I personally can't fathom why someone would feel the need to start networking before a working product exists.
CEO? Why would you need a CEO when there isn't a company to run either on paper or in actuality?
CEO? Why would you need a CEO when there isn't a company to run either on paper or in actuality?
A CEO twittering all day long, hanging out / socializing / spending money at conferences and meetups is NOT going to bring ANY value to the startup at all.
You first need a product!
Once you have a product out of the door, a proven idea and a cash flow you can start worrying about filling up those hi-procrastination roles. Until then worry about finding people who can code, can design, can hack, can do anything that has a measurable outcome.
When I was 100% a geek, I would agree with you: the product (code) is everything, who cares about those other minor business annoyances?
Reality: how programmers does it take to implement a good product that people will buy? More than you can afford. How do you afford them? Raise money. Which for you may mean "pitch to dumb rich people", but that's still a CEO's job.
At any time in the project development, a good pitch to the right business partner can turn the company around and greatly improve its prospects. Yes, if you don't do any of those "CEO" things, you may still succeed because you push through an amazing product. But why take the chance? Try to do everything well, the product development, as well as the CEO/pitching part.
I think the value of the technology is.
IMO, where value exists, everything naturally follows, including people/companies that want to network with value.
I found the story to be rather depressing, yet there were a few points that were - to me anyway - glaringly obvious.
Someone focusing on suit type endeavors when that someone is an engineer/geek/hacker/techie/[insert name for us here] is irresponsible in that it amounts to a gross misallocation of resources.
In other words, any double digit IQ'er wearing a suit can network, but not everyone can design and code and troubleshoot, which is what creates value.
This is overly optimistic about the capacity of your fellow man to recognize value. Sometimes you just have to tell them what the value is, and if you don't have a network, you have no one to tell. Sounds ridiculous to nerds like you and I, I know, but if you spend a little time in the corporate world you'll begin to see how much major purchase decisions are made based on what a trusted individual recommends. A lot of times the "trusted" individual is a vendor with a vested interest in selling something. This actually works better in the long run than you might think, because most people work in the same business for many years, and if one vendor screws them (while seeming very nice), they have time to learn and change to another vendor (probably also someone they've spoken to before).
But, I do think the OP does have some prioritization issues. It always comes back to the product. If you don't have a great product, you don't have a company worth networking for.
Networking for the purpose of getting to know people can be useful, but during the early stages of a startup if you are out talking to people your goal should be to understand your target market better. Otherwise, don't worry about networking instead of coding until you need to raise money.
I completely disagree with this point...
"Someone focusing on suit type endeavors when that someone is an engineer/geek/hacker/techie/[insert name for us here] is irresponsible in that it amounts to a gross misallocation of resources."
What do you plan to do if that person doesn't exist? Wait to sell your product until you can hire one? Get another co-founder to go out and raise money? PG talks about Sam Altman pitching phone execs the early days of Loopt to great success, and his background was CS not sales.
"any double digit IQ'er wearing a suit can network, but not everyone can design and code and troubleshoot, which is what creates value."
There are two fallacies here.
First, the fallacy that everyone can network equally well. Some people are incredible at networking, they can network so well that they are a valuable asset to a company for that reason alone. (See Keith Ferazzi) Everyone can "network" but only certain people can make their network pay very well.
Second, that only coding creates value. A great product still doesn't sell itself. What do you think Apple would be without brilliant marketing? You can have the best product in the world technically, but in terms of market value you have nothing if its not sold.
Of note is that while pitching execs in the early days he was also doing at least 2x the development work of anyone else. He didn't stop coding until long after we had a fully functional demo application that was good enough to raise our series A.
I am sure that some are better than others at networking, my point was (minus my admittedly harsh figurative description) that high intelligence and knowledge are best applied to something that mandates intelligence, as opposed to something that does not mandate a high level of intelligence and knowledge. Those kinds of activities (networking, sales, marketing) do not mandate exceptional intelligence, from what I have seen those mostly require innate skill and experience. Many people can network, sell, and market. Not many can code.
Now, I mentioned more than coding when I referred to what I believe creates value, however I will respond to your point by saying that 1) creating value is conducive to attracting attention IMO 2) I did not state that there should be no networking/marketing/promotion at all, I wrote that it should not be done before a product is ready, and that it should be done by someone adept at it (usually not a propeller head like me, for example, although I am sure some guys are skilled at those activities as well as tech work)
I still think this is arguable, you describe what separates star marketers from the rest is "innate skill" in this case innate marketing/sales/networking skill. However, I think I can equally make the case for star marketers. I'll discuss you're argument from the marketing perspective because its the area I'm most familiar with and feel most qualified to speak for.
