
Whartonite Seeks Code Monkey - jamesjyu
http://whartoniteseekscodemonkey.tumblr.com/
======
shiftb
As a coder, I've historically tended to think poorly of non-technical people
who have the "next big idea".

The truth is that a really great business person with the right skills can be
immensely important! I didn't fully understand that until this last year
between meeting some hustlers on the Startup Bus and my coworkers at my last
startup.

The real problem is separating the hustlers from the blowhards. In my
experience, they land in 2 camps.

1) Hustlers - They will make something happen w/o you. They'll put up a splash
page or a wufoo form or something to get things started. They'll be actively
working on their idea, even if it's just prototyping things on paper.

2) Blowhards - These guys are just waiting around for you to join to do the
work. They usually have an inflated sense of importance (about themselves and
their idea). They also tend to think you're lucky to work with them.

It's the latter type this site is making fun of.

The former are the people you want to work with, and are super valuable.

~~~
potatolicious
> _"The former are the people you want to work with, and are super valuable."_

 _Some_ of the former you want to work with. A technical founder has something
obvious they're bringing to the table - i.e., the ability to implement the
systems that will enable the idea. What a non-technical guy brings to the
table, if anything, is more complex.

Does he have insider knowledge or networks in the field you're breaking into?
Does he have some skillset (say, SEO, _real_ marketing prowess, etc) that will
concretely help the business launch?

Having an idea is fine. Having the hustle and enthusiasm to carry the idea is
fine. The problem here is that, even when you exclude the blowhards, there are
a _lot_ of non-technical people who have the motivation and enthusiasm - but
honestly simply don't bring much of value to the table. Not sufficient to
warrant co-founder equity anyways.

~~~
farout
Ok, while we are at it here is my beef:

1\. technical cofounders - they just want to play around. You tell them the
users are satisfied with the current search engine,that we need to make it
easier for people to enter info in so that app can be more useful. Crickets.
Nothing happens. Hey look, we tried out 3 new search engine. Thanks.

I am sick of tech folks that don't want to do what needs to be done because it
is not sexy.

2\. non-tech folks. Networking is fine. But you need to hustle that means try
out lots of ideas to try to get "top of the mind" awareness from "your ideal
customer profile". This means lots of grunt work. Think of ideas and execute
them. But noooo. It's all about people you know, some of it is. Sure. Noooo.
It' all about perception. Come on, some of it has to be that our product
actually does something useful for them. Bottomline: depending on the product
are we in "demand harvest" or "demand generation" mode. No we are in
"perception" mode so we can be bought out. Our customer is the company buying
us. Screw the users. Their stupidity for doing business with us.

And some marketing people - are a waste of space. Everything is outsourced.
They are glorified yes men to the CEO. Sales repeatedly asks for collateral.
Screwed it I will make my own.

I agree that we need to target strategic customers. They are the hubs that
will virally promote our products. Nope. We need customers with big names so
the companies that are thinking of buying us will think we own the space.

My background: EE, stats, sales, sys admin, dba, programmer. And I agree the
hardest one to learn was graphics and design.

------
lionhearted
You know, there actually is a lot of value in good business people. Problem
is, it's really tough to identify someone who can do business and someone who
can talk but can't.

I think about this a lot. I'm now thinking the fastest way to figure it out is
(tactfully) ask them how much money they've stacked up in various endeavors.
The university teaches a lot of things, but those don't necessarily translate
into stacking up money. If you're technical and want a business guy, figure
out if he can stack up money. A pretty good predictor of that is how much
money he's stacked up in the past.

~~~
seigenblues
you should really read the book "Fooled by Randomness". There's a particular
chapter: "If you're so rich, why aren't you smart?" It points out how
difficult it is to look at empirical evidence, esp. if you don't know the size
of a given cohort. He makes his point with stock markets. Given the huge
number of people who trade in a given year, it's basically inevitable that
someone will pick nothing but winners. But if you don't see the huge pool of
failures, you don't realize that someone's "stock picking skillz" are no
better than what you might expect, given the size of the trading population.

E.g., you're looking at a rich MBA. Say 100,000 MBAs graduate a year in the
US. You still don't have enough information to know if he was any good.

Worse, say you use a pedigree: You're looking at a rich MBA from Harvard. Say
they only graduate 1,000, but, because any damn headhunter will put a harvard
MBA into a C-level job, 90% of the harvard MBAs stack up a ton of money. Now,
knowing that he's a rich MBA tells you even less. All you really know is that
richness & a harvard MBA seem to correlate, which is kind of exactly where you
started :) (on the other hand, if you had a poor harvard MBA in front of you,
then you'd really have something!)

Anyway, yeah. it's a really hard problem -- just as hard as finding a good
programmer, imho

