

CEOs Are From Mars, CTOs Are From Venus: Bridging The Startup Communication Gap - iknowl
http://www.fastcompany.com/1829472/ceos-are-from-mars-ctos-are-from-venus-bridging-the-startup-communication-gap

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zmitri
Pretty good article. I'm a technical founder who is working with a "not-so-
technical but getting more and more comfortable" founder and I've found a
couple things to be useful:

0 - Speak in dead simple terms at first. Once they understand what you're
talking about, feel free to get more detailed. This is key when you're
pitching your product to other companies too!

1 - White board everything. Drawing diagrams and visualizing flow makes things
much easier for me to explain to him, and for him to understand. When he comes
up with an idea, and I break it out step by step it definitely makes him
appreciate what's going on. We just released an api
<https://github.com/goodkarma/gk-api> and because I had drawn out all the
steps, he already understood the whole process and was able to pitch the
technical details to developers the day I finished. I thought that was very
impressive.

2 - Explain the different components of the system to them. Not too in depth,
but talk about how web proxies work, the underlying web app, the notion of
templating engines, the code structure and organization, queues and workers,
apis you use, and cron processes. They don't need to see all the
implementation but it gives them a huge appreciation for the complexity of the
underlying system and when they come to you with ideas, they will have some
sense of how it can be accomplished. They may be off at first but they get
much better when you provide them with what they need.

3 - When you run into a problem, accomplish something interesting, or do
something that you believed to be outside of your core competencies, let them
know, and explain what you did. Even if it's something simple, they will
generally appreciate it.

4 - Don't get wrapped up or annoyed with them getting too far ahead of
themselves. A lot of the time you will be working on solving a current
problem, and they will be thinking of other things to do in the future (Not
that you aren't doing that too). Either hear them out, or ask them to table it
until you finish what you're doing. For me it's not ideal if they do it in the
middle of a super productive hacking session, so I often have to tell him,
"not now, this needs to get done first".

5 - When you aren't in hacking mode you should hang out and talk. Little
bursts of banter often turn into disruptive ideas. The number of cool tweaks
and iterations that have come out of seemingly random conversations is
surprising.

6 - Bond over things that aren't directly related to your company. Right now,
our thing is "Drake and/or Lil' Wayne lyrics" because they are about hustling
all the time.

Communication.

~~~
iknowl
Interesting, I completely agree with your views. I believe your way of
handling should be followed by every CTO.

~~~
zmitri
I think it depends on the team dynamic. If he were technical it would likely
be different. Don't think there's a "list of things to do" but communication,
mutual respect, and being absolutely driven animals does help.

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Ixiaus
Good article, terrible title - I instantly said to myself, "WTF? Is this an
article about the 'masculine' CEO and the spineless techie? Fuck that." but I
read it anyway because I didn't want to be "that guy".

~~~
Symbol
I agree that the title evokes a weird battle-of-the-sexes vibe. I also found
the content to be pretty good. From personal experience, I can't stress enough
that CEOs, self-professed "business guys/gals", need some grounding in
technology if you are doing a tech startup. It seems so obvious, and yet I'm
sure everyone has a story about the guy who said "we'll get to market 3x
faster because we can build it on rails"

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j_baker
I like this article. It strikes a great balance between "just make it work"
and "new stuff for me to play with!". Plus, it encourages CTOs to stand up to
CEOs, something I wish more of them did.

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prplhaz4
The relationship this article describes is not limited to the startup world -
it is quite prevalent in big tech as well. The key to unlocking the dynamic is
communication - a piece that a lot of techies think they do well, but don't.
One of the biggest hurdles I've encountered is explaining to a business
customer what the impact of something is in their terms - it's not shitty
code, it's an approach that will prevent us from scaling in the future.

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ktizo
Am in my third week of trying to organise one day of sober work with the
person who is supposed to be a co-founder of a business I am trying to get
started.

The problem I seem to have with trying to do technical businesses with non-
technical people is trying to get them to do any work at all unless there is a
bar involved.

~~~
iknowl
Well, if a non-technical co-founder is adding value to the business it's worth
it. Every business either technical or non-technical requires certain non-
technical founders who can thrive sales and manage business aspects.

Each founder should divide work and focus on their own part in the business.

