It's perpetually annoying that people make this an East Coast/West Coast thing (as if "East Coast" can even be generalized about... I'm sure Atlanta has a much in common with NYC as Mountain View has with Eugene). It's very small sample set of people to make any kind of good judgement, and seems to just be catering to stereotypes.
Yeah I am also constantly annoyed by this, I work out of a coworking space in the lower east side with tons of technical geniuses. It doesn't matter where you live, but who you associate with in that area.
> This is why it irks me when people try to sort others into "technical" and "non-technical". Being technical isn't about technology, it's about technique. Techné. Skill in something.
This line should be taught and repeated many times in every startup book, school or accelerator. It's amazing how many people don't understand this.
It's widely accepted that you probably shouldn't be trying to build a new food company when you know nothing about food. Why do some people think it's a good idea to build a new technology when you know absolutely nothing about technology? It's not that technology itself has something magically exclusive in it. It's just that you're choosing to build something that highly depends on understanding technology to make business decisions. So it's just smart to understand technology to be able to make smart business decisions.
I can't count how many times I've heard "but it's just not my area, I'm a business/marketing/idea guy". Well, guess what, 90% of the things that are crucial for the success of your startup are not any one single person's area. You could either choose to not care and hope you're lucky, or you could actually get out of your comfort zone and do some learning like we all do.
If you're a pure hacker starting a company that highly depends on a good sales team, you should probably go learn something about sales. If you're a salesman starting an education startup, you should probably go look to learn something about education. If you're whatever and you're looking to build a tech startup, it's probably a good idea to look to learn technology. It's that simple. You have to realize that no matter what area you are on, if you're starting a new company, you are probably gonna have to do a lot of learning of new things that are completely out of your comfort zone.
I can't count how many times I've heard "but it's just not my area, I'm a business/marketing/idea guy".
Unfortunately, this kind of thing tends to be a code word for "I'm an empty suit, not good at anything in particular". And, often, "I'll come up with a half-baked idea, you'll do all the hard work of making it a reality. Obviously, those kind of people aren't going to be that useful.
The thing is, almost any great startup can really use a hard-hustling co-founder who tracks down deals and funding, pitches the company to potential investors and partners, sells product, manages the budget, and so forth. He will be the 'extrovert' to the coder's 'introvert' - and these are both complementary and valuable skill sets. In other words, we don't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
In one of his essays, pg described this kind of person as an "animal". For a tech firm to be successful, you need coding animals, sure, and you also need deal making, selling, product management, and PR animals.
The best non-technical "startup animals" that I know are fascinated by and respectful of coders, and often get drawn in to doing a little (or more) coding themselves.
This piece very easily could have been titled "Whistling Into a Tap Recorder" and had sent the same message (and a worthy message at that). After all, neither New York not the East Coast are mentioned until 90% through the article. But then again that title likely wouldn't have gotten as many upvotes on HN b/c apparently everybody likes a rivalry.
Absolutely, that title is just baiting. We're in the internet era now - when can we get over the east vs west or valley vs nyc rivalries? There are bad apples and fools in suits everyone in the world.
Is it just me or does the non-technical co-founder really get killed by most blogs?
I have been approached a couple of times by friends with 'ideas', they just need a programmer to build it for them. I respectfully declined each time and remain friends with these people.
None of them ever got anywhere with their ideas. They never quit their day jobs, they never read the right blogs and books (even if I suggested, and in some cases bought copies of the books for them), they never raised funding, they never talked to customers, and they never found another programmer. They had absolutely no idea where to even begin on the business side of things, much less the engineering side.
I think programmers get all hot and bothered by the idea of a 'non-technical' co-founder undervaluing their contribution and so we all love these posts. But really, most of the people saying they are 'looking for a technical co-founder' aren't just lacking the ability to code. They are lacking the ability to do a startup.
Calling them 'non-technical co-founders' really is giving them a free pass. Most aren't ready to be co-founders, technical or not.
It also really belittles a good business cofounder (lets not term it around what they can't do, but what they can do). A good business cofounder goes out and talks to customers, has a handle on the market, probably has a contact list full of potential partners or employees, can pitch, do some PR, and hopefully secure some funding. That is very valuable to a young startup, and most of the people with an idea and no coder aren't up to that level.
Being good at PR, for instance, is a technical skill that can be demonstrated. It requires experience and knowledge. If you're "non-technical", though, and you don't actually have demonstrable skill in PR, it might as well be an engineer on your team working on PR stuff.
