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This is well said (and, perhaps, a similar story could be told about Steve Jobs). But I think there's at least one point in the article that holds true: it's ve

This is well said (and, perhaps, a similar story could be told about Steve Jobs). But I think there's at least one point in the article that holds true: it's very tough to evaluate the credibility of a "business" co-founder until he's achieved success. A developer's talent can be measured and normalized; a business person -- before he becomes successful -- is a much riskier and more unknowable commodity. One way to look at things is to say that great businesspeople are undervalued. Another viewpoint is that the valuation of businesspeople carries with it a much higher risk multiplier. Or that the valuation has far fewer knowable variables. The article makes a variety of very unfair, broad, and naive generalizations about the role of a great business, marketing, or product person. It seems to conflate all business people into one bucket -- lumping the fly-by-night hucksters and phonies in with the true visionaries. And its point about how a business founder is 'only as good as his contact list' is a bit ridiculous. But unfortunately, that contact list is often the business person's best calling card. It's one of very few, knowable variables that he brings to the table. (A track record on paper is great, but can be unreliable, because anyone can spin a resume. Conversely, a list of impressive people who can vouch for someone, or even go to bat for him, is much more actionable).

bad_user 14y ago
and, perhaps, a similar story could be told about Steve Jobs Steve Jobs started as an engineer and had Wozniak as his best friend. And if you think you can find a Steve Wozniak that can design a usable computer from a minimal number of chips, with a design that's extensible, with colored graphics, that can also write the software for it and that you can convince to quit his job for you ... good luck with that ;)
- dkrich 14y ago
  What difference does it make? Jobs didn't make his name as an engineer. Technology of any kind is a means to an end. Knowing how to code a site is very much like knowing how to lay brick. It's a specialized skill to complete a certain task. In 20 years all of these "hackers" who are supposedly so valuable while the worthless business guys try to waste their time will be using completely different products in completely different contexts. Just because web app development is hot right now does not mean knowing how to code will make you rich. You still have to know what to build and how to create something that people want to buy. The tools are merely a cheap means of building a scalable distribution system. The reason I bring this up is that I am often reminded of the 96 WWDC where Jobs is lambasted by somebody for getting rid of their precious Java development tool of the day. At the time it was a horrible decision. Now the tools they were clinging to would be considered obsolete and horrendous by any measure. It is important to keep perspective no matter what you are working on. At the core it is always about your product. This coming from a person with two degrees in Computer Science and many years of software development experience.
  - kamaal 14y ago
    Let us put it this way. Knowing how to execute and executing should make you rich. No matter what that is. Selling is also execution, Raising money is also execution and Coding is also execution. But the word 'Business person' generally invokes the image of a middle level manager in a corporate whose only expertise seems to forwarding emails, filling up online forms and politics. That is why most hackers think a 'Business person' is useless. While the fact is everybody has a role to play.
  - bad_user 14y ago
    At the core it is always about your product I never disagreed on this point. Ideas are important too, but ideas only act as a multiplicator of value, so good execution by itself doesn't provide enough value and ideas without execution are meaningless. What difference does it make? Jobs didn't make his name as an engineer That's not what matters here, and yes it makes a difference. To be able to come up with ideas, to be able to have a vision, to be able to have taste, to be able to drive a product, you do have to have an educated mind in that domain, you do need to know what is possible, you do need to be able to do the job yourself if you need to, even if you're not that good as an engineer. How can you come up with ideas otherwise? And the proof is simple really. Every great idea that revolutionized our world, from electricity, to personal computers, to the Internet, to search engines, to the smartphone you're carrying, everything has come from minds of individuals that know their basics. Ideas and vision don't come out of thin air. It is often said that a university's purpose shouldn't be to prepare you for real life jobs, but rather to expand your horizons on what's possible and I believe so too. This is why I consider people with MBAs, but with no technical education, to be basically worthless in startups (and I'm not talking about degrees here, self-taught is good enough). So you have an idea, great for you, however you have to prove that either you know what you're talking about, or have a proven track record of successful implementations of your ideas that worked. This attitude is just meritocracy in action. Also, I see a lot of resentment here, with people getting offended by this attitude of programmers towards business-types. But we aren't the ones that started it, it was the business types that wanted to turn us into stupid and replaceable assembly lines. Ask the developers in the games industry how they get treated. Well you get what you sow.
CoffeeDregs 14y ago
>it's very tough to evaluate the credibility of >a "business" co-founder until he's achieved success. That's not at all true. It may be very tough for a technical person to evaluate a "business" co-founder, but it isn't any tougher than the reverse. I have both an MSEE and an MBA and I have both business and technical roles as a co-founder of a mid-sized, venture-funded firm, so I consider myself a decent judge of this. Whether business or technology, smart folks stand out like blinking red lights because they exhibit a sharp enthusiasm for their domain, have the ability to quickly get to the core issues and see possibility and solutions where others see or search-for complexity. > Another viewpoint is that the valuation of >businesspeople carries with it a much higher risk multiplier. Then you've never worked with a mediocre tech team. The amount of damage that a not-good tech person can do can be remarkable. In particular, the damage is often invisible and can persist for years. A small sloppy commit at the start of a project can produce a bull-whip-effect 2 years later... "Business" people can do this, too, but it's been my experience that the damage they do is more quickly identified and contained. Anything a business person is doing that is large-ish will have lots of eyes on it and anything small is usually pretty minor to the business.
- jonnathanson 14y ago
  "Then you've never worked with a mediocre tech team. The amount of damage that a not-good tech person can do can be remarkable." This is a fair point, but it's orthogonal to mine. When I spoke about the "risk multiplier," I was speaking about the risk of unknown/unknowable information. To use the MBA parlance, businesspeople are experience goods moreso than technical people are. My thesis is that you can ferret out a bad technical person more quickly and more easily than you can ferret out a bullshit businessperson -- thus making businesspeople, as a set, more risky because you often have to "buy before you try." There's no question that a bad technical worker can deal as much damage as a bad business person. But that wasn't my point. Now, perhaps you also take issue with my thesis itself: that businesspeople are tougher to evaluate up front than technical people are. In my experience, this is often the case. If your experience tells you otherwise, so be it. I would consider this a fundamental difference of opinions, probably based on different experiences.
carguy1983 14y ago
> great businesspeople are undervalued Nitpick: by definition, great businesspeople have lots of money (value). You should say that business people with an unknown track record are possibly undervalued. Which is really not saying anything at all, other than it's hard to tell the future.
- tomkarlo 14y ago
  Net worth is one way, but not the only way, to evaluate the quality of a "businessperson" any more than "patents" are the only way to assess technical contributors. (And I note that the concept of a "business person" is about as generalized as the concept of an "engineer" -- it's the kind of grouping that's so broad as to be useless.) There are lots of good "business people" who have spent much of their careers as employees rather than owners. They did their job, they got paid, but even if they were stellar, they probably weren't paid an order of magnitude more than their peers. (As there are many fantastic engineers without patents and/or high profile products.) This may be why they're trying to do a startup rather than switch to a new job. Try working a few times for some not-so-great business people and you'll learn that the good ones are often undervalued.
- jonnathanson 14y ago
  Actually, my point was more about businesspeople in general vis-a-vis the startup scene. Technical people may indeed undervalue the importance of business people (and, in many cases, vice versa). The nitpick offers an interesting perspective, and it's well received, but I think it's orthogonal to my point. In general, I think there's a common misunderstanding between these two camps, especially w/r/t their intersection in the software industry. Just as it's not fair for a businessperson to assume that all technical co-founders are interchangeable ("He's just a skill set"), it's not fair for technical co-founders to assume all business co-founders are worthless ("He's just a rolodex").
wtvanhest 14y ago
The information asymmetry exits with "hackers" as well. It is why VCs like to see them as cofounders. If you simply pay a hacker they can write spaghetti code with random security problems and have no ability to finish. The risk is technical. Hackers are not valuable as cofounders for any other reason. It just so happens that that reason is really, really important.

