Comments on: Whats harder for a startup: Hackers learning to run the business side, or Suits learning how to code?

By: Michael

Michael — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 07:30:34 +0000

In modern startup culture, and even with modern SaaS tools and widgets, it’s going to be tougher for a “suit” to full embrace the levels of detail occuring on the technical side.

That said, I think it’s critical for any team to have cross-functional exposure into how individual details in each camp affect the other roles in the organization.

We’re at a unique time, being that it is relatively inexpensive to test and launch many web-based ideas, but ability to implement throughout the full business lifecycle is where the real growth and wins can occur.

Also, keeping in mind the relative infancy of the Internet as we know it, as the industry matures and alliances form, capitalization to build anything more than niche solutions will tend to require larger, multidisciplinary *teams* to make any headway (a comparative example would be to look at the auto industry in 1905 vs today).

By: Lance Weatherby

Lance Weatherby — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:24:50 +0000

Just to clarify, my comment about coding was not “attitude”. I am just not very good at coding and as much effort as I put into it the vast, vast majority of people that have formal (or informal) development training will always be much better then me. In any startup people have to be willing to do whatever it takes to get things done. You can put me in that camp.

By: Maxwell

Maxwell — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 03:16:42 +0000

Nice post. I think you go in a couple of directions on this, but I’m just going to address the one most compelling to me: “Between suits and developers, who’s more likely to take on the roles of the other?” And notice that I’m not qualifying that at all by adding something like, “And who’s more likely to succeed?” I’d just like to look at the likelihood — some might say, willingness — to engage in the roles of the other.

In that regard, the first three sentences of Lance’s response typifies the suit attitude to that question. Though I put myself squarely in the dev camp, I don’t think I’ve ever verbally placed limits on myself by saying something liike, “I will never be a suit or take on their suit-like responsibilities.” At least, I’m pretty sure I’ve never written it out

Am I being too selective? Well, more generally, when I go to the Ruby users group, it seems like _at least_ half of the developers there are aspiring entrepreneurs. Again, I’m not trying to qualify what their suit-ness level is or how successful it is; I’m just noting that at least half of them are looking to engage in suit behavior, which I would summarize as: starting and promoting a company. And if you talk to them, they’re unlikely to say, “Yeah, I’ve got this great idea and I’m looking for a team of executives to run it for me.”

Now, I’m not sure I even know an analogue for the Ruby users group on the suit side, so I’m just going to call it the MBA users group. Now, at the MBA users group, what percentage of suits are aspiring developers? How many of them would crack a book to make their idea happen? I’d reckon on _easily less than_ half — and I stress _easily_, because I think it’s more like less than a tenth. Yes, I’m betting that at least 90% of them are in the market for a engineering team to fulfill their vision.

By: Lance Weatherby

Lance Weatherby — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 15:57:37 +0000

Here’s the deal. I am a suit. I will never learn to code. At least not at a meaningful level that would make something magical.

In my day job I see lots of ideas. More then one every business day. There is no way to sugar coat this, there are lots of bad ideas. Like 90% of them. So a good idea might be rarer then you think.

In my day job I also see both hackers and suits. The hackers typically are out trying to raise money before their company is ready and the suits are trying to raise money to hire geeks. Both approaches fail.

I believe that takes both types to make a meaningful startup. A business geek and a technical geek. You can’t do it without both. And the only way to lure either of them is to sell them on the concept, articulate the vision for making it bigger, and give them enough equity to make things interesting.

By: Jonathan Goff

Jonathan Goff — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 03:54:28 +0000

Brian,
Coming from the rocket startup you linked to (I’m their propulsion guy), I think which is more important (suits or geeks) depends a lot on the industry. For a capital-intensive startup situation like what we have, I think you really need some strong skills on both the engineering side as well as the business–most of the space startups I’ve seen that have only had one or the other have done poorly. On the one hand, I had a friend who was a great engineer who had been trying to raise money to build an RLV for over 40 years (he actually started working on commercial space projects back before the first Moon landing!). He died last year having never achieved his goals. OTOH, I’ve seen a few space companies that had lots of business talent but little engineering background. Some of them have done ok, some very well indeed, but most of them put up a pretty website and then disappear back into the ether within a year or two.

So, I don’t know if this answers your question as far as Web 2.0 companies. I really don’t know much about them thar intarwebs when compared with propulsion engineering (which end of the intertubes does the hot flamey stuff come out of again?), but I figured you might appreciate the datapoint.

Thanks for the link again!

~Jon Goff
http://www.masten-space.com

By: Micah

Micah — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 15:18:02 +0000

I think it’s also easier for a tech-startup to recruit a biz team than for a biz-startup to get a tech team. The tech guys can actually build something, then use that to lure in some biz people for equity. A working prototype is valuable, even in the anyone-can-do-it Web 2.0 world. I think it’s probably much harder for a biz person to pull in tech people, since all they’ll have is a story.

Of course, if the biz person has one or more successes already under their belt, it becomes that much more compelling of a story.