[felixchan]

Here's the problem with silicon valley:

Engineers think they rule the world. But in reality, product people rule the world.

It doesn't matter if your other "non-technical" co-founder sits on his ass all day and you work your ass off...because you have to understand that one angle of perception--one simple spark of an idea--can create just as much value as your sweat work.

"Point of View is worth 80 IQ points"

When you wrote "Your are easily replaceable"...you are 100% wrong.

YOU are easily replaceable. You're just the coder who builds the thing. Once MVP is launched and the company raises funding, you could easily be replaced because I guarantee you there are thousands of engineers just as good as you.

The product guy, on the other hand, is the DNA of the company. He forms the vision, culture, management. You can't replace that.

[bradleyland]

> YOU are easily replaceable. You're just the coder who builds the thing. Once MVP is launched and the company raises funding, you could easily be replaced because I guarantee you there are thousands of engineers just as good as you.

If your "coders" are replaceable cogs, I dispute that your product is worth a shit. A lot of what defines a "good" developer is their ability to grok a business idea and bring meaningful contribution to the product as it is developed. With every keystroke, a developer has the option to make the product better or worse.

> The product guy, on the other hand, is the DNA of the company. He forms the vision, culture, management. You can't replace that.

You're right. Good product guys have a vision of the product that steers the ship. You can't build a great product on iteration alone. You need an overall vision. This, however, does not automatically make every other person in the organization meaningless drones.

The best products result when the visionary understands how to communicate their ideas to the development team, who internalizes these ideas and uses them to guide their efforts at every moment. The happiest moments in my day (as a product guy) come when a developer pushes a commit/feature that fits exactly with my vision, but isn't an explicit result of some directive I gave. These super-developers can infer good ideas from my product direction.

I imagine that in your view, developers are just there to do your bidding, but this marginalizes the developer, forcing them to perform the equivalent of ditch digging. Programming isn't easy. Those that can do it are generally smart people. Do you think the best developers want to work for someone who wishes to marginalize them in this way?

Because I share my vision with developers and empower them to guide the product, I cannot simply discard them. They need me, I need them, and the product is better as a result.

EDIT: This struck close enough to home I decided to blog about it http://www.bradlanders.com/2012/05/10/the-product-guys-shame...

[bsaunder]

Here's the problem with your comment:

It's not one sided. As you point out, "Point of View is worth 80IQ points". The more productive point of view is external to both the product people and the engineer.

IMHO, I think it's wrong to think one guy "the product guy" (or the engineer) forms the vision, culture, management. A well run, modern start-up is an all-in collaboration with equal participation from all involved. Everyone contributes to these things in one form or another (each in their own sphere of influence).

Top down management is going the way of the dinosaur. Sure, someone has to be CEO, but I think things work best when they view their role guiding the organization and providing a productive environment for their fellow employees. The CEO should be "working" for the other employees as much as they are "working" for him/her.

If your view is "You, engineer, work for me, product guy", I can understand exactly why it may be hard for you to find a technical co-founder.

[conker]

Obvious butthurt is obvious

I bet you went to a meetup with your rackety ass idea for an instagram clone and nobody there even acknowledged you existed

Tell me if you are not easily replaceable then how come every time I ask for hackers I only get about 5 emails but if I ask for business founders or idea guys my inbox goes DDoS?

The "company DNA" is just another bullshit buzzword, as are "vision" and "culture" the fact you used this as your only point in your entire rant gives me a clear idea of what a douche you are.

And "management"? management ruined some of the best companies in America, why don't you try and defend CDOs too?

Good luck getting any hackers to join your imaginary startup.

[itsboring]

Come now, I'm sure he has an awesome idea, but we have to sign an NDA to hear it.

[paulhauggis]

"Tell me if you are not easily replaceable then how come every time I ask for hackers I only get about 5 emails but if I ask for business founders or idea guys my inbox goes DDoS?"

I don't know where you are asking for hackers, but any time I've posted an ad for developers, my inbox is filled within an hour.

"is just another bullshit buzzword, as are "vision" and "culture""

Not really. Without vision, most hackers will never make it past the initial stages of development. I'm a developer (and I run a few startups).

I can't tell you how many technical people I've tried to partner with that either: can't see my vision, get bogged down in the details (IE: only want to work on the cool things), or just don't have the follow-through (give up after X amount of months for whatever reason).

[anamax]

> The product guy, on the other hand, is the DNA of the company. He forms the vision, culture, management.

Actually, culture and management are just as likely to come from the engineering side.

As to product vision, if you really think that it's always solely from the "product guy"....

[adrianhoward]

Reality seems a bit more nuanced in my experience. Most of the time the idea person is more than just the idea person. The coder person is more than just the coder person.