bad_user 14y ago

and, perhaps, a similar story could be told about Steve Jobs Steve Jobs started as an engineer and had Wozniak as his best friend. And if you think you can find a Steve Wozniak that can design a usable computer from a minimal number of chips, with a design that's extensible, with colored graphics, that can also write the software for it and that you can convince to quit his job for you ... good luck with that ;)

dkrich 14y ago
What difference does it make? Jobs didn't make his name as an engineer. Technology of any kind is a means to an end. Knowing how to code a site is very much like knowing how to lay brick. It's a specialized skill to complete a certain task. In 20 years all of these "hackers" who are supposedly so valuable while the worthless business guys try to waste their time will be using completely different products in completely different contexts. Just because web app development is hot right now does not mean knowing how to code will make you rich. You still have to know what to build and how to create something that people want to buy. The tools are merely a cheap means of building a scalable distribution system. The reason I bring this up is that I am often reminded of the 96 WWDC where Jobs is lambasted by somebody for getting rid of their precious Java development tool of the day. At the time it was a horrible decision. Now the tools they were clinging to would be considered obsolete and horrendous by any measure. It is important to keep perspective no matter what you are working on. At the core it is always about your product. This coming from a person with two degrees in Computer Science and many years of software development experience.
- kamaal 14y ago
  Let us put it this way. Knowing how to execute and executing should make you rich. No matter what that is. Selling is also execution, Raising money is also execution and Coding is also execution. But the word 'Business person' generally invokes the image of a middle level manager in a corporate whose only expertise seems to forwarding emails, filling up online forms and politics. That is why most hackers think a 'Business person' is useless. While the fact is everybody has a role to play.
- bad_user 14y ago
  At the core it is always about your product I never disagreed on this point. Ideas are important too, but ideas only act as a multiplicator of value, so good execution by itself doesn't provide enough value and ideas without execution are meaningless. What difference does it make? Jobs didn't make his name as an engineer That's not what matters here, and yes it makes a difference. To be able to come up with ideas, to be able to have a vision, to be able to have taste, to be able to drive a product, you do have to have an educated mind in that domain, you do need to know what is possible, you do need to be able to do the job yourself if you need to, even if you're not that good as an engineer. How can you come up with ideas otherwise? And the proof is simple really. Every great idea that revolutionized our world, from electricity, to personal computers, to the Internet, to search engines, to the smartphone you're carrying, everything has come from minds of individuals that know their basics. Ideas and vision don't come out of thin air. It is often said that a university's purpose shouldn't be to prepare you for real life jobs, but rather to expand your horizons on what's possible and I believe so too. This is why I consider people with MBAs, but with no technical education, to be basically worthless in startups (and I'm not talking about degrees here, self-taught is good enough). So you have an idea, great for you, however you have to prove that either you know what you're talking about, or have a proven track record of successful implementations of your ideas that worked. This attitude is just meritocracy in action. Also, I see a lot of resentment here, with people getting offended by this attitude of programmers towards business-types. But we aren't the ones that started it, it was the business types that wanted to turn us into stupid and replaceable assembly lines. Ask the developers in the games industry how they get treated. Well you get what you sow.

