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>> For 99% of software businesses, the tech can cause the business to fail but its almost never what makes the business succeed. Things like customer developmen

>> For 99% of software businesses, the tech can cause the business to fail but its almost never what makes the business succeed. Things like customer development and sales are actually far more important. I STRONGLY disgree with your take as a universal take. At the pre-Seed stage, the technology is the only thing. Without that, you dont have a technical business. You just have a pitch deck. Of course, once you prove out the idea and reach product market fit, that enables you to either have cashflow or raise funding -- so technology becomes less critical because you can use the $ to hire technologists. If "mapping market demand to technical products" was really the money printer, every management consultant would be running a unicorn. Every MBB consultant would have a side startup. You actually need the technical product, or some MVP of it, to map a market demand to it, to do demos, to raise funding. If you dont, you just have a pitch deck. Sure, if you can raise on a pitch deck, that is winning, but how many can?

waprin 3y ago
A pitch deck is something you make for investors. I'm not talking about investors, I'm talking about customers. Lots of management consultants can make a pitch deck. Very few can actually find people willing to pay for an MVP of a software product. That was pretty much the point of my post. Most "business" guys are bad at the business side. Making pitch decks and raising funds is not the business side - except in some people's little side-circus. Understanding what customers want and figuring out what's the minimal version that people will pay for is. You show me a management consultant that actually has 50 people willing to pay for an MVP, and that person can easily have a side startup. In fact, please put me in touch. Very, very few of them can actually do that. And even if they don't have a developer, I imagine an investor would be pretty impressed by that too. Again, I'm speaking in generalities. If your technology is "turn common trash into gasoline" or "teleports people across contintents safely", then yeah, you don't need many business skills. But if your technology is "a scalable web app", or "I forked stable diffusion and did something cute with it", then the business skills are more critical than the tech skills.
- armatav 3y ago
  Preach
danenania 3y ago
It somewhat depends on the product, but in the beginning, I think the tech only matters inasmuch as it allows you to iterate quickly and build a product people love. It can be a spaghetti code tire fire underneath. What really matters is market insight to understand what people want, design ability to give it to them, and sales/marketing to get traction. You do need a good engineer to pull this off, but they need to prioritize iteration speed, not engineering quality.

waprin 3y ago

A pitch deck is something you make for investors. I'm not talking about investors, I'm talking about customers. Lots of management consultants can make a pitch deck. Very few can actually find people willing to pay for an MVP of a software product. That was pretty much the point of my post. Most "business" guys are bad at the business side. Making pitch decks and raising funds is not the business side - except in some people's little side-circus. Understanding what customers want and figuring out what's the minimal version that people will pay for is. You show me a management consultant that actually has 50 people willing to pay for an MVP, and that person can easily have a side startup. In fact, please put me in touch. Very, very few of them can actually do that. And even if they don't have a developer, I imagine an investor would be pretty impressed by that too. Again, I'm speaking in generalities. If your technology is "turn common trash into gasoline" or "teleports people across contintents safely", then yeah, you don't need many business skills. But if your technology is "a scalable web app", or "I forked stable diffusion and did something cute with it", then the business skills are more critical than the tech skills.

armatav 3y ago
Preach

danenania 3y ago

It somewhat depends on the product, but in the beginning, I think the tech only matters inasmuch as it allows you to iterate quickly and build a product people love. It can be a spaghetti code tire fire underneath. What really matters is market insight to understand what people want, design ability to give it to them, and sales/marketing to get traction. You do need a good engineer to pull this off, but they need to prioritize iteration speed, not engineering quality.