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Whistling Into a Tape Recorder: What the East Coast Doesn't Get About Startups

• deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
• mck- 14y ago
  too much traffic?
  • dangrover 14y ago
    Trying to get the server back up. Geeez.
    • its_so_on 14y ago
      interested in the numbers
• boredguy8 14y ago
  [edit: content removed as the site is back up] HNed, it appears. Google's Cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://dangrover.com/2012/05/30/whistling-into-a-tape-recorder-what-the-east-coast-doesnt-get-about-startups/&hl=en&biw=1311&bih=783&prmd=imvns&strip=1 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...
  • 3am 14y ago
    It's perpetually annoying that people make this an East Coast/West Coast thing (as if "East Coast" can even be generalized about... I'm sure Atlanta has a much in common with NYC as Mountain View has with Eugene). It's very small sample set of people to make any kind of good judgement, and seems to just be catering to stereotypes.
    • mdehaan 14y ago
      I had assumed this "technical cofounder" thing was a West Coast thing anyway :)
      • deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
    • benblodgett 14y ago
      Yeah I am also constantly annoyed by this, I work out of a coworking space in the lower east side with tons of technical geniuses. It doesn't matter where you live, but who you associate with in that area.
      • dangrover 14y ago
        What co-working space is it? Can I check it out? :D
    • slurgfest 14y ago
      Atlanta is nowhere near the coast.
    • gaius 14y ago
      I expect it has entered popular culture via rap music, where they make a big deal about East vs West - even within the same city.
  • vibrunazo 14y ago
    > This is why it irks me when people try to sort others into "technical" and "non-technical". Being technical isn't about technology, it's about technique. Techné. Skill in something. This line should be taught and repeated many times in every startup book, school or accelerator. It's amazing how many people don't understand this. It's widely accepted that you probably shouldn't be trying to build a new food company when you know nothing about food. Why do some people think it's a good idea to build a new technology when you know absolutely nothing about technology? It's not that technology itself has something magically exclusive in it. It's just that you're choosing to build something that highly depends on understanding technology to make business decisions. So it's just smart to understand technology to be able to make smart business decisions. I can't count how many times I've heard "but it's just not my area, I'm a business/marketing/idea guy". Well, guess what, 90% of the things that are crucial for the success of your startup are not any one single person's area. You could either choose to not care and hope you're lucky, or you could actually get out of your comfort zone and do some learning like we all do. If you're a pure hacker starting a company that highly depends on a good sales team, you should probably go learn something about sales. If you're a salesman starting an education startup, you should probably go look to learn something about education. If you're whatever and you're looking to build a tech startup, it's probably a good idea to look to learn technology. It's that simple. You have to realize that no matter what area you are on, if you're starting a new company, you are probably gonna have to do a lot of learning of new things that are completely out of your comfort zone.
    • theorique 14y ago
      I can't count how many times I've heard "but it's just not my area, I'm a business/marketing/idea guy". Unfortunately, this kind of thing tends to be a code word for "I'm an empty suit, not good at anything in particular". And, often, "I'll come up with a half-baked idea, you'll do all the hard work of making it a reality. Obviously, those kind of people aren't going to be that useful. The thing is, almost any great startup can really use a hard-hustling co-founder who tracks down deals and funding, pitches the company to potential investors and partners, sells product, manages the budget, and so forth. He will be the 'extrovert' to the coder's 'introvert' - and these are both complementary and valuable skill sets. In other words, we don't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. In one of his essays, pg described this kind of person as an "animal". For a tech firm to be successful, you need coding animals, sure, and you also need deal making, selling, product management, and PR animals. (See: http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html ) The best non-technical "startup animals" that I know are fascinated by and respectful of coders, and often get drawn in to doing a little (or more) coding themselves.
• jsherry 14y ago
  This piece very easily could have been titled "Whistling Into a Tap Recorder" and had sent the same message (and a worthy message at that). After all, neither New York not the East Coast are mentioned until 90% through the article. But then again that title likely wouldn't have gotten as many upvotes on HN b/c apparently everybody likes a rivalry.
  • mikemarotti 14y ago
    Absolutely, that title is just baiting. We're in the internet era now - when can we get over the east vs west or valley vs nyc rivalries? There are bad apples and fools in suits everyone in the world.
