

The Golden Cart Effect - tsally
http://sallye.posterous.com/the-golden-cart-effect

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pg
It might help focus the discussion if you quoted some specific thing I've
written about business guys that you disagree with. You may find if you look
that your impression of my attitude towards them doesn't correspond to what
I've written.

~~~
tsally
Indeed. I think it's highly improbable that you undervalue business guys. That
is not my claim. My claim is that simplistic readings of your more subtle
points (done by some in the News.YC community) about business result in the
type of attitude I described. I'll edit this comment with examples in a few
minutes.

Perhaps one of the more relevant essays is "What Business Can Learn From Open
Source". The average workplace is accurately described as torture, however
only a small percentage of business people (the ones in charge) are
responsible for perpetuating such a stupid waste of resources. Not all or even
half of business people are like this. You certainly don't claim this is so,
but News.YC does exhibit an anti-business bias. There was a really good
comment thread from the perspective of a business person posted recently about
this, but I can't seem to find it. There's a really interesting larger
discussion here, but I feel the lack of assembling evidence on my part is
constraining.

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JacobAldridge
I must admit, the "aversion towards business people" critique of HN is not my
experience - I'm a business coach, and for me C+ was a grade I got once in
Phys Ed.

I enjoy the start-up culture, and especially the tech focus of our community,
but if you guys didn't love business like I do then I would have grown bored
340-something days ago.

~~~
iamwil
He might be referring to applicants into YC. YC generally doesn't accept
startups with all business guys and no tech founders, though it readily
accepts startups with all tech guys and no business founders.

At the very beginning, you've gotta build. As for knowing what to build, the
assertion has been that hackers can learn that. They don't need to have it
filtered by a business guy.

I'm guessing that's where he gets his impression from. But then again, until
he points to specifics, I'm just guessing.

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redhex
In short, function over form. What function (value) can a founder bring to the
startup? If the function serves its role well and did it well enough, the
founder can (earn the right to) exercise some form. Like arrogance or anti-
suit attitude.

