6 ms·

Completely agree, I'm waiting for the article on "Why you need a business-oriented co-founder and how technical founders can recruit one"...

thelittlenag 3y ago
+1 on that!
debacle 3y ago
The problem is that you don't. "Business" has been systematized in many ways, and more and more your "business" is just someone else's software.
jdminhbg 3y ago
> There are two reasons founders resist going out and recruiting users individually. One is a combination of shyness and laziness. They'd rather sit at home writing code than go out and talk to a bunch of strangers and probably be rejected by most of them. But for a startup to succeed, at least one founder (usually the CEO) will have to spend a lot of time on sales and marketing. [2] http://paulgraham.com/ds.html http://paulgraham.com/ds.html
- aleph_minus_one 3y ago
  > One is a combination of shyness and laziness. They'd rather sit at home writing code than go out and talk to a bunch of strangers and probably be rejected by most of them. I think this is more complicated: the problem is not going out and talking to a bunch of strangers (which I would do if necessary, and I do claim that my tolerance of rejection is sufficiently high). The problem rather is (this is something that a friend, who works as a business consultant, explained to me): to make a successful sale, you need a salesperson "who thinks like the customer". Lots of programmers simply think very differently from how the typical programmers, and thus are bad salespersons concerning these customers. He really said that I have an insanely good intuition for what kind of software product would insanely help some specific industry, but also honestly told me that I (and honestly also he) would likely not be capable of selling such a product (if it existed) to a customer in this industry, simply because I think too differently from the decision makers in this industry.

thelittlenag 3y ago

+1 on that!

debacle 3y ago

The problem is that you don't. "Business" has been systematized in many ways, and more and more your "business" is just someone else's software.

jdminhbg 3y ago

> There are two reasons founders resist going out and recruiting users individually. One is a combination of shyness and laziness. They'd rather sit at home writing code than go out and talk to a bunch of strangers and probably be rejected by most of them. But for a startup to succeed, at least one founder (usually the CEO) will have to spend a lot of time on sales and marketing. [2] http://paulgraham.com/ds.html http://paulgraham.com/ds.html

aleph_minus_one 3y ago
> One is a combination of shyness and laziness. They'd rather sit at home writing code than go out and talk to a bunch of strangers and probably be rejected by most of them. I think this is more complicated: the problem is not going out and talking to a bunch of strangers (which I would do if necessary, and I do claim that my tolerance of rejection is sufficiently high). The problem rather is (this is something that a friend, who works as a business consultant, explained to me): to make a successful sale, you need a salesperson "who thinks like the customer". Lots of programmers simply think very differently from how the typical programmers, and thus are bad salespersons concerning these customers. He really said that I have an insanely good intuition for what kind of software product would insanely help some specific industry, but also honestly told me that I (and honestly also he) would likely not be capable of selling such a product (if it existed) to a customer in this industry, simply because I think too differently from the decision makers in this industry.