

Ask HN: Should a hacker who wants to startup get some business role experience? - plaban123

I wish to startup in near future and I am good with web app development and  was wondering if some business skill experience is required.
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xwowsersx
Well, as with everything, it really depends. But if you're going to do be
launching a business by yourself, then hell yeah some business skills are
going to be necessary. It is rarely the case that simply hacking together some
web product will turn into a profitable business. In fact, if you take a look
at a lot of the successes out there, I bet you'll find that the successful
marketing and growth strategies were every bit as important as the actual
offering, if not more.

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gembird
you should read: Micro ISV From Vision to Reality, Erick Sink on the Business
of Software,

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man_bear_pig
1) It is really hard to be a sole startup founder. I would advise against
being a sole founder. 100% of 0 = 0. startups have binary outcomes (most of
the times).

2) A product really doesn't mean anything unless it's a 1 in a million
amazing. Marketing and growth strategies as xwowsersx pointed out is extremely
important (you will not succeed without great strategy) and I would imagine if
you are a sole technical guy, you don't have time to think about coming up
with marketing strategies because you'll be busy developing.

3) You have to realize people are smart and people have domain expertise in
their respective fields. I'm a business guy. I'm pretty sure that I can pretty
much take any hacker and come up with case study after case study of various
marketing, managing, growth, hedging strategies that's worked/didn't work.
That would save you hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars in opportunity
cost. But that's my expertise. That's what I'm supposed to be good at. And
even though in 12 months, I could probably learn coding, I would be at best
middle 50 percentile (probably not even there). So instead of doing that, I
would easily give up a huge chunk of equity to bring in someone who is an
expert in coding and managing development. That's because all I care about is
winning and maximizing my chances to ensure a successful outcome. And along
the way, I'd learn various part of tech end and vice versa.

4) Some would argue that business skill is easy to acquire. I would highly
doubt that. Unless you are an exceptional outlier, you can't be good at
everything and you're brain isn't designed to. A backend specialist who is
amazing at UI/UX design who is creative to come up with awesome marketing
strategies and knows how to manage a team through the ups and downs? I haven't
met anyone in real life yet that can do that. I'm sure some of these tech
billionaires are, but that's why they're billionaires.

What kind of business do you want to start? I have some ideas too if you want
to trade notes / work on it together. Don't worry about getting business
experience before starting. Get a good team. Then you'll learn on the fly. And
for some businesses, you may be able to start without a business guy. For
most, you'll need one whether to create the deck, go raise funding, sell
customers, execute strategy, get PR, schmooze for connections, etc etc. I can
help out on the business end. Btw. ideas mean nothing. Execution is
everything. And marketing/sales execution is a lot harder than novice
entrepreneurs want to admit.

