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>"You can't build stuff. You can't take an idea in your head and produce a product that works." Yes. You certainly can. Being able to "build" something doesn

>"You can't build stuff. You can't take an idea in your head and produce a product that works." Yes. You certainly can. Being able to "build" something doesn't mean writing all the code, performing all the welds or assembling all the parts. James Cameron didn't build his submarine that set the record for deepest dive, but he most definitely took an idea from his head and turned it into a product that works. He did so by assembling a team around him to accomplish his goals. Why are programmers so set on believing that there is nothing near as important as "writing code" in a business? Being able to turn idea into product involves a hell of a lot more than writing the code. Sorry to tell you, lots of people can code.

its_so_on 15y ago
So, if using nothing more than your checkbook and phone, email, and skype, you could get something built, then you can build it? Well, yes. But take away the checkbook, and now you're either running on bullshit, or you can't build it anymore. Whereas the the guy who fits this blog poster's definition of "technical-cofounder" - this guy can STILL build it, without a checkbook, without running on bullshit (having to convince someone). By actually using local and remote "building-stuff" tools: In other words, the post is about building something using ssh versus building something using email. Building a project using git versus building a project using skype. Yes, they are both about building something, but in a different way. The guy says the person who uses the former of the two is the technical cofounder. This is an important distinction pre-any-cash, if you actually, you know, have to set up a stack and develop a running application on it. Or are we so far into the bubble that having an application actually running on a stack when you're trying to raise money to expand it, is downright quaint?
- tatsuke95 15y ago
  What's the number one reason small businesses fail? They run out of money. The "checkbook" is the most important thing. So, yeah, having money or more importantly being able to access or raise money, is more important than almost anything. I guess this is the difference between being a programmer and being a true entrepreneur. I don't think I'm unable to build anything: social network, car company, health-care service provider, you name it. And I don't, personally, need specialized expertise in any of it. Edit: I think we were both editing, so I removed my inflammatory "mocking" comment.
  - its_so_on 15y ago
    Absolutely not mocking it in any way. I absolutely believe in my first paragraph (I even emphasize my agreement), completely non-ironically. My favorite way I've heard this stated is "Napoleon didn't personally conquer northern Italy." Now, there is something diferent and special that the blog post we're talking about is referring to, and which basically holds ONLY with software. As opposed to car company, health-care service provider, you name it, software is this thing where if you build the lines of code once, you can use them n times at a marginal cost approaching 0. In any other business, if you go from having 10 customers to having 1000, you can't just put another couple hundred into the bank account to cover hosting bills while their monthly payments clear. What this guy is talking about, in my opinion, is the small 2 or 3-person team that, without any money, but only time, Skype, IRC, cheap cloud hosting services (AWS stands out), and standard local and remote software-building tools, can build a complete application without convincing anyone to build it nor paying anyone to build it. Does every team need a technical co-founder? (someone who can use git or ssh?) I personally don't think so. This guy would probably disagree. (But, since the whole blog post is about semantics, I will say this. In my experience, people - especially associated with Y-Combinator, who use the term "technical cofonounder" expect it to mean coder. It's weird. Here's something related. The people who use this term use CTO to refer to someone who is really good at setting up the architecture of the stack, the database, the use cases, and committing actual code to create the application from scratch after selecting the language(s) and frameworks to use. To me, none of this says "CTO", since, to me, CTO says "director-level position overseeing technology", and, to me, anyone with the title of CTO would never commit a single line of code and would only use SSH to check up on other people's work - never anything else. But that's not the usage on y-combinator type startups, and this is what this blog post is talking about.)
    - waterlesscloud 15y ago
      "Napoleon didn't personally conquer northern Italy." Said by someone who should read up a bit more on how Napoleon conquered northern Italy. The man was everywhere with his nose in everything. While he didn't literally do every job, he knew how every job was done and was perfectly capable of stepping in when he needed to. There's a case to be made for that in the world of startup leaders as well.
gnaritas 15y ago
> Sorry to tell you, lots of people can code. Sorry to tell you, no they can't. There's a thousand business dudes with ideas that need implementing for every one that can code. And there's a shit ton of people who claim to be able to code but couldn't solve FizzBuzz.
- tatsuke95 15y ago
