[daniel-cussen]

I know of businesses who look like they were started by businesspeople who hired hackers because the hackers were later ousted (like digg). The businessperson displaced the hacker after the fact. Can you think of any businesses were there where this clearly didn't happen? Can you think you any successful software company started by a businessperson who paid consulting fees to thoughtworks or IBM, set up a booth at a CS department to recruit techies, or paid a headhunter?

[tptacek]

Amazon.

[tptacek]

Also, Intuit.

[tptacek]

And, Wikipedia. And YouTube. Can Dick Costello code? I can't remember (he's a really nice guy, though). No? Feedburner.

[nostrademons]

Jeff Bezos was a hacker. He didn't call himself one because he also had significant business & financial skills, but he worked as a quant for D.E. Shaw. D.E. Shaw is the Google of hedge funds; anyone there is more than a match for the Ph.Ds at Google. Bezos's degree was in EECS, and his childhood projects would easily have gotten him into YCombinator.

Intuit was cofounded by Tom Proulx, who wrote the first version of Quicken himself. Scott Cook gets most of the credit because of his determination, but without either of them, the company wouldn't exist. It certainly was not an outsourced startup.

Wikipedia I'll grant you. Though the concept of wikis was invented by Ward Cunningham, who certainly was a hacker.

YouTube was started by 3 ex-PayPal employees. Steve Chen and Jawed Karim were certainly hackers, Chad Hurley was more design. They built the initial version themselves.

[tptacek]

Hurley was CEO, and received more shares than the other two founders. YouTube was founded with Hurley's money.

We can argue about the other two; I feel like I'll lose Intuit but win Amazon, but who knows. Not worth it. I think my point stands.