[nikcub]

A sweeping generalization of business and product people. I'll offer a counter example.

This story starts over a decade ago. There was a high level executive at a large enterprise software firm. The guy was one of the best enterprise sales people in North America and highly valued by the organization. In reading about the trend of software moving online he realized that the industry he was in, selling large scale enterprise solutions to Fortune 500 companies, was eventually going to be replaced by software delivered online.

He attempted to get his organization to shift into investing in online web services, but they saw it as a threat to their traditional business model. He quit work and then went to find technical people who could implement the visitation. He ended up recruiting a group of 8-10 developers, all sold on the vision. He wrote up a quick vision for the company and raised a few million dollars on the back of it.

He leased out cheap and nasty office space down in the suburbs outside of San Jose. He spent two weeks writing a software specification for a new enterprise product that would be entirely web based. The spec was a couple of dozen pages long. He also wrote a marketing brief on how the product would be sold. He handed the spec over to the developers and then went on vacation in Hawaii for a few months while they built the initial version of the product.

A few months later and with a first version he went out to the media and announced 'the end of software' and introduced a new web services model for the enterprise: salesforce.com. Over 10 years later and the company has a $20 billion market cap, defined an entirely new industry and threatened the business of his old employer (Oracle) to the extend that they setup a clone competitor.

If the original developers who joined Marc Benioff had read this blog post, they would have questioned 'his contribution', especially the part where he took off on holiday. Product and business people are entirely undervalued. Benioff could have found the eight developers he required from any thousands of other developers to implement what he had in mind, but there was only one person who had the vision, perseverance and balls to do what he did.

[jonnathanson]

This is well said (and, perhaps, a similar story could be told about Steve Jobs). But I think there's at least one point in the article that holds true: it's very tough to evaluate the credibility of a "business" co-founder until he's achieved success. A developer's talent can be measured and normalized; a business person -- before he becomes successful -- is a much riskier and more unknowable commodity.

One way to look at things is to say that great businesspeople are undervalued. Another viewpoint is that the valuation of businesspeople carries with it a much higher risk multiplier. Or that the valuation has far fewer knowable variables.

The article makes a variety of very unfair, broad, and naive generalizations about the role of a great business, marketing, or product person. It seems to conflate all business people into one bucket -- lumping the fly-by-night hucksters and phonies in with the true visionaries. And its point about how a business founder is 'only as good as his contact list' is a bit ridiculous. But unfortunately, that contact list is often the business person's best calling card. It's one of very few, knowable variables that he brings to the table. (A track record on paper is great, but can be unreliable, because anyone can spin a resume. Conversely, a list of impressive people who can vouch for someone, or even go to bat for him, is much more actionable).

[bad_user]

      and, perhaps, a similar story could be
      told about Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs started as an engineer and had Wozniak as his best friend.

And if you think you can find a Steve Wozniak that can design a usable computer from a minimal number of chips, with a design that's extensible, with colored graphics, that can also write the software for it and that you can convince to quit his job for you ... good luck with that ;)

[dkrich]

What difference does it make? Jobs didn't make his name as an engineer. Technology of any kind is a means to an end. Knowing how to code a site is very much like knowing how to lay brick. It's a specialized skill to complete a certain task. In 20 years all of these "hackers" who are supposedly so valuable while the worthless business guys try to waste their time will be using completely different products in completely different contexts. Just because web app development is hot right now does not mean knowing how to code will make you rich. You still have to know what to build and how to create something that people want to buy. The tools are merely a cheap means of building a scalable distribution system.

The reason I bring this up is that I am often reminded of the 96 WWDC where Jobs is lambasted by somebody for getting rid of their precious Java development tool of the day. At the time it was a horrible decision. Now the tools they were clinging to would be considered obsolete and horrendous by any measure. It is important to keep perspective no matter what you are working on. At the core it is always about your product.

This coming from a person with two degrees in Computer Science and many years of software development experience.

[kamaal]

Let us put it this way. Knowing how to execute and executing should make you rich.

No matter what that is. Selling is also execution, Raising money is also execution and Coding is also execution.