  Really? You're really going to try to tell me that there are not many, many people on this planet that can competently code? >"There's a thousand business dudes with ideas that need implementing for every one that can code." Having an idea doesn't make you a "business dude", just like writing "Hello World!" doesn't make you a coder. This is the arrogance I speak of.
  - sayemm 15y ago
    I think his point was that there's a lot more to a business than just shipping the product, although it's obviously incredibly important to do that well. Marketing and sales is what makes a business at the end of the day, and if I was a "business guy" that's what I would spend 100% of my time focusing on, not wasting time reading tech/vc blogs. Facebook, Groupon, and PlentyofFish wouldn't be where they are today if their founders were just hackers with zero marketing instincts.
  - gnaritas 15y ago
    Defined as a percentage of the whole, there are a very small number of people in the world that can competently code. And I didn't say having an idea makes you a business dude, I said business dudes with ideas, hopefully you can see the distinction.
  - ricardobeat 15y ago
    I'm just back from startup weekend: there where at least 5x more "idea guys" than coders. This rate seems to apply everywhere. There are certainly way less people who can code than people who can have ideas, though someone who has good business ideas is just as hard to find, or usually fits both categories.
demian 15y ago
I think he didn't meant "produce" as in what a movie "producer" does, but as in what a builder does. It's understandable that programmers tend to be reactionary when approached by non-programmers to make software. The industry has a history of people saying that they write "the recepies for the cake" for programmers to follow, while they actually just write "make a cake".
xibernetik 15y ago
Semantics. Someone else (Acheron Project) designed and built the submarine. Cameron organized and enabled the endeavor, but the product, the Deepsea Challenger, was not built by him. You can argue what the words mean, but it's clear what "built" in this context means, and it's not enabling or organizing or funding, it's coming up with the full technical design and implementing it. Yes, programmers get caught up in thinking they are the gods of business. They aren't. However, (bad) non-technical folk are quick to lose sight of how much their business or ideas are reliant on the technical prowess of someone else. It's not just "writing code" - it's coming up with the overall architecture, understanding how it will scale, being able to come up with something that won't fall apart the moment it gets released to the public. If this was easy, outsourcing would be a lot more common in the field and programmers would not have the sort of pay they do. Non-technical skills are important. However, technical expertise is the difference between an idea and a product. Both are critical in order to achieve fantastic things. The problem seems to be that there are a lot of non-technical, unproven idea-men and -women who think just because they have people skills, they can fashion this "million dollar idea" into a business... They _just_ need a coder. It's easy to get blind-sided when you're not in a given field, be it the technical folk saying "well that business crap is just fluff" or the non-technical folk thinking just anyone can whip up a killer social app given a month or two.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
zedshaw 15y ago
Take all the activities required to build some kind of software. Let's just say, a little website. And let's say you need marketing, sales, design, product management, and coding. Now, start removing everything and see if you can still build something. Remove marketing? Yep, I can still build it. Sales? Yep. Design? Yep. Product Management? Yep. Coding? Nope. Can't even build it if you don't have that. The other stuff is definitely important, and it definitely makes or breaks successful businesses, but none of it is essential. Coding is a hard requirement when you want to make software, and if you don't have it, or understand it, then all the other stuff is kind of pointless. The stupid thing is it's not that hard to learn the basics. It just seems "idea guys" want to be lazy and not learn the essential element of the business they want to enter.
- sethgodin 15y ago
  Not the "business" they want to enter, of course. The "business" involves plenty of other elements. Yes, the craft, the art, the essence--that can't live without the code. But don't call it a business unless you figure out how to get someone to pay.
  - tatsuke95 15y ago
    Exactly. Take it all away and you might have a website, but you don't have a product, and you certainly don't have a business. P.S. Real Seth Godin?
    - zedshaw 15y ago
      What? Uh no there's plenty of businesses that are just one coder. There's no software businesses that are just one marketing guy.
      - tatsuke95 15y ago
        Only if that single coder is performing the duties that you're saying you're removing. That's the point. And there are software businesses built with one marketing/business guy. The software development industry is very efficient. You can have an idea, get a product built and sell/license it without ever writing a line a code.
fleitz 15y ago
> Why are programmers so set on believing that there is nothing near as important as "writing code" in a business? Because most of the people who believe these things have nothing to fallback on other than their ability to code. It's generally the manifestation of being extremely insecure.