    • dangrover 14y ago
      You're totally right -- did not need to drag that in as prominently. Revised the title.
• krschultz 14y ago
  Is it just me or does the non-technical co-founder really get killed by most blogs? I have been approached a couple of times by friends with 'ideas', they just need a programmer to build it for them. I respectfully declined each time and remain friends with these people. None of them ever got anywhere with their ideas. They never quit their day jobs, they never read the right blogs and books (even if I suggested, and in some cases bought copies of the books for them), they never raised funding, they never talked to customers, and they never found another programmer. They had absolutely no idea where to even begin on the business side of things, much less the engineering side. I think programmers get all hot and bothered by the idea of a 'non-technical' co-founder undervaluing their contribution and so we all love these posts. But really, most of the people saying they are 'looking for a technical co-founder' aren't just lacking the ability to code. They are lacking the ability to do a startup. Calling them 'non-technical co-founders' really is giving them a free pass. Most aren't ready to be co-founders, technical or not. It also really belittles a good business cofounder (lets not term it around what they can't do, but what they can do). A good business cofounder goes out and talks to customers, has a handle on the market, probably has a contact list full of potential partners or employees, can pitch, do some PR, and hopefully secure some funding. That is very valuable to a young startup, and most of the people with an idea and no coder aren't up to that level.
  • dangrover 14y ago
    That's the point. Being good at PR, for instance, is a technical skill that can be demonstrated. It requires experience and knowledge. If you're "non-technical", though, and you don't actually have demonstrable skill in PR, it might as well be an engineer on your team working on PR stuff.
  • dsandrowitz 14y ago
    Absolutely spot-on. I fall more on the non-technical side, but where I fall on the spectrum of tech skills really doesn't matter. All that counts is whether I can articulate my idea to a team (preferably by using my ancient coding skill and some ugly wireframes), work with them to make it a reality, and get shit done.
  • earbitscom 14y ago
• mattupstate 14y ago
  Very off-putting link title. Location has nothing to do with it.
• api 14y ago
  I ran into a toxic mentality on the East Coast where there was a class division between "thinkers/leaders" and "doers," and doing automatically placed a person into a lower class. The idea was that execution is for little people and ideas and "leadership" are for big people. I met a bunch of over-stuffed narcissistic and ineffectual big people who could sell like crazy and drum up endless interest by way of their ivy league social networks but would then fall flat on their faces when it came to executing on anything.
  • sudonim 14y ago
    That's a dangerous mentality and I hope it's on it's way out. The way I see things is that especially in tech, it used to be that doers couldn't just do. They needed to drum up cash / etc... to facilitate the doing. Now that's just not the case. There's a quote (I believe from reddit) "Pics or it didn't happen". The benchmark as I see it with very few exceptions is "Prototype or you're full of it". Doers will do and the leaders? They can go and lead each other around in circles.
    • dgreensp 14y ago
      Preferably the doers are also leaders.
  • asmithmd1 14y ago
    I hate that divide also, either you are a manager (the most exalted status being a manager of managers) or you are an "individual contributor" WTF does that mean? Isn't everyone an individual contributor up to and including the president of the US?
    • brazzy 14y ago
      Managers make decisions that directly affect multiple people and thus a larger part of a company (the entire company, for a CEO). Like it or not, that means that the value of a manager who makes good decisions is greater than that of an equally skilled person who does good non-managerial work. Note that this is perfectly compatible with the view of managers as faciliators - if a team of developers can't work effectively because they lack clear requirements or crucial hardware, then the manager who cuts through red tape to get them that hardware and direct access to a customer stakeholder is more valuable to the project than any of the developers. Of course the crux is that a manager who makes bad decisions is equally more damaging to a company than anyone doing bad non-managerial work, and there is good reason to doubt whether there really is a strong correspondence between the quality of people' decisions and their prospects of becoming (and being promoted as) managers.
• MBlume 14y ago
  I realize this is mostly irrelevant, but can anyone confirm/deny the Elfman claim? (It occurs to me that you'd have to be a fantastic whistler to manage some of, say, the spiderman score. Also, I'm pretty sure the guy invents percussion in his basement.)
