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Thanks pg! I was worried that entering too many secondary ideas would almost appear as a drawback. As if the team wasn't truly dedicated to the idea they were s

by bgnm2000 17y ago

Thanks pg! I was worried that entering too many secondary ideas would almost appear as a drawback. As if the team wasn't truly dedicated to the idea they were submitting the application for. Its nice to know the team itself is more important. Also, I'd love to know what percentage of teams have business people, rather than 100% hackers

pg 17y ago
Off the top of my head, I'd say 10-20% of groups have someone who's a pure business person, in the sense of not being able to program. More commonly there's one programmer who's more outgoing than the rest, and he or she does sales initially.
- netsp 17y ago
  That's an interesting definition of a pure business person.
- epkann 17y ago
  It's interesting that YCombinator, which values hackers so highly, included one pure business person (Jessica) among its four partners. Could you explain the reasoning behind that decision? What expertise did Jessica bring that Paul, Robert, and Trevor lack? More generally, when should founders consider bringing on a non-hacker as a co-founder?
  - pg 17y ago
    Jessica came from an investment bank. She deals with all the legal documents, gets startups incorporated, and so on. She also organizes all the events; we have a lot of those. At least, that's what we thought we were getting. She also turns out to be an extremely good judge of character, better than any of us. One of her nicknames is "the social radar."
    - messel 17y ago
      Some folks don't know how lucky they are at meeting the right people at the right time, but you don't sound like one of them Paul. It's hard finding folks to cover all the needs of an early business. I've written about coupling social media with relevant ads for months, so far I've only discovered one business type interested. I gave up and started coding it myself (very limited web programming, desktop c++ for a little under 14 years).

pg 17y ago

Off the top of my head, I'd say 10-20% of groups have someone who's a pure business person, in the sense of not being able to program. More commonly there's one programmer who's more outgoing than the rest, and he or she does sales initially.

netsp 17y ago
That's an interesting definition of a pure business person.
epkann 17y ago
It's interesting that YCombinator, which values hackers so highly, included one pure business person (Jessica) among its four partners. Could you explain the reasoning behind that decision? What expertise did Jessica bring that Paul, Robert, and Trevor lack? More generally, when should founders consider bringing on a non-hacker as a co-founder?
- pg 17y ago
  Jessica came from an investment bank. She deals with all the legal documents, gets startups incorporated, and so on. She also organizes all the events; we have a lot of those. At least, that's what we thought we were getting. She also turns out to be an extremely good judge of character, better than any of us. One of her nicknames is "the social radar."
  - messel 17y ago
    Some folks don't know how lucky they are at meeting the right people at the right time, but you don't sound like one of them Paul. It's hard finding folks to cover all the needs of an early business. I've written about coupling social media with relevant ads for months, so far I've only discovered one business type interested. I gave up and started coding it myself (very limited web programming, desktop c++ for a little under 14 years).