its_so_on 15y ago

So, if using nothing more than your checkbook and phone, email, and skype, you could get something built, then you can build it? Well, yes. But take away the checkbook, and now you're either running on bullshit, or you can't build it anymore. Whereas the the guy who fits this blog poster's definition of "technical-cofounder" - this guy can STILL build it, without a checkbook, without running on bullshit (having to convince someone). By actually using local and remote "building-stuff" tools: In other words, the post is about building something using ssh versus building something using email. Building a project using git versus building a project using skype. Yes, they are both about building something, but in a different way. The guy says the person who uses the former of the two is the technical cofounder. This is an important distinction pre-any-cash, if you actually, you know, have to set up a stack and develop a running application on it. Or are we so far into the bubble that having an application actually running on a stack when you're trying to raise money to expand it, is downright quaint?

tatsuke95 15y ago
What's the number one reason small businesses fail? They run out of money. The "checkbook" is the most important thing. So, yeah, having money or more importantly being able to access or raise money, is more important than almost anything. I guess this is the difference between being a programmer and being a true entrepreneur. I don't think I'm unable to build anything: social network, car company, health-care service provider, you name it. And I don't, personally, need specialized expertise in any of it. Edit: I think we were both editing, so I removed my inflammatory "mocking" comment.
- its_so_on 15y ago
  Absolutely not mocking it in any way. I absolutely believe in my first paragraph (I even emphasize my agreement), completely non-ironically. My favorite way I've heard this stated is "Napoleon didn't personally conquer northern Italy." Now, there is something diferent and special that the blog post we're talking about is referring to, and which basically holds ONLY with software. As opposed to car company, health-care service provider, you name it, software is this thing where if you build the lines of code once, you can use them n times at a marginal cost approaching 0. In any other business, if you go from having 10 customers to having 1000, you can't just put another couple hundred into the bank account to cover hosting bills while their monthly payments clear. What this guy is talking about, in my opinion, is the small 2 or 3-person team that, without any money, but only time, Skype, IRC, cheap cloud hosting services (AWS stands out), and standard local and remote software-building tools, can build a complete application without convincing anyone to build it nor paying anyone to build it. Does every team need a technical co-founder? (someone who can use git or ssh?) I personally don't think so. This guy would probably disagree. (But, since the whole blog post is about semantics, I will say this. In my experience, people - especially associated with Y-Combinator, who use the term "technical cofonounder" expect it to mean coder. It's weird. Here's something related. The people who use this term use CTO to refer to someone who is really good at setting up the architecture of the stack, the database, the use cases, and committing actual code to create the application from scratch after selecting the language(s) and frameworks to use. To me, none of this says "CTO", since, to me, CTO says "director-level position overseeing technology", and, to me, anyone with the title of CTO would never commit a single line of code and would only use SSH to check up on other people's work - never anything else. But that's not the usage on y-combinator type startups, and this is what this blog post is talking about.)
  - waterlesscloud 15y ago
    "Napoleon didn't personally conquer northern Italy." Said by someone who should read up a bit more on how Napoleon conquered northern Italy. The man was everywhere with his nose in everything. While he didn't literally do every job, he knew how every job was done and was perfectly capable of stepping in when he needed to. There's a case to be made for that in the world of startup leaders as well.

gnaritas 15y ago

> Sorry to tell you, lots of people can code. Sorry to tell you, no they can't. There's a thousand business dudes with ideas that need implementing for every one that can code. And there's a shit ton of people who claim to be able to code but couldn't solve FizzBuzz.

