Hacker News Reader

Comment by zedshaw | Hacker News Reader

Take all the activities required to build some kind of software. Let's just say, a little website. And let's say you need marketing, sales, design, product management, and coding.

Now, start removing everything and see if you can still build something. Remove marketing? Yep, I can still build it. Sales? Yep. Design? Yep. Product Management? Yep.

Coding? Nope. Can't even build it if you don't have that. The other stuff is definitely important, and it definitely makes or breaks successful businesses, but none of it is essential. Coding is a hard requirement when you want to make software, and if you don't have it, or understand it, then all the other stuff is kind of pointless.

The stupid thing is it's not that hard to learn the basics. It just seems "idea guys" want to be lazy and not learn the essential element of the business they want to enter.

View on HN

Its also a form of laziness when someone (whether a coder or non-coder) presupposes that some original software is the essential element of their business idea. Barry Silbert had that realization in founding SecondMarket (its in a talk of his on youtube). He was wasting a lot of time trying to get others to build him some extravagant website when somebody told him to just forget about the website, open up a spreadsheet and start making phone calls. So that's what he did and SecondMarket was born.

Its probably similar to the way businesses sometimes expect new software to be a magic bullet that will fix broken business practices.

Well that brings up the flip side of the situation. Out of the types of roles you need to run a software business, what ones can you outsource? I can outsource my initial design to a site like themeforest, accounting to an accountant, marketing to a marketing company, sales can be outsourced to a form on the site, and the coding can definitely be outsourced.

I've found the only thing that's very hard to outsource is product management because you lose control over the product. Sales might be a close second if your product needs direct sales, but then I'd ask why you need software in the first place?

But, think about it. MBAs spend years learning all of the other aspects of running a business. They learn the basics of marketing, sales, economics, accounting, and management because that's part of the business. Why is it then such a stretch that learning basic software skills is needed to run a software business?

Especially when it is really not that hard to learn. I teach 11 year old kids, 30 year old rock stars, and 60 year old grandparents to do it. I'm sure a smart MBA type could spend a few months learning at least that much.

So you definitely need someone with 'hustle' to go find a market, and you definitely need a coder to build the product. I'd argue that having the same person do both of these things means that there is (a) a higher probability that the solution can actually be implemented as software and (b) that the software will actually work as expected by the customers. (Zed, I suspect that the Product Management role you mentioned might encapsulate these skills.)

A business founder might know how to code but at the end of the day, he/she is less of a coder than that "technical founder". Same way that the technical coder could go out and sell product but the business founder is probably the one better able to do it. It's about respecting what each founder brings to the table and using that to move forward. If they can deliver value, there's no reason to waste any time on proving who is more important.

Not the "business" they want to enter, of course. The "business" involves plenty of other elements. Yes, the craft, the art, the essence--that can't live without the code.

But don't call it a business unless you figure out how to get someone to pay.

Exactly.

Take it all away and you might have a website, but you don't have a product, and you certainly don't have a business.

P.S.

Real Seth Godin?

What? Uh no there's plenty of businesses that are just one coder. There's no software businesses that are just one marketing guy.

Only if that single coder is performing the duties that you're saying you're removing. That's the point.

And there are software businesses built with one marketing/business guy. The software development industry is very efficient. You can have an idea, get a product built and sell/license it without ever writing a line a code.

If I just plunked down ~$100K plus another ~$200K in lost salary for two years of business school, not to mention the money spent and experience gained during my undergrad and subsequent years of employment, do you think I'd stoop down to learn the job of someone who just walked in off the street? The job that requires no advanced degree and a skillset learned through informal training over the internet and some weekend workshops.

I wouldn't because it would be an inordinate waste of my time. Just like a skilled engineer would never walk over to human resources and ask the boss' girlfriend to teach them all about recruiting because after all, recruiting is a core requirement if you plan on expanding your little website business beyond just yourself. They'd simply wing it until they found someone good enough that they could afford to hire.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com