~~~
fauigerzigerk
What would be really interesting in light of what you say is repeat
performance. Also, it is not inconceivable that even random success may
_cause_ repeated success as successful people tend to get more opportunities
and are more confident.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_What would be really interesting in light of what you say is repeat
performance_

Well, then you get fooled by randomness in a completely different way: You
begin to believe that the ability to succeed from scratch is a much rarer
skill than it actually is, because (a) only a subset of the potentially-
successful people ever succeed, by whatever measure, and (b) only a smaller
subset of those ever bother to try to succeed again; and (c) only an even
smaller subset of subset (b) ever succeed a _second_ time.

But you don't really need to find a serial performer. You only need to find
someone who can succeed _once_ , and there are more of the latter than there
are of the former, by definition. It's no knock on Bill Gates that, having
founded one incredibly successful company, he didn't quit and try to start a
different one just to "prove" that he had the knack. Zuckerberg should not be
ashamed that, having found himself holding one tiger by the tail, he doesn't
feel inclined to shop around for a different tiger.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
Those are all valid points. However, I do believe that there are patterns of
success and, by definition, patterns are characterized by some sort of
repetition. Looking for patterns in someone can increase the odds of finding
the right person. I don't deny at all that doing this probably excludes a lot
of very qualified people, most importantly it excludes me from my own startup
;-)

------
potatolicious
To turn this topic in a more positive direction:

How do you tell an "I have the next big thing but just need some help with
technical details" people apart from real, talented non-technicals?

Or, as a non-technical founder, how do you differentiate yourself from the 99%
of clueless yahoos run around pitching their Great Big Idea?

~~~
spitfire
Have money.

Tell them you're building a team to do X, and you're not looking for free
labour.

~~~
MrFlibble
I agree. As a non-technical founder my main focus is on that initial capital
raise to be adequately funded to build a solid team and pay them what they're
worth.

You wouldn't ask a mechanic to rebuild your engine for equity in your car when
you eventually sell it, neither should you expect coders to work for free.

~~~
jessedhillon
Your car will definitely be losing value in the future. A better analogy is
that you might ask your friend the electrician to help you out with a house
you're fixing up and getting ready to flip, with the promise that you would
pay his bill after the sale. Plus maybe a bonus.

I think there's a lot of value involved in being able to convince people to
contribute some level of effort for equity. If intelligent people see enough
in your idea to jump in your boat, that might mean something about the value
of your idea. The converse is also true: if you can't convince anyone to
contribute anything of value to your effort in exchange for equity, maybe you
don't have a compelling idea.

A real entrepreneur doesn't expect coders to work for free. He or she is that
pitching a compelling vision that involves a coder adding value to something
that the programmer co-owns, not simply giving away free time.

~~~
potatolicious
I see the word "idea" in your post a lot - and I think that's missing the
point by a wide margin. The world is _full_ of good ideas, the real shortage
is people capable of making them happen.

Intelligent people avoid non-technical (or even technical, honestly) people
who pitch their New Great Idea because 99% of the world has great ideas and
_zero ability to pull it off_. What people are judging you on is not the
quality of your idea, so much as your ability and skills to _do_ it.

If you're failing to gain traction with the people you're trying to sign on,
maybe your idea is sound, but people simply do not see you as bringing
something valuable enough to the table to make it a success.

Whenever I get approached by a non-technical founder about their New Big
Thing, my immediate question, bluntly, is: What do _you_ bring to the table?

