Could it be that there are many business people, some of who have ideas but no ability to execute, some of who can execute but have no ideas, and a very few who have ideas and can execute on them?
And like wise could it be that there are many developers, some of whom have ideas but cannot build their dreams, some of whom can build but have no ideas, and a very select few that have ideas and can build them?
If these two suppositions are correct, then there are some pairings of business person and developer that can work, including a rare business person who has an idea and can execute on the idea, and who needs a developer who can build but doesn't have an idea?
Of course there's some symmetry here, there are going to be developers with ideas and who can build. They will be looking for business people who don't have an idea of their own but who can execute.
However, out of the spectrum of idea guys, one signal I look for is their desire to pursue their idea. One great way to do that -- teach themselves to code.
It doesn't mean that their ideas aren't any good. But at a glance, if someone has an idea that they believe in enough to teach themselves basic skils... well, then they become more than just an idea guy.
Someone who is unwilling to teach themselves basic programming has no business in a web startup.
When discussions about interviewing and hiring come up, I always like to remember that these things are strategies, and false negatives are simply a cost of doing business. While I'm sure we can find of some great businesspeople with good ideas who didn't teach themselves some simple programming, a strategy of only working with those who did is probably still an excellent filter that will get rid of far more false positives than trip over false engatives.
When I was in university, I was a TA/Tutor and found that even upper level CS students have trouble coding. There are many cases where the students understood the upper-level concepts behind say networking, or DFA minimization but couldn't produce simple Fizzbizz level code.
The problem wasn't apparantly with their intelligence (as they could annunciate and expand on the concepts they were taught in class), or their rationality (they made it through the Discrete Math weedout), or even their determination (they worked hours upon hours outside of class)....
So now I'm one of those who believes that sometimes no matter how hard you try, there's a switch that won't go off to make one a 'coder'.
That said, I think a business guy should at least try to learn coding if his idea demands doing a lot of it to start with.
In fact, if it turned out that someone wasn't able to code, I probably don't want them as a co-founder because I don't think they are smart/determined/focused enough to run a business.
I'll back this up with an anecdote. At a relatively small company I used to work for, the CEO was someone who used to code, some 17 years ago. However, he recently decided that he knows enough about coding to act as the lead developer for that company's flagship product. He then proceeded to drive development into the ground, arguing over the merits of using malloc instead of calloc, globals over locals, and the beauty of goto's.
He successfully runs several multi-million dollar companies, yet his smartest move was stepping back out of the development lead position, and back to that of managing the company.
Did knowing how to code get him where he is today? Ultimately, no. His business savy and contacts did that.
In an office environment, different roles are much more important.
It also means that he was able to learn to code, but not to the standard that your product required.
"Idea guy seeking developer" usually means "I think I have a get rich quick scheme."
A lot of the success is in things like marketing, good UIs, implementation, beating the competition in features, strong partnerships with other companies, creative new solutions, good policies, and lots of luck. The idea guy can't help you with any of that. The devil is in the details, not in the big idea. Most "big ideas" are plain to see, its some kind of technical or creative specialization that helps you rise past your competitors.
I've seen people claim that this will happen.
Based on what I've seen, the odds that the claim is accurate in any particular case are very low.
His big contacts file is useless because his domain is in selling real estate not selling real estate apps.
Sure, the real estate seller may not know about apps, but they do know what works and what doesn't work in the real estate market, what the potential legal issues may be, and where the pain points are. I've never worked in real estate, so I don't.
I suspect that's why so many pure-developer run startups are either things that only interest other developers (project management tools and the like) or things that "everybody" knows about, e.g. yet another Twitter client or social networking thingamajig. There's a ton of cash in vertical markets we don't touch because we don't know the right people in those industries to partner with.
The successful businesses I've worked in(startups that went on to achieve success, or already successful small to medium sized businesses) have all been in vertical markets - from forestry to tourism to retail marketing. You couldn't have built these on developer savvy alone. That may go against the HN philosophy that software developers are the be all and end all of startups, but the reality is that most successful businesses need teams of people of different backgrounds.
Some people genuinely believe in their ideas, enough to pay someone else to do it(not in equity ofcourse). And those are usually the people whose ideas work out in the end.
I got the impression that in the tech world, those who succeed were those who did learn how to realize their ideas by themselves, or at least have an idea about how to realize them.
But then, i may be biased.
Agreed. But "realize" could mean developing it themselves, or finding another way. Here i was assuming the idea guy can't code himself out of a hole, and realizes that shortcoming.
Maybe they need to be looking somewhere else?