But the word 'Business person' generally invokes the image of a middle level manager in a corporate whose only expertise seems to forwarding emails, filling up online forms and politics.

That is why most hackers think a 'Business person' is useless. While the fact is everybody has a role to play.

[bad_user]

     At the core it is always about your product

I never disagreed on this point. Ideas are important too, but ideas only act as a multiplicator of value, so good execution by itself doesn't provide enough value and ideas without execution are meaningless.

     What difference does it make? Jobs didn't
     make his name as an engineer

That's not what matters here, and yes it makes a difference.

To be able to come up with ideas, to be able to have a vision, to be able to have taste, to be able to drive a product, you do have to have an educated mind in that domain, you do need to know what is possible, you do need to be able to do the job yourself if you need to, even if you're not that good as an engineer.

How can you come up with ideas otherwise? And the proof is simple really. Every great idea that revolutionized our world, from electricity, to personal computers, to the Internet, to search engines, to the smartphone you're carrying, everything has come from minds of individuals that know their basics.

Ideas and vision don't come out of thin air. It is often said that a university's purpose shouldn't be to prepare you for real life jobs, but rather to expand your horizons on what's possible and I believe so too.

This is why I consider people with MBAs, but with no technical education, to be basically worthless in startups (and I'm not talking about degrees here, self-taught is good enough). So you have an idea, great for you, however you have to prove that either you know what you're talking about, or have a proven track record of successful implementations of your ideas that worked. This attitude is just meritocracy in action.

Also, I see a lot of resentment here, with people getting offended by this attitude of programmers towards business-types. But we aren't the ones that started it, it was the business types that wanted to turn us into stupid and replaceable assembly lines. Ask the developers in the games industry how they get treated. Well you get what you sow.

[dkrich]

> To be able to come up with ideas, to be able to have a vision, to be able to have taste, to be able to drive a product, you do have to have an educated mind in that domain, you do need to know what is possible, you do need to be able to do the job yourself if you need to, even if you're not that good as an engineer.

This is just very, very wrong. All things being equal I would certainly bet on the person with some domain experience in engineering if engineering is a major component of the product. But I would much rather partner with somebody who can go out and make sales, define products, and hustle than somebody who knows how to code. Knowing how to code is a blip in time. It is not something that is necessary to build a successful business. Getting paying customers is and always will be. You can sit behind a computer screen drinking Mountain Dew all day and build the greatest software product in the world. Nobody will care if you don't know how to establish sales. Skilled coders are valuable for creating code, and that shouldn't be dismissed- it's a valuable skill. It's just a fairly common skill. That is, if you have the money you can always find a skilled coder. It is MUCH harder to find a person who can recognize customer needs, get a product created, and get sales, and sales are the lifeblood of a business. We've all seen the "idea" guys who say "wouldn't it be cool if you had a site that did blah blah blah?" Could you build that? Of course those guys are worthless. I'm talking about the guys (or gals) who have that idea and go out and actually get the product built and sold. Those are the rare people you want to partner with.

> Also, I see a lot of resentment here, with people getting offended by this attitude of programmers towards business-types. But we aren't the ones that started it, it was the business types that wanted to turn us into stupid and replaceable assembly lines. Ask the developers in the games industry how they get treated. Well you get what you sow.

I actually see the reverse. I think a lot of programmers don't want to admit that people without any coding experience can create valuable software products just by assembling the right team but GASP not actually doing the coding themselves. Again, this is coming from a programmer.

[CoffeeDregs]

    >it's very tough to evaluate the credibility of 
    >a "business" co-founder until he's achieved success.

That's not at all true. It may be very tough for a technical person to evaluate a "business" co-founder, but it isn't any tougher than the reverse. I have both an MSEE and an MBA and I have both business and technical roles as a co-founder of a mid-sized, venture-funded firm, so I consider myself a decent judge of this. Whether business or technology, smart folks stand out like blinking red lights because they exhibit a sharp enthusiasm for their domain, have the ability to quickly get to the core issues and see possibility and solutions where others see or search-for complexity.