If you don't have a good, concrete, specific answer (instead of hand-wavy
things like "I'm good at marketing"), do not be surprised when competent
technical people roll their eyes and wander off.

~~~
jessedhillon
There's no disagreement on this point; you've changed the subject.

I was taking issue with your characterization that non-technical entrepreneurs
are trying to get people to work for free. I think that's an unhelpful way to
look at things.

People are not working for free at a startup, they're building equity and
increasing the value of the overall enterprise. Except for the case where the
original person is _actually_ sleeping or playing golf all day, I don't see
how you can seriously propose that some people are genuinely trying to pitch
an opportunity where you are doing all the work (and presumably at some
companies they've succeeded in getting the techies to do all the work?)

Considering your last statement, I think you need a better way to evaluate the
work of people who don't do technical work for a living. What sort of concrete
work would a marketer be doing before there's a product? I wouldn't want to
work with someone who said they had already printed all the advertising for a
product that hasn't even been designed!

------
samtp
> The discovery paved the way for industry-wide recalculations of early
> termination fees for smartphones, which were hiked up nationwide from the
> standard money-losing $175 to the current break-even $325.

If thats something you brag about, you're a cunt of the highest order.

~~~
qq66
Why? An early termination fee is necessary in a model where carriers subsidize
handsets. Why should the termination fee be below breakeven?

~~~
sliverstorm
Who _brags_ about making everyone's lives suck just a little bit more?

~~~
sokoloff
Getting the termination fees raised to break-even does not make everyone's
life suck more. The alternative is to have that $150 increment added to the
handset purchase price, which is closer to making everyone's life suck more.

There's no free lunch. Somehow you're going to pay the full price for your
iPhone. The higher monthly bill and higher early termination fee you're
willing to pay, the lower the upfront cost can be, which some would argue is
making people's lives better, not worse.

I would personally prefer to buy an unsubsidized phone (and have
correspondingly lower monthly bills, and a tiny or zero early-term fee), but
that's not how the US mobile market works, at least not for the device I
prefer, and choice of device is more important to me than choice of contract
terms.

~~~
sqrt17
Why would it make people's lives worse to have price transparency both on
devices and on mobile phone contracts?

Around here (i.e. Europe), you can get an iPhone 4 (24x25EUR) and the
corresponding phone contract (20EUR/month), either together (which would give
the well-known 45EUR/month) or separately from each other. You can cancel or
change the phone contract later and only pay for the phone, if you want - in
any case, you know which is which, and it makes it a lot easier to compare
both contracts and device prices.

No early termination fees necessary. It's just the US mobile market being
bogged down from being under the control of an oligopoly of non-competitive
companies.

------
geuis
I don't understand what this is.

~~~
dangrossman
A tumblr making fun of job/partner postings by business students. Wharton is
the business school of University of Pennsylvania, one of the most prestigious
business schools in the country.

~~~
MrFlibble
Wharton is largely populated by entitled douchebags. Not entirely, but
largely.

I was invited to a dinner once where a bunch of Whartonites made up the body
of the group. They really thought they were the future gods of industry and
knew everything about business (mind you they were playing on daddy's money).
When the check came they suggested we play "Credit card roulette" to see who
covered the bill.

I don't think my hearty "go fuck yourselves" was appreciated.

These are the same assholes whose arrogance helped crash the market.

~~~
ebaysucks
As a former strategy consultant who decided not to go the MBA route because
it's bullshit, I want to point out there are plenty of people who end up in
these top MBA programs after working a few years in consulting or banking.

The family net worth does not come into the equation at all for most.

One of my former coworkers was an Indian guy who used to be homeless as a kid.
Can't get much more NOT coming from money than that.

------
sixtypoundhound
Brilliant satire....reminds me of my pet peeve - "analysts" who are unwilling
to pull and QA data.... when I started in analytics 15 years ago that WAS the
path ... you either pulled data or got a job in PR.

The irony is that most of these guys have the intellectual horsepower to learn
enough coding to crank version 1.0 in about 90% of the likely startup spaces
out there. Speaking as a business guy from a similar school who started
refreshing his own tech skills a couple years ago to reach "tech ceo" level
competency (can personally deliver a simple app or feature, understands dev
and support process, has a clue about design and project tradeoffs, can size
up technical talent), these guys have the capabilty.....just being lazy
weasels...

