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As a coder, I've historically tended to think poorly of non-technical people who have the "next big idea". The truth is that a really great business person wit
by shiftb 16y ago
As a coder, I've historically tended to think poorly of non-technical people who have the "next big idea".
The truth is that a really great business person with the right skills can be immensely important! I didn't fully understand that until this last year between meeting some hustlers on the Startup Bus and my coworkers at my last startup.
The real problem is separating the hustlers from the blowhards. In my experience, they land in 2 camps.
1) Hustlers - They will make something happen w/o you. They'll put up a splash page or a wufoo form or something to get things started. They'll be actively working on their idea, even if it's just prototyping things on paper.
2) Blowhards - These guys are just waiting around for you to join to do the work. They usually have an inflated sense of importance (about themselves and their idea). They also tend to think you're lucky to work with them.
It's the latter type this site is making fun of.
The former are the people you want to work with, and are super valuable.
- potatolicious 16y ago> "The former are the people you want to work with, and are super valuable." Some of the former you want to work with. A technical founder has something obvious they're bringing to the table - i.e., the ability to implement the systems that will enable the idea. What a non-technical guy brings to the table, if anything, is more complex. Does he have insider knowledge or networks in the field you're breaking into? Does he have some skillset (say, SEO, real marketing prowess, etc) that will concretely help the business launch? Having an idea is fine. Having the hustle and enthusiasm to carry the idea is fine. The problem here is that, even when you exclude the blowhards, there are a lot of non-technical people who have the motivation and enthusiasm - but honestly simply don't bring much of value to the table. Not sufficient to warrant co-founder equity anyways.
- farout 16y agoOk, while we are at it here is my beef: 1. technical cofounders - they just want to play around. You tell them the users are satisfied with the current search engine,that we need to make it easier for people to enter info in so that app can be more useful. Crickets. Nothing happens. Hey look, we tried out 3 new search engine. Thanks. I am sick of tech folks that don't want to do what needs to be done because it is not sexy. 2. non-tech folks. Networking is fine. But you need to hustle that means try out lots of ideas to try to get "top of the mind" awareness from "your ideal customer profile". This means lots of grunt work. Think of ideas and execute them. But noooo. It's all about people you know, some of it is. Sure. Noooo. It' all about perception. Come on, some of it has to be that our product actually does something useful for them. Bottomline: depending on the product are we in "demand harvest" or "demand generation" mode. No we are in "perception" mode so we can be bought out. Our customer is the company buying us. Screw the users. Their stupidity for doing business with us. And some marketing people - are a waste of space. Everything is outsourced. They are glorified yes men to the CEO. Sales repeatedly asks for collateral. Screwed it I will make my own. I agree that we need to target strategic customers. They are the hubs that will virally promote our products. Nope. We need customers with big names so the companies that are thinking of buying us will think we own the space. My background: EE, stats, sales, sys admin, dba, programmer. And I agree the hardest one to learn was graphics and design.