    > Another viewpoint is that the valuation of 
    >businesspeople carries with it a much higher risk multiplier.

Then you've never worked with a mediocre tech team. The amount of damage that a not-good tech person can do can be remarkable. In particular, the damage is often invisible and can persist for years. A small sloppy commit at the start of a project can produce a bull-whip-effect 2 years later... "Business" people can do this, too, but it's been my experience that the damage they do is more quickly identified and contained. Anything a business person is doing that is large-ish will have lots of eyes on it and anything small is usually pretty minor to the business.

[jonnathanson]

"Then you've never worked with a mediocre tech team. The amount of damage that a not-good tech person can do can be remarkable."

This is a fair point, but it's orthogonal to mine. When I spoke about the "risk multiplier," I was speaking about the risk of unknown/unknowable information. To use the MBA parlance, businesspeople are experience goods moreso than technical people are. My thesis is that you can ferret out a bad technical person more quickly and more easily than you can ferret out a bullshit businessperson -- thus making businesspeople, as a set, more risky because you often have to "buy before you try."

There's no question that a bad technical worker can deal as much damage as a bad business person. But that wasn't my point.

Now, perhaps you also take issue with my thesis itself: that businesspeople are tougher to evaluate up front than technical people are. In my experience, this is often the case. If your experience tells you otherwise, so be it. I would consider this a fundamental difference of opinions, probably based on different experiences.

[CoffeeDregs]

    > businesspeople are experience goods

Ask a businesspeople or two whether they think a techpeople is an experience good. I'll bet you $10 they do.

Also, "experience good" seems a particularly confusing analogy here since it would seem to support my point as well as yours (me: business 'people'; you: business 'person').

    > My thesis is that you can ferret out a bad technical person more 
    > quickly and more easily than you can ferret out a 
    > bullshit businessperson

And this is where I disagree. Once you've experienced enough of tech or business folks, it's not too difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff in either. To be perfectly honest, I haven't seen a bullshit business person in quite a while. I think this is mostly because it's easy to see them and ignore them.

OTOH, I have seen plenty of bullshit technical people who've snowed the business people in their companies (I can think of one client who's been through 3 in 9 months).

    > I would consider this a fundamental difference of opinions

That's a bummer. Seems like we each had valid points and had an interesting discussion afoot.

    > probably based on different experiences

Agreed. My experience says that "we" and "they" have similar concerns and each would benefit from understanding the other's perspectives and experiences.

[wtvanhest]

The information asymmetry exits with "hackers" as well. It is why VCs like to see them as cofounders. If you simply pay a hacker they can write spaghetti code with random security problems and have no ability to finish.

The risk is technical.

Hackers are not valuable as cofounders for any other reason. It just so happens that that reason is really, really important.

[carguy1983]

> great businesspeople are undervalued

Nitpick: by definition, great businesspeople have lots of money (value).

You should say that business people with an unknown track record are possibly undervalued.

Which is really not saying anything at all, other than it's hard to tell the future.

[jonnathanson]

Actually, my point was more about businesspeople in general vis-a-vis the startup scene. Technical people may indeed undervalue the importance of business people (and, in many cases, vice versa).

The nitpick offers an interesting perspective, and it's well received, but I think it's orthogonal to my point.

In general, I think there's a common misunderstanding between these two camps, especially w/r/t their intersection in the software industry. Just as it's not fair for a businessperson to assume that all technical co-founders are interchangeable ("He's just a skill set"), it's not fair for technical co-founders to assume all business co-founders are worthless ("He's just a rolodex").

[tomkarlo]

Net worth is one way, but not the only way, to evaluate the quality of a "businessperson" any more than "patents" are the only way to assess technical contributors. (And I note that the concept of a "business person" is about as generalized as the concept of an "engineer" -- it's the kind of grouping that's so broad as to be useless.)

There are lots of good "business people" who have spent much of their careers as employees rather than owners. They did their job, they got paid, but even if they were stellar, they probably weren't paid an order of magnitude more than their peers. (As there are many fantastic engineers without patents and/or high profile products.) This may be why they're trying to do a startup rather than switch to a new job.