CoffeeDregs 14y ago

>it's very tough to evaluate the credibility of >a "business" co-founder until he's achieved success. That's not at all true. It may be very tough for a technical person to evaluate a "business" co-founder, but it isn't any tougher than the reverse. I have both an MSEE and an MBA and I have both business and technical roles as a co-founder of a mid-sized, venture-funded firm, so I consider myself a decent judge of this. Whether business or technology, smart folks stand out like blinking red lights because they exhibit a sharp enthusiasm for their domain, have the ability to quickly get to the core issues and see possibility and solutions where others see or search-for complexity. > Another viewpoint is that the valuation of >businesspeople carries with it a much higher risk multiplier. Then you've never worked with a mediocre tech team. The amount of damage that a not-good tech person can do can be remarkable. In particular, the damage is often invisible and can persist for years. A small sloppy commit at the start of a project can produce a bull-whip-effect 2 years later... "Business" people can do this, too, but it's been my experience that the damage they do is more quickly identified and contained. Anything a business person is doing that is large-ish will have lots of eyes on it and anything small is usually pretty minor to the business.

jonnathanson 14y ago
"Then you've never worked with a mediocre tech team. The amount of damage that a not-good tech person can do can be remarkable." This is a fair point, but it's orthogonal to mine. When I spoke about the "risk multiplier," I was speaking about the risk of unknown/unknowable information. To use the MBA parlance, businesspeople are experience goods moreso than technical people are. My thesis is that you can ferret out a bad technical person more quickly and more easily than you can ferret out a bullshit businessperson -- thus making businesspeople, as a set, more risky because you often have to "buy before you try." There's no question that a bad technical worker can deal as much damage as a bad business person. But that wasn't my point. Now, perhaps you also take issue with my thesis itself: that businesspeople are tougher to evaluate up front than technical people are. In my experience, this is often the case. If your experience tells you otherwise, so be it. I would consider this a fundamental difference of opinions, probably based on different experiences.

carguy1983 14y ago

> great businesspeople are undervalued Nitpick: by definition, great businesspeople have lots of money (value). You should say that business people with an unknown track record are possibly undervalued. Which is really not saying anything at all, other than it's hard to tell the future.

tomkarlo 14y ago
Net worth is one way, but not the only way, to evaluate the quality of a "businessperson" any more than "patents" are the only way to assess technical contributors. (And I note that the concept of a "business person" is about as generalized as the concept of an "engineer" -- it's the kind of grouping that's so broad as to be useless.) There are lots of good "business people" who have spent much of their careers as employees rather than owners. They did their job, they got paid, but even if they were stellar, they probably weren't paid an order of magnitude more than their peers. (As there are many fantastic engineers without patents and/or high profile products.) This may be why they're trying to do a startup rather than switch to a new job. Try working a few times for some not-so-great business people and you'll learn that the good ones are often undervalued.
jonnathanson 14y ago
Actually, my point was more about businesspeople in general vis-a-vis the startup scene. Technical people may indeed undervalue the importance of business people (and, in many cases, vice versa). The nitpick offers an interesting perspective, and it's well received, but I think it's orthogonal to my point. In general, I think there's a common misunderstanding between these two camps, especially w/r/t their intersection in the software industry. Just as it's not fair for a businessperson to assume that all technical co-founders are interchangeable ("He's just a skill set"), it's not fair for technical co-founders to assume all business co-founders are worthless ("He's just a rolodex").

wtvanhest 14y ago

The information asymmetry exits with "hackers" as well. It is why VCs like to see them as cofounders. If you simply pay a hacker they can write spaghetti code with random security problems and have no ability to finish. The risk is technical. Hackers are not valuable as cofounders for any other reason. It just so happens that that reason is really, really important.