

Startup Advice: I'm a Geek, How do I Pick a Business Partner I Can Trust? - alain94040
http://blog.fairsoftware.net/2009/03/27/im-a-geek-how-do-i-pick-a-business-partner-i-can-trust/

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dkarl
I find business people confusing myself, because the persona they put on when
meeting new people seems plastic and frightening. There is an image of the
ideal businessman, infinitely trustworthy, infinitely confident, infinitely
congenial, and infinitely gregarious, and every time you get a group of
business types together for the first time, everyone does their best
impersonation of this ideal. Whenever I wonder why some people are scared of
clowns, I think of a gathering of businessmen to help me understand.

Unfortunately, the things you're looking for as a geek are things they might
not even recognize and value in themselves. Trustworthiness between
businessmen, for example, seems to be very different than trustworthiness
between geeks. There's a cultural disconnect. The difference between "lack of
integrity" and "reasonable behavior under stress" is very different between
businessmen and geeks, with the difference cutting both ways and neither side
comprehending the other's definition.

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pxlpshr
This blog post does not contain content unique to the challenge of matching
E+B, his suggestions are pretty standard for any hiring process. And, I get
tired of reading these type of comparison slanders toward opposite fields of
interest. For as many bad business people — there is an equal number of
egotistical engineers that talk a much bigger game than capable. And this
applies to just about every industry.

It usually takes two to tango, just don't rush the process putting together
your inner-circle. Find someone you really connect with, you'll be spending
more time with them than your significant other. They might not be
code/engineering savvy, but they definitely should have a firm understanding
of technology and the moving pieces... even more than your average tech-scene-
ster.

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andreyf
Pick someone you have worked with before. People who specialize in deceiving
others have a lot more practice than people have to detect deceivers.

There are tons of personable geeks out there who can both help build a product
and sell them. Only work with people who speak your language when it comes to
technology and that you've worked with before (preferably in technology
projects - maybe schoolwork, or open source projects).

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rokhayakebe
If the sales person is truly experienced, s/he probably can get a job at a
competitor that is well funded and will pay for his business lunches.

Early in the game, a startup cannot afford this guy. In such a case the
hacker-founder(s) should opt for "passion+curiosity" over "skills".

This new addition to your team will be your "chief everything else officer".
It does not stop at locating leads and calling them, creating new distribution
channels, doing some grass root marketing/advertising, it also includes
blogging, contacting bloggers, writers, local media channels (if that applies)
and anything that at the end of the shift could increase your paying
customers.

A passionate and curious, yet inexperienced guy can do all this and, on a few
occasions, better than the guy who has been doing it for 15 years and is quite
arrogant about that 1 million dollar sale he (accidentally) closed during his
flight to Italy.

~~~
tomsaffell
>should opt for "passion+curiosity"

I very much agree. But I think it still leaves a problem. In my experience,
sometimes the camps of 'business' and 'development' find themselves unable to
have a conversation _on common ground_ , and that makes the
"passion+curiosity" test difficult to do. This often exhibits itself through
language (one or both uses words the other cant understand), which maybe a
symptom of _domain protection_.

My advice to someone who is trying to find someone who has a different skill
set to theirs: find a way of talking about your domain in a way that can be
understood by a bright lay-person. Then encourage them to do the same with
their domain. If they can't / won't do that, then move on. If they can do it,
then you can have meaningful conversations in which you can figure whether
your goals are aligned, and how you can each help reach those goals. From
there, it should be obvious whether you want to work with them (assuming they
aren't lying through their teeth :)

~~~
dkarl
The other night I spent half an hour in a bar waiting for friends,
eavesdropping on the conversation at the next table. It was two young guys
(mid-20s) talking about search engines, both obviously comfortable with
business concepts, one with a decent technical understanding and the other not
so much. I gathered that they lived in the neighborhood, and I knew they
needed to be extremely well-off to do so, so I was naturally curious about
what kind of people make so much money so fast in technology. Were they, I
wondered, extremely bright?

I figured out quickly that the technical guy was pretty bright, but I never
got a hand on the other guy. He exhibited behaviors that I associate with
idiocy or flat-out frat boy douchebaggery: making things up, pretending to
understand things he didn't, ridiculing ideas that he didn't even pretend to
understand (I'm not making that up), bragging about himself, continuing
stories after his listener had pointed out that their premise was factually
untrue, and so on. Yet occasionally he said something that made me think no, a
stupid person could never have said that. Plus the technical guy, who
apparently knew him well, was taking all of this douchebaggery in stride and
was talking to him as if he were an intellectual equal, not holding back or
simplifying at all. The technical guy had apparently known this guy long
enough to realize that he was much smarter than he seemed.

Even the fact that the technical guy consistently, quietly corrected the other
guy's facts -- and then sat patiently while the guy finished his story despite
the fact that the correction removed both the point and the credibility of the
story -- seemed to indicate that they had a considerable level of mutual
comfort and respect. I mean, if the guy had really been a complete idiot, the
technical guy would not have bothered correcting him so often. Not to mention
that an arrogant idiot would not have been so tolerant of correction as this
guy was.

Anyway, that whole story was just to illustrate that there is a huge cultural
gap between technical people and nontechnical people. The way that guy acted,
I would not have trusted him to feed my goldfish. Apparently, though, he was a
bright guy who had learned a different set of social mores.

~~~
tomsaffell
> there is a huge cultural gap between technical people and nontechnical
> people

100% agree. It's sometimes staggering how big it is. My point is that a small
amount of effort can go a long way to bridging the divide, and using common
language is a powerful first step.

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alain94040
When it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.

That's the problem with interviewing sales people especially. Telling the
great ones apart from the used car salesmen can be tricky.

Any other advice on how to do it?

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ig1
Use your social network to get a personal recommendation. That way you'll have
someone vouching for his ability, plus they can't screw you without risking
damaging his relationship with the recommender.

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omarish
common sense?

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tphyahoo
Hire them first for a short intense miniproject.

If you decide not to partner, pay them cash for their time.

If you decide to partner, pay them with equity.

~~~
alain94040
Good advice if you can find them a small project. In other words: "date your
future wife before you marry her".

In the situations I faced, we were looking for the co-founder/VP
Business+Sales, so it's not a position where you say: "ok, try for a month and
then we'll see". You sort of have to be sure because when you offer the
position, it's a committment.

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chiffonade
You have to fail 3 or 4 times before you learn what to look for in a partner.

Startups are difficult.

~~~
bliving
Right. So have a plan for failure, in addition to your plans for wild success.

