

Ask HN: Do "average" programmers build "extra ordinary" companies? - rushabh

We all know about how selective are large companies like Google, Apple, Amazon etc about recruiting.<p>A startup on the other hand, has to fight hard to get top talent. I want to know are there any examples of startups that have worked around this problem and implemented ideas so that by recruiting "average" talent, they are able to be successful?
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_delirium
Companies built mainly on getting to a market first or best, rather than on a
technology edge, seem to often have fairly run-of-the-mill tech.

Craigslist is perhaps the most extreme example, a highly successful company
with very average tech even by the standards of the time (and now almost
comically obsolete, but still highly profitable).

eBay, unlike most web startups, has long had a really enterprisey stack and
dev team, all J2EE and SOAP and whatnot.

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chipsy
My impression is that a lot of startups start at "average" and work their way
up through the learning curve very fast as they build the business. That may
or may not mean a lot of tech know-how - take Twitter vs. Groupon, for a
relatively extreme example.

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sheynk
If you or your CTO/co-founder are not "gurus", I would focus your efforts on
the commercial realities of the space you are going to be competing in.

I spend a majority of my time in the ip-video sector corp dev and can tell you
that no matter how sexy your admin UI or what stack the software was written
in, a sales verticalized approached and good service go a long way to make the
company generate revenue.

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ashleyreddy
An average dev specialzing narrowly in the startups area would be a lot more
valuable that a "rock star" generalist.

