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by mainpassathome 939 days ago
> Technical expertise is the money printer onto which all manners of value extraction anchor themselves, like barnacles.

An even easier way to look at this is in general: Business people somehow don’t understand that the value comes from the labour
1 comments
Matticus_Rex 939 days ago
The other parts of the business are labor as well. Products don't magically go to market. Business models don't magically create and evolve themselves.
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TuringNYC 938 days ago
>> The other parts of the business are labor as well. Products don't magically go to market. Business models don't magically create and evolve themselves.

You are right, but it is about which labor comes first. The first labor is taking 100% of the risk without others taking any risk. Others have all upside and no downside. They have a free-option for the upside as the technologist does all the upfront work.

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Matticus_Rex 938 days ago
The idea that everything that comes after initial unpaid technical work to get to where you can bring on investment is "all upside and no downside" is so divorced from the reality of anything I've ever seen in any company that I'm having trouble processing it.
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TuringNYC 938 days ago
It is a surprisingly common reality for numerous technologists.

That doesnt mean that there arent good situations. I would LOVE to work with business co-founders with these backgrounds

- They already have 10 customers in mind, have done mockups, have done validation with customers, and you can verifiably know that the customers are interested in the technology at a particular price point before you build

- They have a friend/colleague at a key major customer who is willing to be the first customer before the technology is even built, and this can be verified

- They can bring in purchase orders before the technology is built out

- They can bring in conditional purchase orders contingent on some technical milestone

- They can bring in VC to pay technical co-founder for upfront work

- They can get front-row seat with some key industry group or policy-maker with influence

- They have prior verifiable successes (e.g., Steve Jobs, Elon as extreme examples)

All the above are worth gold. What isnt worth gold is someone who wants to sit back and chill while a technologist codes away for six months.

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