tatsuke95 15y ago
Really? You're really going to try to tell me that there are not many, many people on this planet that can competently code? >"There's a thousand business dudes with ideas that need implementing for every one that can code." Having an idea doesn't make you a "business dude", just like writing "Hello World!" doesn't make you a coder. This is the arrogance I speak of.
- sayemm 15y ago
  I think his point was that there's a lot more to a business than just shipping the product, although it's obviously incredibly important to do that well. Marketing and sales is what makes a business at the end of the day, and if I was a "business guy" that's what I would spend 100% of my time focusing on, not wasting time reading tech/vc blogs. Facebook, Groupon, and PlentyofFish wouldn't be where they are today if their founders were just hackers with zero marketing instincts.
- gnaritas 15y ago
  Defined as a percentage of the whole, there are a very small number of people in the world that can competently code. And I didn't say having an idea makes you a business dude, I said business dudes with ideas, hopefully you can see the distinction.
- ricardobeat 15y ago
  I'm just back from startup weekend: there where at least 5x more "idea guys" than coders. This rate seems to apply everywhere. There are certainly way less people who can code than people who can have ideas, though someone who has good business ideas is just as hard to find, or usually fits both categories.

demian 15y ago

I think he didn't meant "produce" as in what a movie "producer" does, but as in what a builder does. It's understandable that programmers tend to be reactionary when approached by non-programmers to make software. The industry has a history of people saying that they write "the recepies for the cake" for programmers to follow, while they actually just write "make a cake".

xibernetik 15y ago

Semantics. Someone else (Acheron Project) designed and built the submarine. Cameron organized and enabled the endeavor, but the product, the Deepsea Challenger, was not built by him. You can argue what the words mean, but it's clear what "built" in this context means, and it's not enabling or organizing or funding, it's coming up with the full technical design and implementing it. Yes, programmers get caught up in thinking they are the gods of business. They aren't. However, (bad) non-technical folk are quick to lose sight of how much their business or ideas are reliant on the technical prowess of someone else. It's not just "writing code" - it's coming up with the overall architecture, understanding how it will scale, being able to come up with something that won't fall apart the moment it gets released to the public. If this was easy, outsourcing would be a lot more common in the field and programmers would not have the sort of pay they do. Non-technical skills are important. However, technical expertise is the difference between an idea and a product. Both are critical in order to achieve fantastic things. The problem seems to be that there are a lot of non-technical, unproven idea-men and -women who think just because they have people skills, they can fashion this "million dollar idea" into a business... They _just_ need a coder. It's easy to get blind-sided when you're not in a given field, be it the technical folk saying "well that business crap is just fluff" or the non-technical folk thinking just anyone can whip up a killer social app given a month or two.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

zedshaw 15y ago

Take all the activities required to build some kind of software. Let's just say, a little website. And let's say you need marketing, sales, design, product management, and coding. Now, start removing everything and see if you can still build something. Remove marketing? Yep, I can still build it. Sales? Yep. Design? Yep. Product Management? Yep. Coding? Nope. Can't even build it if you don't have that. The other stuff is definitely important, and it definitely makes or breaks successful businesses, but none of it is essential. Coding is a hard requirement when you want to make software, and if you don't have it, or understand it, then all the other stuff is kind of pointless. The stupid thing is it's not that hard to learn the basics. It just seems "idea guys" want to be lazy and not learn the essential element of the business they want to enter.

sethgodin 15y ago
Not the "business" they want to enter, of course. The "business" involves plenty of other elements. Yes, the craft, the art, the essence--that can't live without the code. But don't call it a business unless you figure out how to get someone to pay.
- tatsuke95 15y ago
  Exactly. Take it all away and you might have a website, but you don't have a product, and you certainly don't have a business. P.S. Real Seth Godin?
  - zedshaw 15y ago
    What? Uh no there's plenty of businesses that are just one coder. There's no software businesses that are just one marketing guy.
    - tatsuke95 15y ago
      Only if that single coder is performing the duties that you're saying you're removing. That's the point. And there are software businesses built with one marketing/business guy. The software development industry is very efficient. You can have an idea, get a product built and sell/license it without ever writing a line a code.

fleitz 15y ago

> Why are programmers so set on believing that there is nothing near as important as "writing code" in a business? Because most of the people who believe these things have nothing to fallback on other than their ability to code. It's generally the manifestation of being extremely insecure.