 16y ago
    Was meant to upvote you, but my fingers failed me.
seigenblues 16y ago
you should really read the book "Fooled by Randomness". There's a particular chapter: "If you're so rich, why aren't you smart?" It points out how difficult it is to look at empirical evidence, esp. if you don't know the size of a given cohort. He makes his point with stock markets. Given the huge number of people who trade in a given year, it's basically inevitable that someone will pick nothing but winners. But if you don't see the huge pool of failures, you don't realize that someone's "stock picking skillz" are no better than what you might expect, given the size of the trading population. E.g., you're looking at a rich MBA. Say 100,000 MBAs graduate a year in the US. You still don't have enough information to know if he was any good. Worse, say you use a pedigree: You're looking at a rich MBA from Harvard. Say they only graduate 1,000, but, because any damn headhunter will put a harvard MBA into a C-level job, 90% of the harvard MBAs stack up a ton of money. Now, knowing that he's a rich MBA tells you even less. All you really know is that richness & a harvard MBA seem to correlate, which is kind of exactly where you started :) (on the other hand, if you had a poor harvard MBA in front of you, then you'd really have something!) Anyway, yeah. it's a really hard problem -- just as hard as finding a good programmer, imho
- fauigerzigerk 16y ago
  What would be really interesting in light of what you say is repeat performance. Also, it is not inconceivable that even random success may _cause_ repeated success as successful people tend to get more opportunities and are more confident.
  - mechanical_fish 16y ago
    What would be really interesting in light of what you say is repeat performance Well, then you get fooled by randomness in a completely different way: You begin to believe that the ability to succeed from scratch is a much rarer skill than it actually is, because (a) only a subset of the potentially-successful people ever succeed, by whatever measure, and (b) only a smaller subset of those ever bother to try to succeed again; and (c) only an even smaller subset of subset (b) ever succeed a second time. But you don't really need to find a serial performer. You only need to find someone who can succeed once, and there are more of the latter than there are of the former, by definition. It's no knock on Bill Gates that, having founded one incredibly successful company, he didn't quit and try to start a different one just to "prove" that he had the knack. Zuckerberg should not be ashamed that, having found himself holding one tiger by the tail, he doesn't feel inclined to shop around for a different tiger.
nika 16y ago
I know there's a huge difference between programming and computer science. I bet there's at least as large a gulf between business and what they teach in business school. When I was in college one of the people I got to know was a guy who started with a paper route in junior high school and by the time he became college freshman he had several houses he was renting out. He cleared enough from rent to cover the mortgage and build up the downpayment for the next house. The guy worked hard, was smart with money, damn humble (he was the one who cleaned the houses between tenants himself even though he could have afforded to hire people to do it). No question in my mind that guy went on to be a multi-millionaire. Also, if you do a venture with a guy like that and it fails, you know he put everything he had into it. There was nothing slick about him. He was not a networker in the least. But he treated everyone with respect, and got along well with just about everyone. He was a natural born businessman and entrepreneur.... who knew how to "Stack up money" as you put it! Show me a business guy like that, and this code monkey will take notice.
- ramanujan 16y ago
  Right. What you are noticing is that many MBAs think that sales is beneath them, sort of like how some theoretical computer scientists think code is an "implementation detail".
netmau5 16y ago
You know, sometimes I wish I could find a good non-technical cofounder. That is probably heresy on HN, but I don't want to do marketing, sales, or write lots of blog posts. I want to do development, design, and product. I haven't even gotten to the point of finding out if the biz guy is any good as I'm still looking for someone I can mesh with personally.
- Vivtek 16y ago
  Take a number.
kerryfalk 16y ago
"Is there anything other than business that you've risen to the top in? Hobby, sport, etc." Start there. If there's nothing, they probably don't have the drive. If there's something then I think there's at least a chance that they'll work hard and be good. The second part is they have to want to be good at business and selling. Being truly good at anything is hard, you have to want it. Money isn't a good indicator, I find. Unfortunately. Personality is, but is very difficult to discern between those who will try hard and win, and those who won't.

baguasquirrel 16y ago

Stacked up money for himself? For the company? For the company for a few quarters? I agree with you, definitely. Finding good business folks is as hard as finding good programmers. Really damn hard.

