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Technical directors are merely tolerating all the “ideas guys” with no skills and no capital. We should cut them out and relegate these marketers to a contract

Technical directors are merely tolerating all the “ideas guys” with no skills and no capital. We should cut them out and relegate these marketers to a contract role, and exclusively pursue business models where customers don’t derive confidence from a CEO sales guy. Mainly because they waste our time, they can’t even judge the character of people in their network assuming they even have a network, and take way too much equity in a conversation that would be better off avoided.

erik_landerholm 5y ago
You just have to find technical people that can do both to some level that is good enough to prove your mvp has legs. After you raise money as long as you can stick to all technical people do it…as long as you can.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
smallerfish 5y ago
My father in law (who had a successful exit back in the 90s with an actual silicon business) is a strong advocate of engineer startup CEOs. ~"Non tech people aren't going to learn technology; it's very doable for a tech person to learn necessary sales and finance skills." Having spent the last N years with sales cofounders, I wish I'd taken that advice on board earlier. (Though, there's certainly value in learning sales from skilled practitioners.)
- long_time_gone 5y ago
  An assumption seemingly embedded in this comment is that technical people can learn sales, but sales people can't learn technology. It would be interesting to unpack that concept with actual data.
- jimbokun 5y ago
  > "Non tech people aren't going to learn technology; it's very doable for a tech person to learn necessary sales and finance skills." I think this is a good summary of the initial Y Combinator investment philosophy.
jollybean 5y ago
(repeating my earlier sentiment) This is a poor assessment. Business want someone that understand their needs and can communicate in their terms - not 'someone that can code'. Having lived on 'both sides of the fence' it took me several years to develop the perspective, maturity and skills necessary to be able to communicate 'with confidence' to customers, and it's not some kind of bluster. While the bar is certainly lower for someone to 'just have an idea' and so there's a lot of chaff and noise ... for most startups that don't require exceptional technical chops (say for example, not a new kind of DB), a 'good CEO' is worth far more than any technical contributor, at least nominally. Technical contribution in more clearly defined areas is more or less just skilled labour. The big advantage of being technical at an early stage is that that labour can come very cheaply with long hours etc. and the material reality of a startup is that there is 'a lot of work, and it's mostly technical'. Also - it needs to churn quickly, which is difficult to do for regular staff engineers at an established company. The best thing any young technical person could hope for is a competent, trustworthy, conscientious, somewhat business savvy CEO who can communicate, as a partner. Edit: The #1 issue I see among youngish new companies making pitches, is that they are building something that nobody wants. They have no specific insight into some kind of market need, and don't have the ability to communicate with material confidence around specific issues. Sadly by the time someone has been working in industry long enough to do this (and this is a minority, not everyone develops insight), their opportunity cost is usually pretty high and they're less interested in 'startups'. For example, in a recent discussion with a major retail exec., listening to his woes, a 1/2 dozen solid concepts came out of a 1hr. discussion, but they're opportunities that could only be addressed by someone with that insight, and would be hugely benefited by someone like him doing the selling.
- vmception 5y ago
  I notice I did write my opinion in a very echo-chambery way. Sure, emotional intelligence and charisma and communication skills are important in this proposed technocracy, I’m just saying that the non-technical people with no capital should no longer be able to grift their way into double digit share ownership. We can go vertically integrated and switch the distribution of ownership, much more heavily than it already is.

erik_landerholm 5y ago

You just have to find technical people that can do both to some level that is good enough to prove your mvp has legs. After you raise money as long as you can stick to all technical people do it…as long as you can.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

smallerfish 5y ago

My father in law (who had a successful exit back in the 90s with an actual silicon business) is a strong advocate of engineer startup CEOs. ~"Non tech people aren't going to learn technology; it's very doable for a tech person to learn necessary sales and finance skills." Having spent the last N years with sales cofounders, I wish I'd taken that advice on board earlier. (Though, there's certainly value in learning sales from skilled practitioners.)

long_time_gone 5y ago
An assumption seemingly embedded in this comment is that technical people can learn sales, but sales people can't learn technology. It would be interesting to unpack that concept with actual data.
jimbokun 5y ago
> "Non tech people aren't going to learn technology; it's very doable for a tech person to learn necessary sales and finance skills." I think this is a good summary of the initial Y Combinator investment philosophy.

jollybean 5y ago

(repeating my earlier sentiment) This is a poor assessment. Business want someone that understand their needs and can communicate in their terms - not 'someone that can code'. Having lived on 'both sides of the fence' it took me several years to develop the perspective, maturity and skills necessary to be able to communicate 'with confidence' to customers, and it's not some kind of bluster. While the bar is certainly lower for someone to 'just have an idea' and so there's a lot of chaff and noise ... for most startups that don't require exceptional technical chops (say for example, not a new kind of DB), a 'good CEO' is worth far more than any technical contributor, at least nominally. Technical contribution in more clearly defined areas is more or less just skilled labour. The big advantage of being technical at an early stage is that that labour can come very cheaply with long hours etc. and the material reality of a startup is that there is 'a lot of work, and it's mostly technical'. Also - it needs to churn quickly, which is difficult to do for regular staff engineers at an established company. The best thing any young technical person could hope for is a competent, trustworthy, conscientious, somewhat business savvy CEO who can communicate, as a partner. Edit: The #1 issue I see among youngish new companies making pitches, is that they are building something that nobody wants. They have no specific insight into some kind of market need, and don't have the ability to communicate with material confidence around specific issues. Sadly by the time someone has been working in industry long enough to do this (and this is a minority, not everyone develops insight), their opportunity cost is usually pretty high and they're less interested in 'startups'. For example, in a recent discussion with a major retail exec., listening to his woes, a 1/2 dozen solid concepts came out of a 1hr. discussion, but they're opportunities that could only be addressed by someone with that insight, and would be hugely benefited by someone like him doing the selling.

vmception 5y ago
I notice I did write my opinion in a very echo-chambery way. Sure, emotional intelligence and charisma and communication skills are important in this proposed technocracy, I’m just saying that the non-technical people with no capital should no longer be able to grift their way into double digit share ownership. We can go vertically integrated and switch the distribution of ownership, much more heavily than it already is.