For example I've seen many places where the company culture has come as much, if not more, from the technical than the idea side. I've seen investors remove the "idea guy" from a company because the organisation has has grown up around product development team - and he's become isolated from that.

Good developer folk need to understand the product vision - otherwise they can't build the product vision. Good idea folk need to understand the development side - otherwise they can't get a grip on the team dynamics as product development goes forward.

Great partnerships are well... partnerships. If either side thinks the other is a useless tool who isn't pulling their weight it's not going to go well :-)

[raverbashing]

This is very true

This is what people calling Instagram a $1B Django App don't get (and of course, it's Django + IOS)

If you add nothing but technical skills, your pink slip is a matter of time. Unless of course, your technical skills are really up there (like: scalability, cryptography, special algorithms, etc)

[JoeAltmaier]

Yeah, everybody in the chain thinks they are the critical link.

The difference is, without a product the investors don't come easy. A hacker can make something, get it in front of users, maybe even get a sale all by themselves. So they have a natural inclination to see the other half as 'hire some marketing once I have something to show'.

[conker]

Enlighten me, what's the product investors want?

Is it your boring as hell slide deck?

That overly optimistic spreadsheet?

That oh-so-inspiring blog post about stuff not related to the product itself?

Or maybe is the app the technical founder made?

[JoeAltmaier]

Its a product with customers and traction.

Investors? If that's your goal, I guess you have to buy into the whole slap-happy salesguy smilefest. Tell that to Mr. Persson (minecraft).

Sure one example doesn't prove a point. I refer instead to the ideal web product that goes viral. It's self-funding and low-maintenance, and the topic of lots of discussion on this site. And it doesn't necessarily need any marketing staff. Sure SEO etc are often done by Marketing, but consider the more statistics-driven and testing-centered, the easier it is for an Engineer to grok the task.

[georgespencer]

Investors want a return on their fucking investment. That isn't just an app built by an asshole engineer who lives in a myopic world. It isn't just a spreadsheet showing projections for growth and a strategy behind it.

Investors want a return on their fucking investment. To get that you need all the parts of your startup working together, and nobody wanking on about being valuable and stupidly and pointlessly generalising the work of others.

Well done on listing a bunch of straw men.

Is it your patchy account session controller?

Is it your user View which specifies Arial before Helvetica in the stylesheet?

etc etc etc.

[tdr]

Both points-of-view are a little one-sided (although martin explains why), but yours is too aggressive.

Vision and execution together give the value, not one or the other. That's why YCombinator and PG focus so much on the team: you need complementary skills.

While I can't fully agree to "ideas worth nothing, execution is 100%", the fact is people come up with your idea independently. The value of it will be show by the ones who execute it.

This "you are easily replaceable" thinking is probably the worst way to think of getting into a startup or any kind of business partnership.

To not make this any longer: startups are like a marriage. Is your wife (/husband) easily replaceable?

[lucian1900]

Wiser people explained why execution beats ideas, and ideas are almost worthless.

[raverbashing]

Correct

But several execution details come from the idea guy

Technical people can, of course, come up with execution details (this is not use RoR instead of node.js kind of details)

It's one thing to have an "idea" like "Sell cat food on the internet". That's a dime a dozen

The real idea that investors are looking for is all the nitty-gritty details on how selling cat food on the internet can be a good idea (is it customer acquisition? sales structure? pricing?)

[msabalau]

Oh, come on. I'm a "product person". Fundamentally we explain the customer to the company, explain the company to the customers, and obsess over the business model. Fun, interesting challenges, sure.

But the team is the DNA, vision, and culture. And any leader, regardless of background, can guide the team to aim even higher.

[anamax]

> The product guy, on the other hand, is the DNA of the company. He forms the vision, culture, management. You can't replace that.

As I pointed out, the "product guy" doesn't necessarily form the culture or management. And, he isn't the sole source of the initial product vision.

However, the core of the argument is "YOU are easily replaceable. You're just the coder who builds the thing. Once MVP is launched and the company raises funding, you could easily be replaced because I guarantee you there are thousands of engineers just as good as you."

The same can be said of the "product guy". Yes, folks bought into the MVP, but that doesn't imply that the "product guy" is the only person who can do the follow-ons.

[kls]

History is full of hackers that built a product and changed the world. It is less full of business people who taught themselves to hack and changed the world.

[rythie]

I'd argue that in the short term, everyone is replaceable when the company is profitable. Most companies that are bought have their founders leave even if the product keeps going.

Though of course in the long term without the innovators the company loses relevance (Flickr, Delicious, MySpace etc.).