

How old were you when you decided to start giving up? - nate
http://blog.inklingmarkets.com/2010/02/how-old-were-you-when-you-decided-to.html

======
coffeemug
I would argue that the only skill a business owner _really_ needs is the skill
to identify, hire, and lead talent. Everything else is probably secondary. If
you're not good at programming, learning to program in order to do it yourself
is ridiculous advice - unless you spend ten years learning full time, you'll
end up with a mediocre product.

Delegation works. Just do it.

~~~
nostrademons
So many people confuse "Let others do what they're good at" with "Let others
do everything", though. Including your comment. No, talent identification is
not _the only_ skill a business owner needs. If they have a skill and you
don't, why should they come work for you?

A business owner needs to be skilled enough in their particular specialty to
get the ball rolling and the money flowing in. _Then_ they'll have the
resources and cachet to identify and hire talent. But if all they can do is
find talent and tell it what to do, why should the talent bother listening?

I'm sure I could tell go up to Marc Andreesen or Steve Jobs or Larry Page and
say "I've got this great idea. Come work for me." I also suspect that if I did
this, I'd get this quizzical "Who the fuck are you and why should I?" look,
and then they'd walk away.

~~~
coffeemug
_If they have a skill and you don't, why should they come work for you?_

Because talented people don't spontaneously self-organize. Your example is a
bit silly - you're talking about people with a lot of money, stellar
reputation, and great leadership skills. Most skilled people don't have any of
these things. Working for someone with leadership skills is the only option
they've got. If you happen to have enough charisma to get people to buy into
your vision, you really don't need to know how to code.

~~~
aswanson
_Because talented people don't spontaneously self-organize._

Yes they do. Game recognizes game. I always want to socialize and engage with
people I deem technically competent.

Myself, and most technical people I know, would not defer judgement nor
respect to someone trumping "leadership skills" as a reason to follow them. In
fact, someone projecting that air would be an immediate target for mockery
until they displayed technical competence.

------
byrneseyeview
Determination is a good thing, but determination without direction is not. If
you're good at design, and bad at programming, why insist on doing the
programming yourself? A designer-programmer team will almost certainly kick
your ass.

If you have a particular skill that seems to be part of a generalized skill
set (for example, if you're good at meeting new people, you're likely to be
good at sales), you can test it. If you know that you're bad at math, bad at
logic, bad at working on one task for more than a few minutes at a time, and
bad at spotting your own mistakes, you might not want to try programming (or
architecture) just to prove to yourself that you have the willpower to
overcome your character traits.

~~~
mortenjorck
I think you're right, but there's a third situation that works even better:

A great designer and a great programmer will work better than a great designer
who has picked up some programming, but both will be put to shame by the team
of a great designer who understands the challenges the programmer has, with a
programmer who understands the challenges of the designer.

In other words: It's important to learn new disciplines, even if you never get
near a professional level with them, because you'll work better _with_ the
people specializing in that area.

~~~
ewjordan
I think that's great advice, and it's something I'd love to work towards.

I suspect I'm speaking for a lot of us here when I say that I have absolutely
no idea where to even start when it comes to design, though. And I don't mean
learning CSS - that's the easy part (at least once you embrace how
underequipped CSS truly is vs. the problems of layout and styling).

Are there any good beginner resources available that focus more on developing
good designs and less on implementing them? It seems that most of the
beginning design stuff assumes that you already know what you want things to
look like and that you don't know how to build it; for me, it's usually the
opposite problem.

------
tron_carter
This was an inspiring article for someone like me with an business degree and
aspirations for creating a startup but without the programming ability. Would
starting out learning a language like python be recommended as a good one in
general for putting an idea into action? After some iteration and traction,
I'd bring on a capable coding partner to do it right. FWIW, I've also heard
that Python is useful for making scripts for automating tasks or improving
productivity.

~~~
notauser
This route (learn to code it yourself) is the one I took. I now have a pretty
technically credible* product with actual paying customers and everything.

The language I learned first was JavaScript because it's ubiquitous. There are
a million tutorials to get you going.

A lot of JS tutorials suck, which is a disadvantage, but it gives you a pretty
big confidence boost to be able to read a tutorial and think "that's moronic,
I know 6 other ways to do that which will work better". Python tutorials tend
to break out advanced/elegant/clever stuff really quickly which has the
opposite effect.

I wrote a couple of little apps, then a prototype, then it felt like I knew
enough to really get going.

I then picked up Python (actually Django) because the relative maturity of
server side JS platforms isn't as good. Switching languages was easy.

The total time to get to that point was about 4 months (whilst working full
time), but I had the advantage of living in a place where everything shut when
it went dark at 7pm.

*Except for the bugs, and the scaling issues, and the bad design decisions I made early on. As far as I can tell I'm not the only person to have problems like this though, and refactoring is a good way to spend a plane ride.

