Ask HN: Do startups need analysts? What can this 26-year-old semi-generalist do?

Have you made e-mail pitches to 10 - 15 people/companies offering your services?

What type of reception or feedback did you get from that?

You still need a programmer if you want to create some software, but still you'd have quite a place in a startup as the entrepreneur developing the idea and the business.

From my own experience, if you can not only master the technical side of working with metrics, but be the kind of guy who can actually ask intelligent, relevant questions and structure them in a way that gets meaningful answers from raw data, then you are worth your weight in gold to any start-up.

Can you build it? Or can you sell it?

In tech start-ups, building it means coding, and that might be only role early on.

"Selling it" is broader than pure sales (E.g. Selling it to investors, to non-paying users, to bloggers, etc.), but you need a track record in selling (I.e. Not "analysis" or "marketing").

There's a reason why there is a programming bias: programming is 90% of the work at an early stage consumer web company. So get back to coding, or try something other than start-ups, because there is no job for an 'analyst' at a start-up (or a community manager, or a head of product, or a COO, or any other job that isn't building or selling).

With a background in CS you have the functional hacker skills needed to create a first version of something, but you say your energy lies in marketing skills, so you know what 'something' to build.

I see this as one of the most powerful combinations seen in founders: the skills to get things done, and the soul to see the big picture of what problems people need solving.

On the flip side, the problem you have joining in with another startup is that the founders are often great generalists who need specialist help. Therefore a business/systems analyst is not an obvious fit with a startup, where the hacker-founders shoot first and measure later... at least until they've proven there is something there and they can mature their processes and goals.

I hate to break the news to you, but you describe yourself with a job title that's pretty much exclusive to the enterprise world. For the most part, start-ups don't really have a place for "business/system analysts". Let me explain...

School of Thought A: Call it SDLC (Systems Development Life Cycle), the project approach, or the waterfall approach goes something like this: Define a need, conduct analysis to answer the question "What", conduct design to answer the question "How", program, test, program, test, compare to the Functional Specs from the Analysis Phase, conduct User Acceptance Testing, promote, deploy, repeat anything as required. The more rigorous the documentation and project management, the better.

School of Thought B: Build something ASAP. Get it out there ASAP. Get feedback ASAP. Iterate indefinitely.

For the most part (I'm sure there are many counter-examples), enterprises employ School of Thought A and Start-Ups employ School of Thought B. There simply isn't a need for systems analysis in School of Thought B. By the time you're done analyzing, someone else is servicing the customers you wanted.

My advice: Combine a love for building stuff with your love of systems analysis. They go perfectly together. In fact, we now have a name for that: "programmer/analyst".

The systems analyst who can code is a better systems analyst because he can test/evaluate his ideas.

The programmer who can conduct analysis is a better programmer because he knows what to work on.

This may not be what you wanted to hear, but you're in a perfect position to do both, so do it.

We work with big banks but are a small company and so I get to experience both worlds, which is great for me because I haven't figured out which one I hate more :-)

We have offices in NYC and South Jersey and are hiring, so if you're looking to make a change, shoot me an email and I can give you more background on the company.

Startups that focus on Web/saas/cloud are getting a lot of attention lately but by no means is this your only path. Maybe consider a career arch that will value what you would like to focus your energy (research, writing, & marketing)?

For example, I've notice a growing trend of upstart industry analysis boutique shops that are taking market share from the Gartner/forrester/Juniper research mafia. Some examples are redmonk (developers) and altimetergroup (social media). The high value workers of these companies are the analysts (that like tech) and not the hackers.

Bottom line is don't limit build/succeed of a startup to just being a hacker.

I've worked at a couple VC-funded startups where the VCs had us hire one of their analysts part-time. The only catch is that you must prove yourself to the VC firm first, which usually requires a strong track record and good networking skills.

Nonetheless, in slightly larger -- 30-40+ people -- startups, there is often a need for someone who is good with sql or whatever datastore you have, who can make reports. That sounds a little bland, but it can range from asking and answering questions like how effective is our SEO or SEM, what advertising is giving us the best response, predicting churn rates for customers, etc. Good luck.

If you want to talk to the analyst at my current employer, hit me up over email. She's not a personal friend, though, so I can't promise anything but an intro.

Produce real-world reports and suggest next steps. Be sure to "own" the data and branding by producing your own Excel spreadsheets that contain an amalgamation of all the different data sources, and understand their business enough to personalize it to their industry, i.e., ecommerce revenue vs. freemium signups lost to competitors.

Most importantly: be sure to budget your time properly so you can bill accurately.