

What Does The Business Guy Do Pre-Launch? - gatsby
http://swombat.com/2011/5/30/what-before-launch

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sayemm
Answer: Look for technical co-founders

I'm joking, but seriously, those first 8 bullet points are nothing that
technical founders can't do. And if I was working on a startup, it really
wouldn't make sense to me to give someone co-founder equity to do just those 8
things that I could easily do myself while building the product too.

~~~
dasil003
> _it really wouldn't make sense to me to give someone co-founder equity_

The problem is you're thinking of your co-founder as some kind of technical-
coattail-rider. But ideally your co-founder is _better than you_ at product
and market research, dealmaking, finding advisors and general networking. Your
argument only applies to the all-around inferior co-founder, in which case no
you shouldn't "give them co-founder equity" regardless of whether they are
technical or not.

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sayemm
You're right, I am biased here - the reason being is because I actually used
to be a "business guy" before, worked in finance and have since turned into a
coder, and I've also failed. Because of that my standards for a business guy
are extremely high, if I was ever even thinking of linking up with one early
on, because of my background and experiences.

Though I'll also argue that all else being equal hacker founders have a huge
leg-up over non-tech founders for executing and surviving, esp these days.
Online marketing, iterating, and design are all technical in nature and if
you're a business guy, it's likely going to be your first time going through
these sort of hurdles, big risk.

~~~
earbitscom
Your standards for any co-founder should be very high.

I have to agree with dasil003. You're making all kinds of biased and unfounded
assumptions about basically half of the world of founders. Saying that online
marketing is technical in nature and that a business person probably has no
prior experience doesn't make any sense to me. I don't know any hackers who
have the depth of marketing experience that I have, and very few who have
managed as many people across as many types of job functions, which is crucial
to running an entire business. That being said, our technical founder is
obviously crucial, as is the founder in charge of our music department. Every
founder should bring something important to the table, and most founders are
no good on their own.

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andrewcross
After reading the Sternberg and Tenner articles on this topic, I noticed that
they forgot one major thing: it's sometimes the business guy who's the lead
founder and in charge of the product direction. I'm going to be a little
biased here since I'm the "business guy" of the startup I'm working on, but
having a guy who knows the product well yet is constantly in the market
chatting to people is very important. If the lead founder is also the
developer, the product often has a tendency to be technically incredible, but
lack the market connection needed to sell. By bringing a business guy along
once the product is "ready", he's selling something that he didn't create,
which is so much harder to do.

Now I'm not going to say that every startup must have a business guy leading
from the beginning, there are a ton of developers that have incredible
business sense. What I am saying is that it can often be a disadvantage to
have the guy coding the product be the guy that leads product design. Your
decisions become jaded by what you like doing and what you don't like doing,
and a customer focus is hard to maintain. Taking a step away from the code and
having a guy who understands software dev, yet is focused solely on market
intelligence can make all the difference.

I previously worked with a successful startup that had a CEO who had never
actually seen the code of his company's platform. It didn't matter to him. He
was talking with the customer every day, knew what they wanted and was able to
convey it to the developers. As a graduate of Software Engineering, he still
knew how to code, but his vision wasn't hampered by the day to day grind of
actually coding it.

Obviously there's many ways you can be successful in a startup, but creating a
great product is really only half the battle. If you can have a software-
intelligent, externally-focused "business guy" leading the charge, you can
make sure that your great product doesn't go to waste and you have a market
for it when it's complete.

~~~
swombat
I stopped short of saying that in the article (I was trying to make the point
that even if you're not working directly on the product, there are many things
to do in a pre-launch startup), but you're absolutely right! I actually had a
sentence that I cut out which said something along the lines of "By the way,
if you're a 'business guy' on a startup but you're not at all involved in
building the product, you're probably doing something wrong!" - however, I
don't feel I'm in a position to make such a generic statement, especially in
view of the counterexample of Seth Sternberg himself.

I do feel that the 'business guy' should be involved in the product
development/leadership, though, as you feel.

~~~
andrewcross
Very fair. That's the great thing about startups, there's no magic formula.
What works for one group probably won't work for the next.

But I would say this, if your a business guy and you don't have much of a clue
how the product works, sit down with a developer and chat for an hour or two.
You'll probably be a little bit overwhelmed, but you'll definitely have a new
appreciation for the product and hopefully be able to talk in a bit more depth
in the future (where appropriate).

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mixmax
I think the most important thing is missing: Selling the product!

The notion that you can't sell a product you haven't created yet is prevalent
in tech circles, but it isn't true. I did a startup some years ago where we
got around $10.000 worth of sales with nothing but handwaving, smooth talking
and powerpoint. The product launched a few months later. Our investors loved
it because it was a serious indication that we had a product that someone
would buy, and that we were able to sell it.

This isn't unusual, especially in B2C markets. Tech guys just often seem to
miss it, probably because there are a lot of incompetent people out there
calling themselves business people. A good business guy is as hard to find as
a good hacker.

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grammaton
It seems like the only real problem with this article - the one causing any
contention - is simply that no one really specifies what time frame they mean
when they say "pre-launch."

~~~
swombat
Any time from the point where people get together and say "hey, I have this
idea..." to the point where real users start using your product (and paying
for it, if it's a paid product).

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Hisoka
There's many things to do pre-launch.

For a consumer product, they can include: 1) Starting a blog and establishing
yourself as an expert. At the very least, at least get some content out there
for search engines to crawl.

2) Establishing yourself in forums. This is important because if you just sign
up as a new user when the product is done, don't expect anyone to take your
pitches seriously. If you got some reputation under your belt though, people
will listen.

3) Email leads You want to start a relationship with people, especially
bloggers. Don't talk about selling anything to anyone, or even talk about your
idea. Just ask questions, get to know them, and when the time comes, you can
either tell them what you did, or say "Hey, look at this, I just found this
out..."

4) Brainstorm about network effects. There's the product but there's the other
stuff that helps makes the product more viral. They can include things such as
widgets to embed in blogs, etc.

5) Get some links to your site. This is in line with #1. If you start a blog,
the links will naturally flow in. This will lessen the time until search
engines gives your site more trust. If you can launch your site in 2 steps, do
so.. For instance, if there's a section for content(articles, how-to's, etc)
and a section for the actual product, launch the content first.

