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Comment by ssharp | Hacker News Reader

I think a lot of people fail to understand what an MBA is and who MBA's were in their "former" lives. I don't have any statistics in front of me, but from what I remember looking over, a higher percentage of engineers/technical degree undergrads go for MBA's compared with Business undergrads. So a lot of these "beef-headed" MBAs that people seem to LOVE to stereotype as useless on here, were probably in a position much like yours at point in their lives. I just don't understand the blatant inferiority complex that exists in the tech community with people who do productive things other than code.

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This is an excellent point. As I said in the article, I'm a business guy myself. I was in the business school of my college in fact- and the undergrad program was basically the MBA program in twice as much time. So basically, I've done all of the work, in twice the time, with none of the networking of a true MBA program. haha.

However, the point was really to bring up the fact that experts in any field are going to be useful. EP's rant was primarily that he felt that a mediocre business guy has no place amongst elite hackers in a software startup, and I would mostly agree with that. I would also say that a mediocre code monkey has no place in a startup either.

But if you can identify some true talent- regardless of their specific discipline, you could have a great addition to the team. Would anyone NOT give the next Seth Godin something to do in your startup if you had the chance?

P.s. Another crack at business schools- at least at our undergraduate program, this is also what all of the kids on sports scholarships were enrolled...

Good times.

Totally agree-- that's why I said:

"I think the wisdom here is to not throw the baby out with the bathwater-- because most biz types are useless doesn't mean they all are."

But again-- the question is... What productive stuff is there to do in the first 3-4 months of MOST web startups besides code/design/write? And if you can't build something, what are you going to do to earn your equity? If the value you add is down the road a ways, what are you risking while the builders work for free for 50-60 hours a week for no pay?

I don't know because every business is different. I'm sure if you're programming all day long you don't want to deal with lawyers, investors, vendors, etc as well. Also, you likely CAN'T deal with them as effectively as someone who might have experience in doing so and WANTS to do so.

Besides that, you don't need to be a programmer to help flesh out a design. You don't need to be a hacker to help grow, shape or evolve an idea. With an end-product in site, there is plenty of work to be done away from TextMate or BBEdit!

IMO, if you are talking with lawyers, investors or vendors for any significant period of time during the first 3 months of a startup, you're doing something very wrong. Though, as you say-- all businesses are different.

I do agree that design is important (I'm a designer myself-- tho if I couldn't code a bit, too, I wouldn't have enough work to do).

Just a little nitpicking, but I'd say one of the top problems facing startups is letting the "super l33t hackers" do the design portion.

Very few start ups bring any significant skill to that end and have atrocious workflows/UIs. You can have the most elegant code in the world that can scale magically to no end but turn off everyone who looks at it.

And that's ignoring the bigger picture - there's a large difference between what one amazing coder thinks would be awesome and what any market is actually interested in. Don't get me wrong, it's very likely the same that can happen to a business superstar too, but if nothing else it's crucial to have people from different perspectives involved in a project. You work to avoid tunnel vision that can completely lead you down the wrong path and waste those months of 50-60 hour weeks.

Also I would be willing to put forward that if you're not doing 50-60 hours worth of non-coding work for a startup, you're probably doing it wrong.

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