

Ask HN: How do you recognise good business guys if you're a programmer? - jerryji

Inspired by the recent HN post of "How do you recognise good programmers if you’re a business guy? -- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=515900", I wonder what light would the people here (presumably much more programmers than business guys) shed on how to find/recruit good business partner/key employees?
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aristus
I'm not a business guy but I've been around a lot of them.

Honesty and self-honesty are key. Curiosity too. They best business people
tend to teach as they go... but the worst like to lecture as they go. So
talkativeness is not always a good sign.

Greed in a business person is not fatal, but needs to be watched. Hunger is a
better motivator than greed because it's self-limiting.

Business school is not always a good indicator -- I've met both idiots and
geniuses who went to Sloan, LSE, EDHEC, etc.

Self-taught or self-made business folk tend to have smaller horizons. You find
them a lot in businesses that are less risky, more limited, yet profitable --
eg contract software for government.

Scions of old successful (eg 4 generations) families can be very good as long
as they are not too emotionally scarred. If they have something to prove, let
them do it somewhere else.

People who have entrepreneurs (parents, aunts, etc) in the family tend to have
more natural and secure approach to business overall. They've seen it done
from birth.

One good negative indicator is being too "fancy". If a person seems to create
complex deals just for the joy of it, run away. You want elegant power in
business deals just as you want it in programming. Being too fancy is a sign
of inexperience, but may also be a sign of greed or worse.

Another negative indicator: I've never seen a VC make an outstanding CEO.

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mkuhn
So, I'm a business guy and currently doing my Masters in Strategy and
International Management, then I will go on to take my MBA in Singapore. So
much about how I got to know a lot of business guys, so now how do you
recognize good ones:

1\. There is a lot of arrogance among business people. They (probably as
engineers) think that they know things, that others don't. If you meet someone
with an arrogant attitude I would steer away from him. And even if it is only
because it will e hard to work with them.

2\. Smart. Really good business people are truly smart, but how do you
recognize a smart business guy? I have found, that people who have mastered
their subject can explain it in very simple terms. They can teach people the
reasons behind their decisions and why they are doing something the way they
do. And most of the time that explanation (at least in business) will be very
straight forward and seem like something that is obvious, but it wouldn't have
occurred to many other people and it had to be spotted. it's almost like good
business ideas, the best ones often are obvious and can be understood by
almost anyone.

3\. Good business guys are curious. They are broadly interested and fascinated
with a lot of stuff. In the article that spun off this thread the Blogger
mentions curiosity and self teaching as important in a good programmer. And I
would reiterate that point here. A good or even great business guy probably
isn't into business because of business but because of other interests he
wants to connect / advance. I for example study business because I am very
interested in Technology (IT and classical engineering), Biology, Chemistry
and Physics. My interest in business lead me to pick up that for my studies
because it makes it possible for myself to later connect my areas of interest
through my work. Am I a good business guy? I don't know, but I hope to be one
day. But I have seen a lot of good business folk who shared that trait. They
start learning about e.g. programming and they will probably never be as good
as the experts in such a field but they will start to understand a field and
can contribute a sense for business and the business perspective to the field.

4\. A good business guy understands the field he works in.

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SwellJoe
A friend of mine is working on a startup, and she's non-technical (not
retardedly non-technical...she used Linux on the desktop for many years, and
has designed and built a number of very nice looking websites, but she's not a
developer or an engineer by any stretch), so she'll be looking for an
engineer. She asked me what she should be doing to insure she is able to
attract a good technical co-founder.

Here's what I told her engineers look for:

Proof that they get shit done. This is the first thing you'd look for in an
engineer for starting a company, and it's likewise the same thing you need in
a business guy. The definition of what shit needs to get done is very
different, but it's still the most important thing. So, what projects have
they headed up and gotten done? "Business guys" need to wield the phone,
email, project budget, underlings, teammates, etc. in order to make things
happen. If they have excuses for why their team or their prior workplace was
crappy and held them back, or whatever, they might not have the right
attitude.

Be willing to do the stuff that hackers hate. This usually includes business
development, accounting, taxes, legal, etc. A lot of talking to people and
choosing vendors and service providers, and figuring out ways to get
everything cheaply but in a timely manner.

Decisiveness is probably important in a business guy. Not recklessness...just
the ability to make decisions in a reasonable time. They need to be a good and
quick judge of character, since they'll be making most of the deals...and a
bad partner early on can spell the end of your startup.

Likewise, they need to be honest and have character, themselves. There _are_
business guys who get ahead by screwing others, but you probably don't want to
work with them (because they'll screw you, too), and unless they're _really_
good at it, in the end it will backfire. The tech industry is, perhaps
surprisingly, polite. Competitors are friendly with each other, and very
rarely bite each other in anything other than honest ways...because a
competitor one day is a partner the next, and the more you grow and expand
your offerings, the more this will happen. For startups, a competitor one day
may be an acquirer tomorrow, as well. So, don't work with people whose primary
competitive philosophy is "screw everybody else". Competing aggressively is
obviously mandatory. But, if they'll say anything to make a sale, it's not
good for the long term life and growth of your business.

Bring money or the connections to get money. This is crass, of course, and
there are lots of other useful things a business guy can bring to the table,
but bringing money to the table is an indicator of almost everything else
you're looking for in a business guy (either that, or dumb luck). It's
probably not possible to have good money from a good investor on the table
without a prototype...but if they can arrange a meeting with an angel two
weeks later to show off your early stage prototype and get the wheels turning
on raising a round, you might have a winner.

Be easy to work with, and willing to learn. In the first few months, there's
not much to do besides "make something people want", so they need to be able
to be a contributing partner on that task. Design, maybe. Docs, maybe. Getting
feedback from potential customers, definitely. Figuring out the data you need
to build the right things for the right customers. This one is brute force
Googling and making phone calls. Finding out the size of the opportunity (and
whether other opportunities could be addressed with the same technology),
making an honest assessment of the competition and figuring out their
weaknesses, etc.

