What I don't understand is why every single startup has to be around some web 2.0 software idea. There are thousands of industries outside of software for MBA students to pursue. If you're a good businessman, you shouldn't pigeonhole yourself into a position where you have no expertise, that's just bad judgment.
Not every MBA is doing this. A number of my MBA classmates are getting into things like bio-tech, micro-sensors and other kinds of industries, where their background matches research developments in the University.
But if you have an interest and passion for a particular software idea (that meets a strong customer need), then I say go for it.
That's what I'm doing. Though I'll admit to having a decent bit of programming experience a number of years back, it's been a while and I'm rusty enough that I'd prefer to partner with a real coder who will be much more productive while I concentrate on the business aspects.
This is terrible advice, even for people who want to do web startups. The job of the entrepreneur is to pull everyone from their social network to make the thing work. They're responsible for finding the web guys, the sales guys, the marketing team, the science advisers, the customer support people, etc.
Learning to code for the CEO only makes sense if your ambitions are limited to creating a two person startup in a garage. Don't get me wrong, plenty of great products have been created that way. But most of the best businesses are just slightly different versions of things that have already been done, and by focusing on learning to code instead of building your social network you are eliminating 95% of your business options before you even start.
I don't think the advice is "learn to code", as such; rather, the author's saying "be prepared to do whatever your business needs to be successful." Obviously the CEO shouldn't be writing a lot of code in the long run, but at a startup, everyone needs to be prepared to do whatever needs to be done, not necessarily what their job description defines. Hiring "web guys, a marketing team, science advisors, customer support people", etc. makes sense in the long run, but a CEO who only views his role as managing others + "the vision thing" and isn't prepared to get his hands dirty, probably isn't a great early-stage startup CEO.
Spot-on. The whole premise of learning to code as a "preparation" to launch a startup is just idiotic.
It takes years to become a half-decent programmer, so if you have this hot internet-idea right now but no idea about programming then better go find someone who can implement it for you instead of trying to learn it yourself...
I'd like someone who can do a lot of things, such as properly form the corporation, manage the books, do some branding, get us some PR and has an eye for great visual design. Oh, that and get us some funding. Really good funding. At least I need someone who has the network or drive to find those people to do it for us.
I'll write the SQL, do the SEO and find great coders to help us build the darn thing. I'll even manage the projects as needed. In my situation CEO that codes would just be another programmer. I really do need the business skills.
Oh, and one more thing. The catalog site he built, hiscatalog.com is neat looking, but just looks like another affiliate catalog site. I'm not sure (aside from some clean design) what it offer beyond that.
I agree. I am programming for my own startup but I actually think that works to my disadvantage at times. The reason being that it limits my perspective - I tend to look at problems and want to solve them by writing code. Someone who is unable to do so will have to solve them through delegation which is often much better for business.
if you don't mind, i'd like to throw in a few desirable traits of a business person.
i've rubbed shoulders with business students as a co-founder of a student entrepreneur group. the problem usually starts when the business guy runs out of money to pay people in india on elance for his project. so he poaches other people's teams for programmers, exaggerates the heck out of his project (we built this in 2 months! [read: this has been sitting inactive for 4+ years]), treats the programmers like s*, gives ridiculous deadlines, and yells a lot.
but that's not to say the business guy is useless at all. here are a few things they could help the coders with:
[1] term sheets, make sure they're good.
[2] go do the fundraising (be really good at presenting in front of a lot of people too)
[3] talk to as many of the users as possible and let me know what the top complaints and compliments are. the rest i'll figure out from analytics. [4] get us partnerships that will help everyone immensely, the user, the startup, and the partner.
Knowing code has made it a lot easier to hire people to work for my company, as they don't care that I don't know code as well as they do, they just care that I understand their world enough not to place unreasonable demands on them.
Totally agree. I'm a product manager, but I taught myself RoR and MySQL last year mostly because I wanted to better understand how databases work with web apps. In the process I also learned how to use CSS, SVN, nginx, and search engine optimization techniques.
I don't ever expect to use these skills in a major web app (I'm nowhere near good enough to do it for real), but they've helped me immeasurably in communicating effectively with engineers. Wish I had done it years earlier.
It's interesting how "start-up" has somehow become synonymous with software or web start-up company, but I think it applies to all start-ups in the sense that competency in the skills needed to create the core business are primary when starting out.
Only on HN is startup synonymous with software startup. In other place startup can apply to many different kinds of firms: biotech, cleantech, nanotech, MEMS, semiconductor, medical device, to name a few technologies/markets that get much less attention on HN.
As a word, "startup" has it's origins in VC. In the last decades VCs focused primarily on software/IT. Because the industry was growing the most the fastest. Normal stuff. In a decade or so the conversation goes like "What do you do?" "Startup" "Oh, biomedical or..."
I have seen terrible ceos who can code and great ceos who can't. The only common factor amongst the great ones is that they are smart and interested in learning.
When you are just starting out with a shoestring budget, developing the product is the most important thing on the to-do list. Business skills are certainly desirable. But since the company is operating on limited budget, those skills cannot be procured at the expense of actual product development. However, when a company has grown beyond a certain level, the ability to manage, market, and sell the products becomes a crucial requirement for growth.
This is really just so true. I've seen so many would be "CEOs" getting distanced from the code far too early, they just want to run a business and make a bunch of cash. All the great companies have coders at their heart for the longest time, listen to their users, build a dedicated community and most importantly create a _great_ product.
Of course, this depends on the stage of the start-up. If you want to start a start-up, yeah, for the first 9 months or so, all that matters is product development, so if you can't help with that you're no good.
