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"Technology, however, isn’t the driver any more for startups. The scarce talent is business model engineering and product marketing" How true is this? Sounds l

"Technology, however, isn’t the driver any more for startups. The scarce talent is business model engineering and product marketing" How true is this? Sounds like wishful thinking from a non programmer to me. (Please note : I am not saying that marketing/product engineering is not important. They (obviously) are. I just think "Technology, however, isn’t the driver any more for startups" is too broad a brush)

TimothyFitz 17y ago
I think his point is that scaling up on the web is a solved problem, which is mostly true. If you look at most startup's pitch/plan the biggest risks are not in technology. Steve Blank would say there's Market Risk (will your customers want it?) but minimal Invention Risk (can you deliver it?). Contrast this with biotech where you're trying to cure diseases. Minimal market risk, tons of invention risk. Read more here: http://steveblank.com/category/vertical-markets/ http://steveblank.com/category/vertical-markets/
- plinkplonk 17y ago
  "his point is that scaling up on the web is a solved problem, which is mostly true" Maybe, but that isn't what "Technology, however, isn’t the driver any more for startups" means. "Technology" is a lot more than "scaling on the web", even in software based startups. "Steve Blank would say there's Market Risk (will your customers want it?) but minimal Invention Risk (can you deliver it?). " Steve Blank is also careful to qualify that statement with "for some types of startups" (unlike the author of this article, hence my "too broad a brush" judgment). Assuming every software startup, even when the web is used as an interface, is a "web 2.0" startup with minimal Invention risk is intellectual laziness. "The scarce talent is business model engineering and product marketing" This doesn't have any supporting arguments/evidence/data. sounds like something a non programmer MBA type person, for whom of course programming is easy and programmers are commodity hires (like say receptionists) would say. I'd like to hear a supporting argument for why great programmers, who are what startups are usually desperate to hire, are not "scarce talent", but marketing folks are. Sure, for some startups, that is no doubt true, but as a generalization it seems too broad, which was my point. So yes I've read Steve's book too and like it a lot :-), but I don't think this dichotomy of risks supports the original article much.
  - rizzn 17y ago
    I can't speak directly for John - I'll let him do that when he gets up in the morning and reads this thread.... .... but if I were to interpret that sentence and edit it to better clarify meaning (which in retrospect, I probably should have done since I'm the site's editor), I would put the qualifier "most" in that sentence, so it would read: "Technology, however, isn’t the driver any more for [most] startups." We see that to be quite true when you look at the base building blocks of many web startups. They're largely the same underneath the UI, same development environments, same infrastructure, and many even run on common CMSs, and it's the positioning (i.e., the marketing) of the startup that's the key differentiator. That marketing influences the community that floods the site, how they perceive the site, and thus how they use the site (which affects the iterative direction of the site).
    - plinkplonk 17y ago
      "Technology, however, isn’t the driver any more for [most] startups." Well that is marginally better, but it still assumes a certain kind of startup as evinced by the statement "that marketing influences the community that floods the site,". You don't need a "flood" of a site by a "community" to have a successful startup. You need customers . Whether customers are pulled in my deliberate "marketing" or technological superiority providing differential capability depends on the exact offering. If you confine the technology behind a startup to things like using open source CMS es as "building blocks", then of course technology and programming are commodities, and the "scarce talent" is indeed marketing, not programming. I could continue, but my original point was that it was an over broad generalization, which is addressed if you are talking about the kinds of startups using off the shelf building blocks as their "technology" and have no real technological differentiator, and therefore don't need excellent programmers (who are very hard to find- just ask anyone running a "non cms" startup.) Under those circumstances, (in other words, with a narrower focus than implied in the original sentence ) the original claim is completely valid. Under those assumptions, technology is not the driver and "scarce talent" is indeed marketing. I concede the argument.
      - rizzn 17y ago
danielrhodes 17y ago
Most technological innovation today is due to better available resources (CPU, RAM, bandwidth, etc.) rather than say, a better algorithm. The question then becomes: not can you make it, but can you sell it?/will people use it? That's a much different game.
- plinkplonk 17y ago
  "The question then becomes: not can you make it, but can you sell it?" This is again, over simplification. (as a matter of fact the exact same oversimplification made by the author of the original article.) The relative difficulty of "Making it" vs "selling it" depends on what "it" is. Without a qualifier narrowing down the "it" (e.g another social networking site with no real capability difference from what exists today. In such a case, marketing is much more important than technology) what you say is wrong.
RobGR 17y ago
That remark, as well as the phrase "a business person who can’t code anymore" made me a little suspicious of this guy. But I agree that there is unmet need at the lower end of business investments.

