3 ms·

After reading the Sternberg and Tenner articles on this topic, I noticed that they forgot one major thing: it's sometimes the business guy who's the lead founde

After reading the Sternberg and Tenner articles on this topic, I noticed that they forgot one major thing: it's sometimes the business guy who's the lead founder and in charge of the product direction. I'm going to be a little biased here since I'm the "business guy" of the startup I'm working on, but having a guy who knows the product well yet is constantly in the market chatting to people is very important. If the lead founder is also the developer, the product often has a tendency to be technically incredible, but lack the market connection needed to sell. By bringing a business guy along once the product is "ready", he's selling something that he didn't create, which is so much harder to do. Now I'm not going to say that every startup must have a business guy leading from the beginning, there are a ton of developers that have incredible business sense. What I am saying is that it can often be a disadvantage to have the guy coding the product be the guy that leads product design. Your decisions become jaded by what you like doing and what you don't like doing, and a customer focus is hard to maintain. Taking a step away from the code and having a guy who understands software dev, yet is focused solely on market intelligence can make all the difference. I previously worked with a successful startup that had a CEO who had never actually seen the code of his company's platform. It didn't matter to him. He was talking with the customer every day, knew what they wanted and was able to convey it to the developers. As a graduate of Software Engineering, he still knew how to code, but his vision wasn't hampered by the day to day grind of actually coding it. Obviously there's many ways you can be successful in a startup, but creating a great product is really only half the battle. If you can have a software-intelligent, externally-focused "business guy" leading the charge, you can make sure that your great product doesn't go to waste and you have a market for it when it's complete.

swombat 15y ago
I stopped short of saying that in the article (I was trying to make the point that even if you're not working directly on the product, there are many things to do in a pre-launch startup), but you're absolutely right! I actually had a sentence that I cut out which said something along the lines of "By the way, if you're a 'business guy' on a startup but you're not at all involved in building the product, you're probably doing something wrong!" - however, I don't feel I'm in a position to make such a generic statement, especially in view of the counterexample of Seth Sternberg himself. I do feel that the 'business guy' should be involved in the product development/leadership, though, as you feel.
- andrewcross 15y ago
  Very fair. That's the great thing about startups, there's no magic formula. What works for one group probably won't work for the next. But I would say this, if your a business guy and you don't have much of a clue how the product works, sit down with a developer and chat for an hour or two. You'll probably be a little bit overwhelmed, but you'll definitely have a new appreciation for the product and hopefully be able to talk in a bit more depth in the future (where appropriate).

swombat 15y ago

I stopped short of saying that in the article (I was trying to make the point that even if you're not working directly on the product, there are many things to do in a pre-launch startup), but you're absolutely right! I actually had a sentence that I cut out which said something along the lines of "By the way, if you're a 'business guy' on a startup but you're not at all involved in building the product, you're probably doing something wrong!" - however, I don't feel I'm in a position to make such a generic statement, especially in view of the counterexample of Seth Sternberg himself. I do feel that the 'business guy' should be involved in the product development/leadership, though, as you feel.

andrewcross 15y ago
Very fair. That's the great thing about startups, there's no magic formula. What works for one group probably won't work for the next. But I would say this, if your a business guy and you don't have much of a clue how the product works, sit down with a developer and chat for an hour or two. You'll probably be a little bit overwhelmed, but you'll definitely have a new appreciation for the product and hopefully be able to talk in a bit more depth in the future (where appropriate).