On Business Guys
rdegges.com
rdegges.com
As an engineer, it took me a long time to figure out that the same skills I apply to learning hard tech topics, could be used to learn about the business world.
The barriers I encountered (and my solutions to date) include:
- Business topics seem too boring! I think thats why I studied engineering instead. Solution: think about the money you can make by getting through them, it can genuinely make it more interesting.
- Many "business" people dont seem very smart (using my engineering metric), and so are a pain to deal with. Solution: Get over myself, stay humble. Read "People Skills".
- Many business books are so fluffy, and could be summarized in a couple dense pages. Solution: Read summaries, stick to recommended classics.
- Sometimes I was actually intimidated by important sounding business concepts I didnt understand. Solution: Talk to people, read, same as anything else.
- A lot of "business" aspects seem repetitive. Possible solution: Automate where possible (but it still seems there is tons of things that are dreary but not automatable).
- I dont know enough about business to evaluate "biz guys" skills. Solution: Talk to a lot of biz guys, get them to critique each other. Try to get beneath the bravado and big talk that often seems to be a biz guy trait. Learn more about their domain so you can see through it.
A lot of business is dealing with people. Some geeks dont really like people that much (maybe those weak people skills again!), so "biz guys" let them focus on tech. But the geeks really lose out that way.
Wish I knew all this 12 years ago.
oh please. bus dev is hard. making sales is hard. figuring out why your cool technical hack is pointless and will make no money is hard. convincing your brilliant co-founder that a simple trivial feature is going to bring a smile to your customer's face is hard. bringing different _expert_ skillsets together so they complement each other is hard.
there are bad biz guys out there just the same as there are flub coders. note: i'm not justifying the 'i need a hacker' submissions - that's probably just an indicator that you're not dealing with the top 1%
The main point I'm trying to make in the article is that "business guys", particularly the sort looking for technical co-founders, really need to teach themselves technical skills. In early stage companies (I probably should have made this more clean in my article), the business guys just aren't necessary. Any engineer can talk with his potential customers and get feedback. Any decent engineer can run A/B tests and improve their conversion rate. Any good engineer can make smart decisions based on their customer data and feedback, and become successful.
If you're a "business guy" and teach yourself technical skills, you're immediately more valuable. You can prototype basic features and get feedback. You have the technical understanding of your product to make informed customer decisions. You'll have the ability to spot problems early on, and make adjustments as needed to your product. Even if you're not necessarily a "good" programmer, you can still have much more of an impact with technical skills.