TimothyFitz 17y ago

I think his point is that scaling up on the web is a solved problem, which is mostly true. If you look at most startup's pitch/plan the biggest risks are not in technology. Steve Blank would say there's Market Risk (will your customers want it?) but minimal Invention Risk (can you deliver it?). Contrast this with biotech where you're trying to cure diseases. Minimal market risk, tons of invention risk. Read more here: http://steveblank.com/category/vertical-markets/ http://steveblank.com/category/vertical-markets/

plinkplonk 17y ago
"his point is that scaling up on the web is a solved problem, which is mostly true" Maybe, but that isn't what "Technology, however, isn’t the driver any more for startups" means. "Technology" is a lot more than "scaling on the web", even in software based startups. "Steve Blank would say there's Market Risk (will your customers want it?) but minimal Invention Risk (can you deliver it?). " Steve Blank is also careful to qualify that statement with "for some types of startups" (unlike the author of this article, hence my "too broad a brush" judgment). Assuming every software startup, even when the web is used as an interface, is a "web 2.0" startup with minimal Invention risk is intellectual laziness. "The scarce talent is business model engineering and product marketing" This doesn't have any supporting arguments/evidence/data. sounds like something a non programmer MBA type person, for whom of course programming is easy and programmers are commodity hires (like say receptionists) would say. I'd like to hear a supporting argument for why great programmers, who are what startups are usually desperate to hire, are not "scarce talent", but marketing folks are. Sure, for some startups, that is no doubt true, but as a generalization it seems too broad, which was my point. So yes I've read Steve's book too and like it a lot :-), but I don't think this dichotomy of risks supports the original article much.
- rizzn 17y ago
  I can't speak directly for John - I'll let him do that when he gets up in the morning and reads this thread.... .... but if I were to interpret that sentence and edit it to better clarify meaning (which in retrospect, I probably should have done since I'm the site's editor), I would put the qualifier "most" in that sentence, so it would read: "Technology, however, isn’t the driver any more for [most] startups." We see that to be quite true when you look at the base building blocks of many web startups. They're largely the same underneath the UI, same development environments, same infrastructure, and many even run on common CMSs, and it's the positioning (i.e., the marketing) of the startup that's the key differentiator. That marketing influences the community that floods the site, how they perceive the site, and thus how they use the site (which affects the iterative direction of the site).
  - plinkplonk 17y ago
    "Technology, however, isn’t the driver any more for [most] startups." Well that is marginally better, but it still assumes a certain kind of startup as evinced by the statement "that marketing influences the community that floods the site,". You don't need a "flood" of a site by a "community" to have a successful startup. You need customers . Whether customers are pulled in my deliberate "marketing" or technological superiority providing differential capability depends on the exact offering. If you confine the technology behind a startup to things like using open source CMS es as "building blocks", then of course technology and programming are commodities, and the "scarce talent" is indeed marketing, not programming. I could continue, but my original point was that it was an over broad generalization, which is addressed if you are talking about the kinds of startups using off the shelf building blocks as their "technology" and have no real technological differentiator, and therefore don't need excellent programmers (who are very hard to find- just ask anyone running a "non cms" startup.) Under those circumstances, (in other words, with a narrower focus than implied in the original sentence ) the original claim is completely valid. Under those assumptions, technology is not the driver and "scarce talent" is indeed marketing. I concede the argument.
    - rizzn 17y ago

danielrhodes 17y ago

Most technological innovation today is due to better available resources (CPU, RAM, bandwidth, etc.) rather than say, a better algorithm. The question then becomes: not can you make it, but can you sell it?/will people use it? That's a much different game.

plinkplonk 17y ago
"The question then becomes: not can you make it, but can you sell it?" This is again, over simplification. (as a matter of fact the exact same oversimplification made by the author of the original article.) The relative difficulty of "Making it" vs "selling it" depends on what "it" is. Without a qualifier narrowing down the "it" (e.g another social networking site with no real capability difference from what exists today. In such a case, marketing is much more important than technology) what you say is wrong.

RobGR 17y ago

That remark, as well as the phrase "a business person who can’t code anymore" made me a little suspicious of this guy. But I agree that there is unmet need at the lower end of business investments.