  • planetguy 14y ago
    I'd imagine it's an exaggeration of some aspect of his real creative process. I wouldn't be surprised if he does whistle into a tape recorder while watching a rough cut of the film, I'd just be surprised if that's all he does. Actually it seems like a damn good way to write music for a film. First you figure out the basic themes at leitmotifs that you want to use. Then you watch the film a few times and whistle or hum basically how you want the music to go, so that you can match the music to the moment on a second-by-second basis. Hand over the tape to an assistant and let them worry about turning this vague musical shape into the outline of a complete score; once you've got the score you can worry about the details.
    • smd80 14y ago
      It's not in the slightest bit true about Danny Elfman -- in fact, it's farther from the truth in his case than any other film composer I can think of. With the amount of synth and guitar that Danny performs himself, he actually has up to half his tracks laid down by the time the cue is getting approved by the director. Not only is he not outsourcing the composing, he's not even outsourcing the performance except where he needs to. And he's certainly not fiddling around with a tape recorder when he has a $100k+ Pro Tools rig in his studio. All film composers have different processes, and it's true that few of them take on the details of notation, and all of them have teams that they work with. But you're absolutely right that that's a good thing, because that's how film music works: Turnover is extremely short (sometimes as little as a couple weeks to write an hour of music), notes on the page are not the product, and specialization allows the process to move forward and the job to get done. This blog post irks me in part because it's an unkind rumor, and in part because it's a completely inept metaphor.
  • brk 14y ago
• rsingel 14y ago
  I love that this showed up the same day as the post about how Alexis Ohanian built reddit. For those that don't know, Alexis doesn't code. And he and Steve are from the East Coast. But who am I to bash another good round of technical vs. non-technical Hacker News flaming?
  • GFKjunior 14y ago
    Well Steve is a programmer, and from the udacity classes he teaches he seems like a damn good one.
• edwardcapriolo 14y ago
  This might be like the third blog I have read about the east coast 'doesn't get' or 'can't do' startups. The last article said the east coast could not make a facebook. Check your facts. Facebook started on the east coast. Anyway onto this article. How can you call yourself humble when your saying someone else 'doesn't get it' or 'cant do it' That does not sound humble to me. Other then that there is no substance to your argument. Here is my prospective: On the west coast, your startup fails, go work at another startup, get a real job at a profitable company, that fails, sleep outside in a tent. On the east coast your startup fails, get a real job at a profitable company, or freeze to death.
• blhack 14y ago
  Um. Boston Dynamics? DEKA!? Yeah, maybe the east coast doesn't have social networks for cats, or iPhone apps for taking pictures of your food, but to say that they "don't get" startups is stupid linkbait.
• fleitz 14y ago
  I don't have a problem working with non-technical people who are 'looking for a technical co-founder', usually they identify as 'business guys'. Just like 90% of coders can't write fizzbuzz, 90% of biz guys can't close a deal. The issue is not the 90%, it's finding the 10%. The east coast has no monopoly on useless people.
• robwgibbons 14y ago
  I realize OP already altered the title, but I just want to reiterate that this is a universal problem and has zero to do with East vs West
• jjune 14y ago
  I am a non-technical founder, grandma, wife of a starving artist. All I can say is, ya gotta start somewhere. It's been gruesome, and awesome. Promoting local sustainable commerce. Free online neighborhood Storefronts. Http://ourtownzip.com.
• StavrosK 14y ago
  "Techné"? Where do people get these? This isn't French, it's "Techne". As in "τέχνη". Or did we start accenting random létters now?
  • rockmeamedee 14y ago
    I dunno, it's on Wikipedia: "Techne, or techné, is a Greek term..." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Techne http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Techne
    • StavrosK 14y ago
      That's wrong, that accent has no place there. If anything, it would be téchne, because that's where the stress is. Techné just makes no sense. I think I'll change it.
• rockmeamedee 14y ago
  I think the recent, cool web stuff has made programming look easier, even though it isn't. Maybe we're closer to to the tech, maybe we can expect more from software. We don't really appreciate any of these 'simple' web services that solve a lot of hard problems (eg, scale). Twitter is only 140 characters, but it's definitely not simple. That way it seems to outsiders like the hard part is coming up with the idea, instead of the execution.