Absolutely spot-on. I fall more on the non-technical side, but where I fall on the spectrum of tech skills really doesn't matter. All that counts is whether I can articulate my idea to a team (preferably by using my ancient coding skill and some ugly wireframes), work with them to make it a reality, and get shit done.
This is the best articulation I've read on this debate, which I usually find filled with arrogance and condescension. Our company is what it is today because of our technology team, but by the time we found them we had money in the bank, boxes on boxes of CDs from record labels, an amazing advisory board (most of whom we cold called), and a blog with thousands of readers. We had mockups, all of our licensing agreements, and the list goes onm. Being a founder is about doing what it takes, and it takes a lot more than just building technology.
No. But if you immerse yourself in the language, the business and the culture of startups, you can learn enough to give it a shot. There's more to startups that 'tech' -- basic business skills are seemingly underrated by so-called technical people. The question should never be 'can we build it', but 'can we sell it'. A startup is a business, designed to make money. Building something with no business plan can be cool and useful, but a project doesn't become a startup until the project turns into a product -- which is something that makes money.
I ran into a toxic mentality on the East Coast where there was a class division between "thinkers/leaders" and "doers," and doing automatically placed a person into a lower class. The idea was that execution is for little people and ideas and "leadership" are for big people.
I met a bunch of over-stuffed narcissistic and ineffectual big people who could sell like crazy and drum up endless interest by way of their ivy league social networks but would then fall flat on their faces when it came to executing on anything.
That's a dangerous mentality and I hope it's on it's way out. The way I see things is that especially in tech, it used to be that doers couldn't just do. They needed to drum up cash / etc... to facilitate the doing. Now that's just not the case. There's a quote (I believe from reddit) "Pics or it didn't happen". The benchmark as I see it with very few exceptions is "Prototype or you're full of it".
Doers will do and the leaders? They can go and lead each other around in circles.
I hate that divide also, either you are a manager (the most exalted status being a manager of managers) or you are an "individual contributor" WTF does that mean? Isn't everyone an individual contributor up to and including the president of the US?
Managers make decisions that directly affect multiple people and thus a larger part of a company (the entire company, for a CEO). Like it or not, that means that the value of a manager who makes good decisions is greater than that of an equally skilled person who does good non-managerial work.
Note that this is perfectly compatible with the view of managers as faciliators - if a team of developers can't work effectively because they lack clear requirements or crucial hardware, then the manager who cuts through red tape to get them that hardware and direct access to a customer stakeholder is more valuable to the project than any of the developers.
Of course the crux is that a manager who makes bad decisions is equally more damaging to a company than anyone doing bad non-managerial work, and there is good reason to doubt whether there really is a strong correspondence between the quality of people' decisions and their prospects of becoming (and being promoted as) managers.
I left a job a few years ago the moment that I realized that the people who were allowed to have ideas and the people who were allowed to implement ideas were always going to be, by deliberate design, different sets of people.
I realize this is mostly irrelevant, but can anyone confirm/deny the Elfman claim?
(It occurs to me that you'd have to be a fantastic whistler to manage some of, say, the spiderman score. Also, I'm pretty sure the guy invents percussion in his basement.)
I'd imagine it's an exaggeration of some aspect of his real creative process. I wouldn't be surprised if he does whistle into a tape recorder while watching a rough cut of the film, I'd just be surprised if that's all he does.
Actually it seems like a damn good way to write music for a film. First you figure out the basic themes at leitmotifs that you want to use. Then you watch the film a few times and whistle or hum basically how you want the music to go, so that you can match the music to the moment on a second-by-second basis. Hand over the tape to an assistant and let them worry about turning this vague musical shape into the outline of a complete score; once you've got the score you can worry about the details.
It's not in the slightest bit true about Danny Elfman -- in fact, it's farther from the truth in his case than any other film composer I can think of. With the amount of synth and guitar that Danny performs himself, he actually has up to half his tracks laid down by the time the cue is getting approved by the director. Not only is he not outsourcing the composing, he's not even outsourcing the performance except where he needs to. And he's certainly not fiddling around with a tape recorder when he has a $100k+ Pro Tools rig in his studio.
All film composers have different processes, and it's true that few of them take on the details of notation, and all of them have teams that they work with. But you're absolutely right that that's a good thing, because that's how film music works: Turnover is extremely short (sometimes as little as a couple weeks to write an hour of music), notes on the page are not the product, and specialization allows the process to move forward and the job to get done.
This blog post irks me in part because it's an unkind rumor, and in part because it's a completely inept metaphor.