Try working a few times for some not-so-great business people and you'll learn that the good ones are often undervalued.

[ilamont]

It should be noted that Marc Benioff was once a developer himself (adventure games for the Atari 800, see http://thesocialcustomer.com/blakelandau/30345/behind-cloud-... ). This would have given him additional credibility with some of the developers he recruited.

[lifeisstillgood]

From that story he sounds the total opposite of the OP's complaints.

The pitch would have been, Hi I am a successful Sales exec with millions of dollars of yearly sales under my belt, I've hired 6 guys and am looking for a 7th to develop this new software I have an idea for, I have got x million in VC already and by the way once you are settled and running through the VC cash, I'm going to Cancun to recharge my batteries before coming back and selling the heck out of what you guys build.

Hell, I would be very happy to get on the ground floor of that one.

[wildmXranat]

Indeed. OP's comment confirms that author's suspicions are valid. Mind you, if the projects don't align with what he wants to work on, that's still a concern, but at least there's runway to make it happen.

[dabent]

This is just another case of investing in people, just like YC, or any startup investor does.

"The guy was one of the best enterprise sales people in North America and highly valued by the organization."

I get your point and Benioff was not the ordinary "business" person. If someone with that level of success wanted to talk with me about their project, actually had some kind of written plan for it (even just a dozen pages) and could actually rent out space on top of that, they'd at least get me interested.

I think most developers end being approached by a mid-level manager (often freshly laid off) who has an idea outside of their area of expertise, not so much as one page for a spec, no money and only has unwritten promises of equity for pay. I know I've been approached by a few over the last decade. If I bet on them, I'd have to try and understand what they want built, build it on my own time and hope that they honor their promises of pay in the future. Maybe there have been successes in that case, but it seems like such a long shot, especially when almost anything else offers a better reward-to-risk ratio, that it's never worth pursuing.

I think that the repeated offers that developers often get from non-technical founders start to sound like the offers writers get to develop a novel based on an idea non-writer has. Very often, the developer has more than enough drive and imagination to develop their own idea, just an an author can develop stories on their own.

[skilesare]

The thing that is different here is that 'he raised a couple million dollars.' If you show up at my door with cash in the bank then you get my ear. This article is talking about the guy that shows up with just a plan and no cash.

[Alex3917]

"If you show up at my door with cash in the bank then you get my ear. This article is talking about the guy that shows up with just a plan and no cash."

Most VCs think the same thing. Realize though that this indicates a lack of skill on your part, not a lack of skill on the side of the founder.

[nanijoe]

The key phrase here is "one of the best enterprise sales people in North America"...In addition, he understood the software enough to write the specs, AND raised money. Does not sound at all like the so-called business/ideas people in the original post.

[joshAg]

If he managed to come up with a multi-page business plan, get enough money to recruit 8-10 developers, get a couple million dollars in funding, come up with an actual spec himself, trust the team he assembled to write produce an mvp with almost no oversight on his part in 6 months, and have enough personal money to go vacation in a popular tourist destination for months, then I don't think he fits into the "doesn't know IT stuff" category, the "easily replaceable" category, or the "no track-record of success" category.

[lrobb]

This is gold.

I've experienced the "irreplaceable" business person as well, though not on that scale. I was at a startup where a guy was almost singlehandedly bringing in a few million in revenue, which was crucial to our survival.

[base698]

The post isn't under valued. Marc Benioff would have probably had Zuck's number on speed dial and been on Barack's 2nd level on LinkedIn. If you have rock star engineers that can crack out a highly technical product on short order, why not have a business guy that can get the product in front of well connected people quickly?

[gnaritas]

Your story is an exception, the OP's story is the general rule.

[carguy1983]

From the wikipedia:

Before joining Oracle, Benioff worked as an assembly language programmer at the Macintosh Division of Apple Computer, where he was inspired by the company and its co-founder, Steve Jobs.

High school entrepreneur, Apple Macintosh assembly hacker, standout Oracle executive... this guy is the real deal, the true exceptional case that you take a risk on, not the money-less 'business' (and I do put that in quotes) guy most people run across day to day.