By the way, anyone at a startup who considers himself a ceo is seriously
delusional.... You are a CEO in training at best. Call yourself a founder and
move past it. Get cash flow positive and create 50 - 100 jobs and you can
reconsider...

------
dotBen
Anyone know if these are real or satirical?

~~~
kajecounterhack
Definitely satirical. At least, that's what the snarky post titles are telling
me.

------
rwebb
<http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/eng/2195882661.html>

------
benreesman
the satire is apt, in the sense that folks have been known to talk like this.

what intrigues me is why anyone who was lukewarm on technology would hang out
in software circles. this shit is hard. really hard and it just gets harder
the more you learn. there must be easier money lying around for that crowd.

~~~
Vivtek
They all think Google and Facebook are the norm.

------
yef
These are biz noobs. There are good ones too who understand talent and
startups. We can make fun of the arrogant noobs, but we'd all benefit if they
were just enlightened about the shortage of tech talent, and about the best
way to sell their idea and build a team.

------
nika
I know the site is a joke but there is a real disconnect. There is this idea
of a "business person" in a startup. But I think everyone serious enough about
startups to be on HN, if you'll think about it, will realize there is no
"business dude" role in a startup.

You're either engineering, design or marketing, and preferably more than one.

My background is in engineering, which means I didn't have much need to pick
up design, marketing, or entrepreneurial/business skills while growing up.
Once I realized I wanted to work for startups (about a decade before founding
my first startup) I started learning about these things. Design, as in graphic
design, is probably the hardest to teach. Business is the easiest.

If your background is you got a BS in "Business" or an MBA and you want to be
in startups, then you should figure out what role you're going to play. (And
it shouldn't be "CEO".) Pick up some engineering, design or marketing.

Show me someone who designed and marketed several extremely popular websites
when they were in college, say, along with a technical buddy who made them,
and I'll see someone who can greatly benefit a startup (whether their degree
is an MBA or a BS in art appreciation.)

Eventually if your startup gets big enough, or for some business models (eg:
Groupon) you may need large numbers of sales guys or "Bizdev". Well, "BizDev"
is just sales to other businesses where you sell a partnership. Sales guys
sink or swim on bringing in business, and I think nothing will kill the
"whartonite" sense of entitlement more than working on a commission.

Much respect to sales guys, though. I have done that job because I knew I'd
never be able to hire a sales force if I hadn't ever done the job. It is not
easy.

So, Engineering, Design, Marketing. Which hat do you wear?

~~~
meterplech
I think many people conflate BisDev and Sales too much. Most people in tech
have an idea of a Sales guy: the ultimate closer, knows everyone, eats
rejection for breakfast. A great sales guy is one of the best assets in a tech
startup. That being said, a BizDev person normally is thinking strategically
about the company's position as a whole. He is gaining deep knowledge in new
verticals and identifying the right companies to target. It's usually a big
picture type person. I think the best in this position truly understand the
tech involved in the company.

~~~
cosgroveb
Jim handles the day to day stuff (sales) while Michael focuses on the big
picture stuff (bizdev). I think I get it now...

------
nika
Also, a suggestion for non-technical cofounders: Do not tell us a list of
technologies that you think we need in order to cofound a company with you.
(I've seen this happen a lot.)

If you think your technical cofounder needs [java/php/rails/javascript]
experience, then you're starting off attempting to dictate technology to the
person who you're supposed to go to in order to discover what the right
technology is.

~~~
MrFlibble
The wise man (or woman) partners with someone who is skilled at what they do
then stays the hell out of the way and lets them do it.

------
ActiveIndian
Wow, quite beautifully executed... lol, I have been in functional in almost
all the three roles from Geekdom to Designer to my current assignments i.e.
Strategy and Sales. All of them great experience. But the way these have
depicted all this, is really funny. I was thinking about an
entrepreneurial/self-employed/self-directed/sales context... funny, I didn't
even think about someone who did it on a corporate level.

