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Want to look at a few high profile examples?
* Chris Dixon: needs no intro, coded many lines of code at and before hunch.
* Conway: a salesman in the past, you take this one (although he's seen more startups than you've written LOC)
* Hoffman: has written many LOC
* Thiel: yup
* Andreessen: I've seen it first-hand
* Bezos: yup
* Sacca: business guy, no LOC
* Paul Graham: you're using his LOC to drive traffic to your site
The list goes on. Fact is there are angel investors and VCs that have not written software, but since when does that truly actually matter when they're giving you advice on how to run a business, namely finding out what people want and give it to them? Your comment in this very thread about banning speakers who use office for their slides (who cares?) tells me of your naivety, but here's a final tip: be formulaic all you want, but talk about things you know for a fact.
[1] https://twitter.com/jasonadriaan/status/72972319080976384
The guy is a genius. He has a way to put complex thoughts into understandable words.
Regarding investors: I think you're describing a quality issue, rather than a subject matter problem. Many investors used to be entrepreneurs (mine were) and were massively successful. Starting entrepreneurs can learn a ton from these guys and they are pure gold every step of the way.
Then you get angel investors who got rich through some other means. e.g. through inheritance or stock options in a company they had nothing to do with starting or running. These are often to be avoided for two reasons. 1. They want to be the CEO they never were - in your company. 2. They have no experience or knowledge about creating and building a business beyond what they read online.
What makes it worse is that they and the entrepreneurs they invest in see their wealth as qualifying them to advise or participate in the business. Avoid these guys as speakers at events and as investors.
There is a third class that I've neglected to mention. Super-angels or experienced VC's can also be very helpful through their extensive dealings with other companies they've invested in, often in your space. Super-angels who are former entrepreneurs are the absolute best early stage investors.
ps: Greetings from a fellow South African. [based in the US]
Thanks for the insight, yeah I agree totally. I'm sure there are a number of VC's/Angels worth listening to but the vast majority of them don't know what they're talking about imho.
If you mean in the South African context, then you are probably right. Has South Africa produced any notable software startup successes? Vinny Lingam got some press for that Yola/Synthesite app, but that's it (Shuttleworth doesn't fit in this category since he made money by selling his CA).
It's one of the concerns I have with Google Umbono as well - how well can the angels recognise potential for success if they haven't had any themselves?
I see a lot of cargo-cultism, but something is missing.
Wait, how do you know which angel investors are involved? On their website, they wrote "We will not be publicizing the names and details of our Angel investors without their express permission. A typical Angel with Umbono will be a tech savvy entrepreneur with an established track record in the industry."
As an organizer who just put my first event (indieconf) on last year, and am planning my second iteration, honest feedback is golden. I had a few people who shot from the hip (thanks!), and I'm doing what I can to address those points this time around, but they were mostly minor points. I'm left thinking either no one really cared all that much, or it really was so amazing there's nothing to improve on - I don't think either extreme is true though.
I learned I did something poorly, and am trying to rectify it - getting feedback about particular sessions. Almost all the comment cards given out after the sessions were good or great - a few neutral - but less than a handful that were bad reviews. I initially thought "wow, we did awesome". I then realized people who'd left a session because it wasn't meeting their needs were not filling out the cards in the first place(!). Any ideas about how to collect that sort of feedback, short of specifically asking people to come find me or leave a note at the front desk about egregiously bad experiences? I've noticed people tend to bottle things up at an event, then blog about things later when there's absolutely no chance of fixing anything.
They should be at marketing conferences and business conferences.
An engaging speaker will expand your understanding - bringing elements of their expertise to you in a way which you can leverage it yourself. An engaging speaker is one that takes you outside your comfort zone, but at the same time gives you some practical encouragement or advice that you can take away and use yourself.
Of course getting the 30 minute "you must be on facebook and twitter" speech is pretty dull to people already on those platforms. But understanding the concepts behind why, and when, one media works over another, or how to use those media to reach your core market can be enormously interesting, and rewarding. Or it can be deadly dull. It all depends on the speaker.
Investors are another enormous source of information, but it takes more than just fluff to make a great presentation. It's the speakers ability to reach you, and keep you interested, which separate great from average speakers.
By contrast I've been to tech events where the speaker was clearly a tech-head, and shouldn't be allowed near a stage under any circumstances.
Presenting is a skill, which can be developed and improved. Don't knock the material, knock the presenter. Better yet, start presenting yourself to improve the standard accepted.
(funny story: I was in Australia at an event and there was some dude from India doing a pitch on out-sourcing. The mic was having trouble, and his accent was hard to understand at times. I was at the back, and next to me a true blue Aussie was doing his emails. When he finished that, about 30 minutes into the presentation, he looks up, and in his normal (very loud) speaking voice asks "what the is this guy talking about?". )
Your little anecdote added neither substance or context, rather than presenting a very thinly coated attempt at making fun of a guy with a different accent. Atleast that's what it felt like, reading it. So do explain why it was the presenter's fault that the "true blue Aussie" typing up his long email did not feel he should follow the presentation?
Not everyone can be a Guy Kawasaki. But over time, people can aspire to be like him, and they can do that by having the balls to stand up and speak to a crowd every chance they get. Sometimes you miss, but eventually you will figure out what works with a crowd.
So next time, skip the thinly veiled attempts at xenophobia and lay out a compelling argument instead.
My apologies for any offense caused.
I recently attended a conference that billed itself as being focused on "entrepreneurship and innovation." One of the speakers was Aneesh Chopra, the "CTO of the United States" and the other was a representative of the inappropriately titled "Startup America Partnership." We were also treated to twenty minute stump by a Ben Nelson, the Senator that pissed off the entire state of Nebraska when he extorted pounds of pork in exchange for his vote on Obamacare.
None of the speakers did more than illustrate that the bureaucracy they represented was/is antithetical to entrepreneurship and innovation, and I've never seen the energy get sucked out of a room full of energetic people more quickly.
That said, VC speakers, especially on panels, seem to devolve into a discussion of the VC industry. Whether it's "frothy", deal term trends, etc, etc. The stuff that is relatively easy to look up but doesn't have a whole ton of bearing on a real business. ("Real" in the sense that you'd do it anyway regardless of how/when/if funding happens.)
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2571874
Always pleasantly surprised that although HN lives in the internet, it is not of the internet.
3) Speakers who say 'uhmm' before and after each sentence.
4) Speakers who read bullets from powerpoint slides.
He's accomplished far more than perhaps anyone on HN. Like it or not, he started and nurtured all this (Free Software/OSS).
But serious: I hate it when they use party (subwoofer and all) speakers for speech. Every plosive will shake the room. It's very annoying and tiring to listen to.