After the product gets to a sufficient state, though, there are other things than coding to do for the company. Sales, marketing, deals, etc... Those can use a business CEO.
Actually, I disagree. If you have a CEO that does not fully understand the company's product to a sufficient technical degree, then you have someone who is leading the company with no idea of what is possible. What nearly always happens in companies when this is the case is the development group starts making outlandish claims ("that feature will take 30 man-years and $9m to develop", etc.) with no one to call BS on them.
Personally being able to code (even if I'm not the sharpest at it) has led me to be able to drive teams a lot faster because I can say "well, if I can develop this in a week and I suck at programming, then you should be able to get it done in a day - come back tomorrow and let me know how it went".
That said, you're right - after a product is on its way it's all about sales and doing deals. But you still have to be able to whip the parts of the organization that need whipping (mind you, that's not always the development team either).
Great book. Read it. Two-sentence description: product development is essential, of course, but "build it and then market it" is way too risky. Instead, do customer development alongside product development, from day 1.
This might be true for a class of startups, but not all. For the first 4 months or so of my latest (CAPEX intensive) venture, 'all that mattered' was developing the business case and raising funds.
I agree though; the merits of a technically capable CEO can't be overstated.
The key is that he knows code. Depending on the size of the organization you run you don't have to be a regular coder, but a coder you must be.
I've seen far too many CEOs and managers who are technically inept, and as such completely gloss over great technologies and business opportunities, while at the same time pursuing impossible goals with no understanding of the technical underpinnings of their business.
[+] [-] charlesju|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anateus|17 years ago|reply
If you have a "startup" doing anything else, it's more common to just call it a "small business".
[+] [-] jedc|17 years ago|reply
But if you have an interest and passion for a particular software idea (that meets a strong customer need), then I say go for it.
That's what I'm doing. Though I'll admit to having a decent bit of programming experience a number of years back, it's been a while and I'm rusty enough that I'd prefer to partner with a real coder who will be much more productive while I concentrate on the business aspects.
[+] [-] pibefision|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmtame|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Daniel_Newby|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Alex3917|17 years ago|reply
Learning to code for the CEO only makes sense if your ambitions are limited to creating a two person startup in a garage. Don't get me wrong, plenty of great products have been created that way. But most of the best businesses are just slightly different versions of things that have already been done, and by focusing on learning to code instead of building your social network you are eliminating 95% of your business options before you even start.
[+] [-] neilc|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moe|17 years ago|reply
It takes years to become a half-decent programmer, so if you have this hot internet-idea right now but no idea about programming then better go find someone who can implement it for you instead of trying to learn it yourself...
[+] [-] coglethorpe|17 years ago|reply
I'll write the SQL, do the SEO and find great coders to help us build the darn thing. I'll even manage the projects as needed. In my situation CEO that codes would just be another programmer. I really do need the business skills.
Oh, and one more thing. The catalog site he built, hiscatalog.com is neat looking, but just looks like another affiliate catalog site. I'm not sure (aside from some clean design) what it offer beyond that.
[+] [-] kristiandupont|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmtame|17 years ago|reply
i've rubbed shoulders with business students as a co-founder of a student entrepreneur group. the problem usually starts when the business guy runs out of money to pay people in india on elance for his project. so he poaches other people's teams for programmers, exaggerates the heck out of his project (we built this in 2 months! [read: this has been sitting inactive for 4+ years]), treats the programmers like s*, gives ridiculous deadlines, and yells a lot.
but that's not to say the business guy is useless at all. here are a few things they could help the coders with:
[1] term sheets, make sure they're good. [2] go do the fundraising (be really good at presenting in front of a lot of people too) [3] talk to as many of the users as possible and let me know what the top complaints and compliments are. the rest i'll figure out from analytics. [4] get us partnerships that will help everyone immensely, the user, the startup, and the partner.
[+] [-] martian|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] omnivore|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kennyroo|17 years ago|reply
I don't ever expect to use these skills in a major web app (I'm nowhere near good enough to do it for real), but they've helped me immeasurably in communicating effectively with engineers. Wish I had done it years earlier.
[+] [-] gcheong|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skmurphy|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] access_denied|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sachinag|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icey|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trapper|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kailashbadu|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wheels|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dunk010|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swombat|17 years ago|reply
After the product gets to a sufficient state, though, there are other things than coding to do for the company. Sales, marketing, deals, etc... Those can use a business CEO.
[+] [-] sanjayparekh|17 years ago|reply
Personally being able to code (even if I'm not the sharpest at it) has led me to be able to drive teams a lot faster because I can say "well, if I can develop this in a week and I suck at programming, then you should be able to get it done in a day - come back tomorrow and let me know how it went".
That said, you're right - after a product is on its way it's all about sales and doing deals. But you still have to be able to whip the parts of the organization that need whipping (mind you, that's not always the development team either).
[+] [-] jon_dahl|17 years ago|reply
Great book. Read it. Two-sentence description: product development is essential, of course, but "build it and then market it" is way too risky. Instead, do customer development alongside product development, from day 1.
[+] [-] astrec|17 years ago|reply
I agree though; the merits of a technically capable CEO can't be overstated.
[+] [-] gustaf|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] potatolicious|17 years ago|reply
I've seen far too many CEOs and managers who are technically inept, and as such completely gloss over great technologies and business opportunities, while at the same time pursuing impossible goals with no understanding of the technical underpinnings of their business.
[+] [-] Jschwa|17 years ago|reply