Side note: I used to have relatively decent hooks into the music industry. A friend of mine is a well-known producer and while he was coming up in the 90's was working with a lot of then-popular artists. I heard multiple stories about name brand artists calling him up and leaving a message on his voicemail that went like 'Hey Mike! This is [Foo] I had this idea for a melody... It goes do doot doooooot dododooooot toooodoooooo. Or something like that. Can you put that down on an instrumental track? Maybe add a little bit of, you know, like cool drums and a keyboard? k thanks bye'
And then he would, and 6 months later you'd be hearing it on the radio or on an album.
Of course, in between the phone call, his prototype track and the release would be HOURS (I've been in 15 hour studio sessions) of mixing, remixing, tweaking, etc.
So, yeah, I'd guess Danny Elfman might write his 'pseudo-code' into a tape recorder that somebody then makes a first pass at. But that is not what you finally hear as the released song.
I recall an interview with him in which he said he sang the theme to the 1989 Batman movie into a tape recorder. The reason was, he thought of it during a commercial airline flight and didn't want to forget it. According to the interview, he went into the restroom and sang it into his tape recorder as loud as possible in order to be heard over the plane noise. That story or one like it is probably where the notion comes from.
This might be like the third blog I have read about the east coast 'doesn't get' or 'can't do' startups. The last article said the east coast could not make a facebook. Check your facts. Facebook started on the east coast.
Anyway onto this article. How can you call yourself humble when your saying someone else 'doesn't get it' or 'cant do it' That does not sound humble to me. Other then that there is no substance to your argument.
Here is my prospective:
On the west coast, your startup fails, go work at another startup, get a real job at a profitable company, that fails, sleep outside in a tent.
On the east coast your startup fails, get a real job at a profitable company, or freeze to death.
Yeah, maybe the east coast doesn't have social networks for cats, or iPhone apps for taking pictures of your food, but to say that they "don't get" startups is stupid linkbait.
I am a non-technical founder, grandma, wife of a starving artist. All I can say is, ya gotta start somewhere. It's been gruesome, and awesome. Promoting local sustainable commerce. Free online neighborhood Storefronts. Http://ourtownzip.com.
That's wrong, that accent has no place there. If anything, it would be téchne, because that's where the stress is. Techné just makes no sense. I think I'll change it.
I think the recent, cool web stuff has made programming look easier, even though it isn't. Maybe we're closer to to the tech, maybe we can expect more from software. We don't really appreciate any of these 'simple' web services that solve a lot of hard problems (eg, scale). Twitter is only 140 characters, but it's definitely not simple. That way it seems to outsiders like the hard part is coming up with the idea, instead of the execution.
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This line should be taught and repeated many times in every startup book, school or accelerator. It's amazing how many people don't understand this.
It's widely accepted that you probably shouldn't be trying to build a new food company when you know nothing about food. Why do some people think it's a good idea to build a new technology when you know absolutely nothing about technology? It's not that technology itself has something magically exclusive in it. It's just that you're choosing to build something that highly depends on understanding technology to make business decisions. So it's just smart to understand technology to be able to make smart business decisions.
I can't count how many times I've heard "but it's just not my area, I'm a business/marketing/idea guy". Well, guess what, 90% of the things that are crucial for the success of your startup are not any one single person's area. You could either choose to not care and hope you're lucky, or you could actually get out of your comfort zone and do some learning like we all do.
If you're a pure hacker starting a company that highly depends on a good sales team, you should probably go learn something about sales. If you're a salesman starting an education startup, you should probably go look to learn something about education. If you're whatever and you're looking to build a tech startup, it's probably a good idea to look to learn technology. It's that simple. You have to realize that no matter what area you are on, if you're starting a new company, you are probably gonna have to do a lot of learning of new things that are completely out of your comfort zone.
Unfortunately, this kind of thing tends to be a code word for "I'm an empty suit, not good at anything in particular". And, often, "I'll come up with a half-baked idea, you'll do all the hard work of making it a reality. Obviously, those kind of people aren't going to be that useful.
The thing is, almost any great startup can really use a hard-hustling co-founder who tracks down deals and funding, pitches the company to potential investors and partners, sells product, manages the budget, and so forth. He will be the 'extrovert' to the coder's 'introvert' - and these are both complementary and valuable skill sets. In other words, we don't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
In one of his essays, pg described this kind of person as an "animal". For a tech firm to be successful, you need coding animals, sure, and you also need deal making, selling, product management, and PR animals.