lionhearted 16y ago
> Stacked up money for himself? For the company? For the company for a few quarters? I was thinking in an entrepreneurial/self-employed/self-directed/sales context... funny, I didn't even think about someone who did it on a corporate level. No information is perfect for decisionmaking, but the closer the past success is to what you're looking to do, the better. That said, I've found some people just have a knack for getting money, and it's good to work with those people. As a side note, I was just reading this earlier - I'd recommend it, there's a whole education in here on having a knack for getting money if you read it slowly and think through it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent#Non-musical_projects http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent#Non-musical_projects
- Natsu 16y ago
  Did I read that right? Did he really win a lawsuit against Taco Bell for them selling food for using his name? One would think that selling "50 cent tacos" wouldn't cause undue confusion, but....
  - lionhearted 16y ago
    I think they sent out a press release asking him to change his stage name to "79 Cent" to jokingly promote their new discount menu and it got picked up by some newspapers.
- GVRV 16y ago
  Was meant to upvote you, but my fingers failed me.

seigenblues 16y ago

you should really read the book "Fooled by Randomness". There's a particular chapter: "If you're so rich, why aren't you smart?" It points out how difficult it is to look at empirical evidence, esp. if you don't know the size of a given cohort. He makes his point with stock markets. Given the huge number of people who trade in a given year, it's basically inevitable that someone will pick nothing but winners. But if you don't see the huge pool of failures, you don't realize that someone's "stock picking skillz" are no better than what you might expect, given the size of the trading population. E.g., you're looking at a rich MBA. Say 100,000 MBAs graduate a year in the US. You still don't have enough information to know if he was any good. Worse, say you use a pedigree: You're looking at a rich MBA from Harvard. Say they only graduate 1,000, but, because any damn headhunter will put a harvard MBA into a C-level job, 90% of the harvard MBAs stack up a ton of money. Now, knowing that he's a rich MBA tells you even less. All you really know is that richness & a harvard MBA seem to correlate, which is kind of exactly where you started :) (on the other hand, if you had a poor harvard MBA in front of you, then you'd really have something!) Anyway, yeah. it's a really hard problem -- just as hard as finding a good programmer, imho

fauigerzigerk 16y ago
What would be really interesting in light of what you say is repeat performance. Also, it is not inconceivable that even random success may _cause_ repeated success as successful people tend to get more opportunities and are more confident.
- mechanical_fish 16y ago
  What would be really interesting in light of what you say is repeat performance Well, then you get fooled by randomness in a completely different way: You begin to believe that the ability to succeed from scratch is a much rarer skill than it actually is, because (a) only a subset of the potentially-successful people ever succeed, by whatever measure, and (b) only a smaller subset of those ever bother to try to succeed again; and (c) only an even smaller subset of subset (b) ever succeed a second time. But you don't really need to find a serial performer. You only need to find someone who can succeed once, and there are more of the latter than there are of the former, by definition. It's no knock on Bill Gates that, having founded one incredibly successful company, he didn't quit and try to start a different one just to "prove" that he had the knack. Zuckerberg should not be ashamed that, having found himself holding one tiger by the tail, he doesn't feel inclined to shop around for a different tiger.

nika 16y ago

I know there's a huge difference between programming and computer science. I bet there's at least as large a gulf between business and what they teach in business school. When I was in college one of the people I got to know was a guy who started with a paper route in junior high school and by the time he became college freshman he had several houses he was renting out. He cleared enough from rent to cover the mortgage and build up the downpayment for the next house. The guy worked hard, was smart with money, damn humble (he was the one who cleaned the houses between tenants himself even though he could have afforded to hire people to do it). No question in my mind that guy went on to be a multi-millionaire. Also, if you do a venture with a guy like that and it fails, you know he put everything he had into it. There was nothing slick about him. He was not a networker in the least. But he treated everyone with respect, and got along well with just about everyone. He was a natural born businessman and entrepreneur.... who knew how to "Stack up money" as you put it! Show me a business guy like that, and this code monkey will take notice.

ramanujan 16y ago
Right. What you are noticing is that many MBAs think that sales is beneath them, sort of like how some theoretical computer scientists think code is an "implementation detail".

netmau5 16y ago

You know, sometimes I wish I could find a good non-technical cofounder. That is probably heresy on HN, but I don't want to do marketing, sales, or write lots of blog posts. I want to do development, design, and product. I haven't even gotten to the point of finding out if the biz guy is any good as I'm still looking for someone I can mesh with personally.

Vivtek 16y ago
Take a number.

kerryfalk 16y ago

"Is there anything other than business that you've risen to the top in? Hobby, sport, etc." Start there. If there's nothing, they probably don't have the drive. If there's something then I think there's at least a chance that they'll work hard and be good. The second part is they have to want to be good at business and selling. Being truly good at anything is hard, you have to want it. Money isn't a good indicator, I find. Unfortunately. Personality is, but is very difficult to discern between those who will try hard and win, and those who won't.