
Paul Gram, his following, and the hacker partiality - dbosson

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kyro
This is a problem I have been dealing with.

There's been this stigma now that it's all about the hackers and that business
guys are nothing but dead weight and really do not provide nor contribute
anything to a given project. It's almost as if just because someone's forte is
business, all other aspects of that person are soon ignored, despite how
brilliant, creative, or motivated a person can be.

My entire life I have considered myself an extremely creative person and one
who can understand, analyze, and improve upon existing technologies. In
addition, taking care of the business/financial side of matters has also been
a strong point of mine. So here I am, a soon to be college junior, and I am
extremely serious about starting a startup. I firmly believe that I have great
ideas, and would love to team up with a team of hackers to get something
going. I would handle the business end, but I would be equally involved in
development, being a powerhouse of ideas and creativity.

The problem is, every time I approach a hacker about starting a project and
bring up the subject of my contributions to the business end and also me being
a source of ideas and creativity, they are instantly turned away, and
essentially treat me as someone who would be useless as far as the development
of the product and one who is just trying to take advantage of their hacking
skills so that I can make a few bucks.

I'm all for hackers; without them, you're really nowhere and can't get
anywhere. But there are many others, beyond the realm of hackers, that have
great ideas, possess creativity, and who can use his/her creativity to make
something successful. Perhaps it's me being paranoid or jumping to uninformed
assumptions, but I really do sense this stigma against anyone who is not a
hacker, ESPECIALLY, against those who can help out on the business end. And at
times, I look at myself and feel incredibly discouraged because of things that
I have read and have heard essentially delivering the message that if you're
not a hacker, you really cannot be successful in this world of tech startups.

However discouraged I may get, I'm out to prove this stigma wrong. :P

~~~
cwilbur
Well, I've been talking to a couple business people about various startup
stuff.

One major thing I've noticed is that business people who don't have hacking
experience do not have any experience to judge what's simple and what's hard.
If you're in a startup mode where you're trying to leverage the least amount
of work for the most profit, this is the kiss of death.

Hackers have heard "I can't hack, but I have this brilliant idea..." a million
times, and hackers realize that the idea is easy and the execution is hard --
so by making that kind of a pitch, you're offering to the hacker the
proposition that you're going to do 1% of the work and take 50% of the credit.
That just isn't an attractive deal.

And I do not agree with your statement in the the fourth paragraph: "But there
are many others, beyond the realm of hackers, that have great ideas, possess
creativity, and who can use his/her creativity to make something successful."
Creativity is not sufficient, or you wouldn't be upset that no hacker will
listen to your pitch.

Honestly, if you want hackers to take you seriously, if you are as brilliant
and motivated as you claim, learn to program.

~~~
jaf656s
or graphic/UI design. I think you would be a much more welcome addition if you
were good at something hackers are usually weaker.

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staunch
Almost everyone has grand visions of changing the world. Hackers can implement
their ideas, why would they implement someone else's?

~~~
dbosson
I wanted to debate whether being partial to a specific group of people limits
creativity, but it seems people would rather debate the importance of
business guys so I too will give my input on business guys.

I would like to make an effort to reframe the word business guys. Currently
when people use or hear that word they think MBA, consultant, Wallstreet,
Investment Banker, VC, Money, and ego, all of which are destructive to a
startup.

But someone who simply understands the basics of business can be very
beneficial to programmers and startups.

A lot can be learned from a business guy who understands how to manage cash
flow so that the inflows are greater than the outflows, who has an ability to
be close to the customer, who understands sales and marketing so that when he
communicates he talks about the benefits and not the features, someone who can
speck publicly and inspire others.

This value is a lot less tangible than 40,000 lines of beautiful code but I
can assure you it is just as important.

~~~
dbosson
Hopefully I can speak better than I can spell [sorry for spelling your name
wrong]. Looking back at my first submissions I am embarrassed at how insecure
I sounded. I hope this does not get in the way of an interview if you like our
idea.

Dave Bosson

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dbosson
I would like to debate Paul Gram's partiality towards hackers and whether or
not this has a negative effect on creativity.

I will open the debate by arguing that being partial to a specific group of
people, in this case hackers, does limit creativity. In Paul Gram's essay 'The
18 Mistakes That Kill Startups' he says "when I think about what killed most
of the startups in the e-commerce business back in the 90s, it was bad
programmers. A lot of those companies were started by business guys who
thought the way startups worked was that you had some clever idea and then
hired programmers to implement it. That's actually much harder than it sounds
--almost impossibly hard in fact--because business guys can't tell which are
the good programmers. They don't even get a shot at the best ones, because no
one really good wants a job implementing the vision of a business guy."

I don't understand why a really good programmer would not want to help
implement the vision of a business guy.

The whole point of a startup is to improve people's lives. Paul Gram
understands this; he even says the most important aspect of a startup is
making something people want.

Well what if that business guy has a vision that will improve a lot of peoples
lives? What if that business guy has an idea for something a lot of other
business people would want? Why would a great programmer not want to work with
the business guy?

My concern is that if hackers do not keep an open mind about working with
others their creativity will be limited to their own interest, needs, and
desires. If Hackers are only willing to implement their own visions they may
be missing out on some wonderful opportunities to make something people want.

~~~
vlad
I think there's a bug. I replied already to mention that the creators of
auctomatic, zentix, and Sam Odio who works at Anybots are 100% business guys,
but the post seems to have disappeared after dbosson deleted his original
post.

~~~
pg
Your comment is still alive

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27969>

even though the post you commented on was deleted.

I just added deletion. When something is deleted, it really goes away. This is
different from marking something as dead. You can still see dead stuff if you
set showdead to yes.

Deletion is for submitters who change their mind; marking stuff as dead is for
editors to do to spams and offtopic submissions.

~~~
vlad
When he first deleted his original comment, it said (deleted) in its place,
but my reply still showed up under it. I think that makes more sense than
hiding all the children replies of a parent that is deleted.

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dbosson
In regards to staunch's comment I feel A Hacker would implement someone else's
ideas if they felt enough people would want the idea to be implemented.

I would like to thank [willarson] I found his comment to be insightful and
will take to heart what he has said about a non-programmer not understanding
the capacity of programming.

It sounds like hackers are not completely shut down to working with a non-
technical person as long as that person can add his fair share of value.

I am now going to throw a kicker into the business / hacker relationship. What
if a business guy has a vision that both he and the hacker agree has a chance
to improve peoples lives. And on top of this vision he has the money to fund
it. What is the hacker's response? And how should the equity be divided?

~~~
cwilbur
No, a hacker would implement someone else's ideas if the ideas were
interesting to implement and possible.

If a business guy has a vision that he shares with the hacker, the hacker will
want to build it, though the hacker may want to build other things _more_ and
thus decline the partnership. The equity should be divided according to what
each brings to the relationship; if all the business guy brings is the vision,
he ought to be paid a flat fee for it, probably no more than $50, and thanked
kindly. If he brings funding, it depends on how badly he needs the hacker.

