
"You're a Woz. You need a Jobs."   - brett
http://damienkatz.net/2006/11/the_woz.html
======
ecuzzillo
Does every pair of founders consist of a Jobs and a Woz?

Off the top of my head: Apple: Jobs, Woz

(pattern match below)

Viaweb: PG, rtm

Google: Sergey, Larry

Reddit: Alexis, Steve

Paypal: Thiel, Levchin

It seems not uncommon that the Jobs, if this theory is correct, can also hack,
unlike Steve Jobs. I don't know for sure of any counterexamples, but I'm also
not very sure of the theory.

Edit: GRR! Does _this_ __use _____markdown_ __[now](now.com) too?

Edit 2: Good, it doesn't.

~~~
Alex3917
"Does every pair of founders consist of a Jobs and a Woz?"

I think our school system is very much designed around this idea of "give a
man a fish and you'll feed him for a day, teach a man HOW to fish and you'll
feed him for the rest of his life."

Almost everything we learn in school is a HOW question. Hacking is a HOW
question. To the extent that school focuses on WHAT questions, it's busy work
like memorizing the places and dates of historic battles. WHO, WHY, WHEN, and
WHERE are barely touched touched on at all, and that doesn't even begin to
scratch the surface of questions that don't fit into this paradigm.

But there are other questions that aren't how questions. They aren't taught in
school, which leads some to believe that they aren't important or don't
require intelligence or that they don't even exist.

Success in a startup is partly a HOW question, but it's more than just that.
After all, the point isn't knowing how to manipulate tools, but rather making
something people want.

I think the reason why MBAs (deservedly) get a bad rap is because they don't
know how to answer the HOW questions, but they also don't know how to answer
any other questions either.

So I'd say it's not really an answer of one hacker and one non-hacker, but
rather that both put together cover the full range of human thought.

~~~
ecuzzillo
Well, my point was more that I could think of a number of examples where one
guy did the vast majority of the talking, and no examples (in my very limited
knowledge) where the two founders were close to equal.

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zkinion
"Business" is almost always about how you present yourself/your ideas. Jobs is
a genius at presentation. I thought I was great at presentation,

It's helpful to think ahead and prepare multiple pitches, including the
elevator pitch, the casual pitch, and a full blown presentation, including
difficult questions that will probably rise up. Some questions will be
difficult, and are more of a test of the presenter than the actual idea. This
shows the amount of thought and foresight a presenter puts into the plan, as
well as the dedication.

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fireandfury
Yeah Woz and Jobs were a great combo. It amazes me how well they matched.

It seems harder to identify a good "Jobs" type person. Good presentation
skills... Couldn't you just get a smooth talking MBA type? An MBA that is good
with technology? A smooth talking engineer with an MBA?

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Constantine
Well he is right of course, Woz needs a Jobs, or at least someone who is
significantly part Jobs to get anywhere, designing cool things is definitely
an enviable ability, but without someone to focus that ability you have the
worlds smartest garbage man.

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brett
Today I remembered seeing this on reddit after the last round of YC apps.

The reddit comments: <http://programming.reddit.com/info/pzaq/comments>

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far33d
looking at the "product" page, it looks like he could still use a jobs. or at
least a description of what the problem he's solving is.

