Why the notion here that to be an entrepreneur, you have to be a hacker.

[vintya]

I'm a bit puzzled by the notion and expectation by Y Combinator & folks on this forum that you absolutely need to be a "hacker" to have any shot at being a good entrepreneur. Even the application form for startup school asks you about what systems you've hacked in the past.

I am a fairly intelligent guy, if I can say so myself, who somehow ended up in computer science, ended up going to grad school but realized later on that my true interests and calling really lie somewhere else. I'm not a hacker so to say and I don't particularly enjoy programming - certainly not to the extent that I could have orgasms doing it and spend countless hours just doing it for fun. I look at it as a means to an end, do it to get my job done and happen to be decently good at it. I'm in the process of launching a site here and have already launched a beta version of it in India (our initial target audience). I learned RoR/AJAX/CSS and all else associated with deploying it in my spare time (my day job is a systems one with C coding). I truly enjoy the process of taking an idea from concept to launch and building a successful business around it. I spend much time thinking and working on it, learning about all aspects from the engineering to the business side. I've been working on my idea for over an year and half now, all in my spare time, riding many ups and downs and persevering through.

But please explain, why this ridiculous idea that to be an Internet entrepreneur, you should just absolutely be in love with programming & hacking anything and everything to death!

[icey]

It's not that you have to be a hacker, it's that you should be able to justify yourself with contributions.

The "YC Way" rejects idea men in favor of people who get things done.

To paraphrase Linus, "Talk is cheap, show us results."

By the way, if you picked up a framework and built a business on it, you're close enough to being a hacker.

[wmf]

IMO this site is for hackers, hacker entrepreneurs and hackers who want to be entrepreneurs, not for entrepreneurs in general. There are many paths and this is just one of them.

[pg]

why this ridiculous idea that to be an Internet entrepreneur, you should love programming

Empirical evidence.

[vintya]

Programmers or hackers don't build companies. Yes, they build a product or a service - the best ones can create magic. But it stops there. You need smart enterprising people who understand the bigger picture and the ecosystem, how different pieces of the puzzle fit together, how to make money out of all that stuff that's been built. You need the idea men, and the executioners. It's so wrong I believe to make programming or hacking skills/smarts/history the most important qualifying criteria for being accepted to YC, or the most important indicator of potential success.

[paul_houle]

I like the term "software developer" because it's vague about what you actually do: I mean, you could be doing software construction, project management or you could be the owner of the company -- one can be a "web developer" much like a "real estate developer."

Much of my extended family works in the construction business, where there are career paths that go between being an employee and being an owner: you might start out as a teenager putting in fenceposts and nailing shingles onto roofs, then you're working for a big contractor doing roadwork, then you and your brother buy a bulldozer and start digging foundations, putting in sidewalks and curbs and clearing snow at the mall. At some point you might end up owning a few rental properties, and if you make it big you might become the guy who does $20M contracts for roadwork...

Of course there are different paths: I worked for a startup founder who was an MBA -- we pitched an idea to venture capitalists, had it turned down, switched to a plan b we could do on a shoestring. We executed that successfully. I moved on to other things, but he sold the business at a profit a few years later.

[tstegart]

Part of the reason is because YC concentrates on web companies. From their website: "Though we fund all types of computer startups, we're especially interested in web-based applications. We've been thinking about that problem longer than anyone else, and by now can visualize much of the space of possibilities."

[plinkplonk]

"I don't particularly enjoy programming - certainly not to the extent that I could have orgasms doing it"

How many people do you know who get orgasms from programming? This kind of subtle condescension ensures that no halfway decent hacker would want to work with you.

As someone asked earlier, if we can have ideas and execute, why do we need (someone like) you, who (with due respect) have no credentials (in terms of having built succesful businesses/ have non technical demonstrated skills) but do have "ideas"?

If you think non hackers (like you) can create a successful technical product company, by all means do show us - build such a company , and then tell us how you did it so we can all learn from your experience and benefit from it.

[vintya]

My point is this - the barrier to entry and delivering a decent web product/service has come down a lot over the years. With frameworks such as RoR, countless online articles that literally spoon feed ready made solutions to common problems, stumbling blocks, and an above average intelligence, one can build a good enough web service these days.

Sure, building something state of the art requires true "hacking" skills and genuine creativity and intelligence - but how often do you really see such web companies these days? Most ideas are simple, some downright silly, and only a few that are products of intelligent hacking. Do you agree?

[gills]

I suspect (ok, I know from current experience) that it helps, when you have just a small team (or a lonely solo adventure, in my case) and you're living on ramen, to have at least one founder who is enthusiastic enough about the technology side to actually make progress even in a perfect storm of morale-killing events.