------
charlesju
I couldn't agree with the author more. The primary skill of a successful
entrepreneur is the relentless ambition to just do it. Subsequently, after
trashing my alma mater for the majority of my college career, I've come to
realize that the biggest lesson I learned in life was through there. Which is
of course the lesson on how to learn stuff that is really hard, but necessary
to accomplish a goal.

~~~
nate
I hear ya. I'm on the fence when it comes to Jason Fried's advice about
dropping out of college. He's a big fan of convincing people to quit and start
working, at least in the software industry.

I went to school as a chemical engineer, and though often it seems the
education's specifics are a waste to me, I learned how to approach problems
rigorously and, in your words, relentlessly. I'm not sure I'd have that same
drive if I wasn't challenged like that from the teachers and the education.

------
ryanwaggoner
This is _fantastic_ advice for people who want to learn the new things that
they need to learn. However, not everyone does, and that's perfectly OK. I
know we're biased towards programming here, but let's flip your example
around: I know how to code, but I don't know how to do enterprise sales. Yes,
it behooves me to learn something about it, but if I can hire someone to do it
for me, why shouldn't I? My goal is to always hire people smarter and more
competent than myself _at the thing that I'm hiring them to do_. I don't need
to be the best at everything; I'd much rather be the best at what I'm best at
:)

~~~
nate
Right, as long as you have the money to hire someone to do enterprise sales,
great. I'm all for hiring people smarter than me and to do things I don't want
to do. But most people starting a new project don't have money to do those
hires.

Look at Paul Graham. When they started viaweb, Paul had to play sales guy. I
believe he mentions in at least one essay, that it's not like sales was
something he was chomping at the bit to go and do. But a fledging company
can't go out and hire sales guys, so he stepped up and learned how to sell his
product, and realized he was actually pretty good at it.

So this advice is to all those out there with no money who are stuck waiting
for someone else to make their dreams come true. That's a no good place to be,
and I refuse to be in it.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Being relentlessly resourceful doesn't always mean "do it myself". Sometimes
it means you go get funding, sometimes it means finding someone to work for
equity or revenue share, sometimes it means figuring out how to make money
somewhere else until you afford to pay someone to do X.

------
nihilocrat

      "I have this great idea for a *video game*, I just need someone to build it. How do I find a *coder* and build this *video game* in a couple months?".
    

This happens so often on gamedev-related forums it's depressing. Pure
beginners often lack the gumption, or perhaps just the knowledge, to realize
that they could and usually should just do everything themselves, or at least
learn how to code a game or use a game making application.

In these days of 200-person AAA development teams I can understand the
sentiment that developers by nature are super-specialized, and that having
multiple skillsets just doesn't compute.

------
tpyo
I was expecting something completely different by the title. I was thinking of
how, when you grow older, your curiosity dies because it takes too much effort
to satisfy it.

This worries me. I have a friend who was saying the same thing, but he was
uninterested in doing anything about it.

~~~
drhodes
I think curiosity dies out for two reasons. The first is plain ol' brain
chemistry. Secondly, when people get older and they sit down at a computer,
they do so to get stuff done. When a kid sits down at a machine they explore
without expectation of themselves. Adults have the expectation that - what
they want to get done - will get done - and in a reasonable amount of time.
However, some things do take more than a "reasonable amount of time", and
frustration mounts because of this expectation. Soon, learning new things
becomes associated with frustration. So relax a little, and explore a lot.
Then read the docs. Or read the docs - and then explore. Just don't expect to
be productive in the New-Software-Product in 2 hours.

------
joelhaus
The bottom-line in this article is that you need to take the steps necessary
to get a project done. Even if this means self-educating, don't let that
prevent you from accomplishing your goals.

In reality, this isn't always feasible. That's why it's so important to have
good judgment about these things.

It reminds me of this quote:

 _God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to
change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. - Reinhold
Niebuhr_

[UPDATED] This isn't meant to be a religious statement, I'm just crediting the
original. You can just as easily replace "god" with "imagination" or
"consciousness" or whatever if that makes it more palatable.

------
ww520
If you know the stuff, do it yourself. If you don't know it, hire someone else
to do it. If you don't have money, well, you find a cofounder.

------
hyperbovine
The analogy at the top is flawed. The 7-year old has zero opportunity cost.
His time is worthless. If you have a great idea, but also the burden of
supporting a family, holding down a day job, or whatever, hiring somebody to
build your idea might make good sense.

------
tptacek
Is Inkling using market scoring rules for liquidity? I've been wondering about
that for awhile, and the Hanson reference makes me wonder more.

(The LMSR is the only way I've managed to get a market work; I'm still totally
stuck in automated market makers).

~~~
yankeeracer73
Yes, it uses Hanson's market scoring rule.

~~~
akkartik
That's the same Robin Hanson I've been reading at overcomingbias and
lesswrong. I wasn't aware of his work on prediction markets. Most interesting.

------
wendroid
18