(See: http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html )
The best non-technical "startup animals" that I know are fascinated by and respectful of coders, and often get drawn in to doing a little (or more) coding themselves.
I have been approached a couple of times by friends with 'ideas', they just need a programmer to build it for them. I respectfully declined each time and remain friends with these people.
None of them ever got anywhere with their ideas. They never quit their day jobs, they never read the right blogs and books (even if I suggested, and in some cases bought copies of the books for them), they never raised funding, they never talked to customers, and they never found another programmer. They had absolutely no idea where to even begin on the business side of things, much less the engineering side.
I think programmers get all hot and bothered by the idea of a 'non-technical' co-founder undervaluing their contribution and so we all love these posts. But really, most of the people saying they are 'looking for a technical co-founder' aren't just lacking the ability to code. They are lacking the ability to do a startup.
Calling them 'non-technical co-founders' really is giving them a free pass. Most aren't ready to be co-founders, technical or not.
It also really belittles a good business cofounder (lets not term it around what they can't do, but what they can do). A good business cofounder goes out and talks to customers, has a handle on the market, probably has a contact list full of potential partners or employees, can pitch, do some PR, and hopefully secure some funding. That is very valuable to a young startup, and most of the people with an idea and no coder aren't up to that level.
Being good at PR, for instance, is a technical skill that can be demonstrated. It requires experience and knowledge. If you're "non-technical", though, and you don't actually have demonstrable skill in PR, it might as well be an engineer on your team working on PR stuff.
I think this is the crux of the matter. Most people aren't ready to be co-founders.
I met a bunch of over-stuffed narcissistic and ineffectual big people who could sell like crazy and drum up endless interest by way of their ivy league social networks but would then fall flat on their faces when it came to executing on anything.
Doers will do and the leaders? They can go and lead each other around in circles.
Note that this is perfectly compatible with the view of managers as faciliators - if a team of developers can't work effectively because they lack clear requirements or crucial hardware, then the manager who cuts through red tape to get them that hardware and direct access to a customer stakeholder is more valuable to the project than any of the developers.
Of course the crux is that a manager who makes bad decisions is equally more damaging to a company than anyone doing bad non-managerial work, and there is good reason to doubt whether there really is a strong correspondence between the quality of people' decisions and their prospects of becoming (and being promoted as) managers.
(It occurs to me that you'd have to be a fantastic whistler to manage some of, say, the spiderman score. Also, I'm pretty sure the guy invents percussion in his basement.)
Actually it seems like a damn good way to write music for a film. First you figure out the basic themes at leitmotifs that you want to use. Then you watch the film a few times and whistle or hum basically how you want the music to go, so that you can match the music to the moment on a second-by-second basis. Hand over the tape to an assistant and let them worry about turning this vague musical shape into the outline of a complete score; once you've got the score you can worry about the details.
All film composers have different processes, and it's true that few of them take on the details of notation, and all of them have teams that they work with. But you're absolutely right that that's a good thing, because that's how film music works: Turnover is extremely short (sometimes as little as a couple weeks to write an hour of music), notes on the page are not the product, and specialization allows the process to move forward and the job to get done.
This blog post irks me in part because it's an unkind rumor, and in part because it's a completely inept metaphor.
And then he would, and 6 months later you'd be hearing it on the radio or on an album.
Of course, in between the phone call, his prototype track and the release would be HOURS (I've been in 15 hour studio sessions) of mixing, remixing, tweaking, etc.
So, yeah, I'd guess Danny Elfman might write his 'pseudo-code' into a tape recorder that somebody then makes a first pass at. But that is not what you finally hear as the released song.
For those that don't know, Alexis doesn't code.
And he and Steve are from the East Coast.
But who am I to bash another good round of technical vs. non-technical Hacker News flaming?
Anyway onto this article. How can you call yourself humble when your saying someone else 'doesn't get it' or 'cant do it' That does not sound humble to me. Other then that there is no substance to your argument.
Here is my prospective:
On the west coast, your startup fails, go work at another startup, get a real job at a profitable company, that fails, sleep outside in a tent.
On the east coast your startup fails, get a real job at a profitable company, or freeze to death.
Boston Dynamics? DEKA!?
Yeah, maybe the east coast doesn't have social networks for cats, or iPhone apps for taking pictures of your food, but to say that they "don't get" startups is stupid linkbait.
Just like 90% of coders can't write fizzbuzz, 90% of biz guys can't close a deal. The issue is not the 90%, it's finding the 10%.
The east coast has no monopoly on useless people.