Marketing isn't just a game of follow these rules and you will be successful, its not just a matter of experience either. If it were, marketing agencies wouldn't be differentiable and campaigns like Absolut wouldn't have cult-like status. Just as there is an so described "innate skill" for programmers I would argue that there is a similar type of "innate skill" that separates the best marketers from the rest. To say that intelligence on the same level as programming isn't mandated for marketing is demeaning to that profession as a whole and represents a misunderstanding of what really goes into a well defined marketing strategy. Admittedly, it may not be as quantitatively measured as programming, but that does not mean it requires less intelligence or is less demanding.
I do agree with your point that creating value is conducive to attracting attention, but by no means is it a limiting factor. There are plenty of historical examples where things of little to no value, when marketed well, rose to great success. (The pet rock, among other things)
I've done a fair amount of both programming and marketing, and while I don't claim to be a "star" at either, I still cringe when people dismiss one or the other categorically as being of little added value. It happens from both sides and most of the time just represents a lack of understanding of the efforts that go into either.
I did not say that marketing was a follow the cookbook type endeavor either.
Problem with this point is that, neither one of us in this small debate has any hard data to back up or counter our respective points (does any exist? I personally doubt it) which are highly subjective anyway, mostly based on anecdotal perception.
I stick by my opinion however, and can point to the relative number of programmers versus marketing people in the global workforce as indicative of what I am saying . . . if more people were smart enough to program, as opposed to market, they would . . .
Marketing has its place, but to an admittedly occasionally arrogant geek such as myself (who has come across some incredibly, impossibly dumb marketing types) they are figuratively just the people who stand outside the shop on the sidewalk and try to get people to step inside and look at the wares . . .
Can you further explain here? Market forces will determine where people go, salaries will rise until people move into those positions. The number of people in given positions is not indicative at all of the skill of the people taking those jobs.
"Marketing has its place, but to an admittedly occasionally arrogant geek such as myself (who has come across some incredibly, impossibly dumb marketing types) they are figuratively just the people who stand outside the shop on the sidewalk and try to get people to step inside and look at the wares . . ."
I agree with you that this is an extremely arrogant viewpoint. I've met many stupid programmers but I don't assume the same of all programmers. I also think you're confusing the roles of sales and marketing but that's beside the point.
Discounting the value of people who aren't like you isn't a very great way to get anywhere in life, especially as an entrepreneur.
You are not reading what I write. I did not mention skill, I mentioned intelligence. Those are not the same.
It is quite simple. Look at all occupations. There are more non-intellectually demanding jobs than there are intellectually demanding jobs. There are more dumb people than smart people on the planet. That is obvious.
Speaking of market forces, why are programmers on average paid more than marketing and sales people?
You have met stupid programmers? Interesting. I agree that not all are extremely bright, however, anyone who is truly stupid will not be able to even learn how to program, much less become worthy of the title programmer, whereas, I have seen some nearly illiterate folks working in marketing, and sales, and I realize those two are different, even though I do not bother to differentiate between the two when making reference to them.
"Discounting the value of people who aren't like you isn't a very great way to get anywhere in life, especially as an entrepreneur."
Neat, now you are starting the personal attacks.
Innate skill and intelligence are pretty much the same thing. (Although I would argue that intelligence can grow as a function of effort).
"Speaking of market forces, why are programmers on average paid more than marketing and sales people?"
The pay of programmers vs. marketers is pretty comparable. Check salary.com
"Neat, now you are starting the personal attacks."
No, just responding to your multi-post personal attack against marketers/bizdev with one against arrogance. Its up to you whether to take it personally.
I have more points I could make, but this doesn't seem to be going anywhere useful so I'm done with this discussion.
salary.com? Please.
I wrote "on average".
As far as "on average" goes, where do you think salary.com/payscale.com get their data, averages of real-world salaries.
Wrong.
>(see dictionary)
Skill n. 2 a) an art, craft, or science, esp. one involving the use of the hands or body b) ABILITY IN SUCH AN ART, CRAFT, OR SCIENCE
ISBN 0-02-860586-1 pg. 1257
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/skill%5B2%5D
1 obsolete : cause , reason
2 a: the ability to use one's knowledge effectively and readily in execution or performance b: dexterity or coordination especially in the execution of learned physical tasks
3: a learned power of doing something competently : a developed aptitude or ability <language skills>
(emphasis mine)
Edit: Stalemate?
Edit: What I mean by this is networking at the expense of product/technology building.
As for allocating resources to networking before there is a working product, check out www.path101.com. I met these guys when they did an open brainstorming session with nothing but a preliminary pitch deck and not a line of code. Being open from very early on enabled them to find angel investors and their first employees, and when it came time to doing an alpha launch they had tons of people that had been eager to try the thing out for months.
What happens when it turns out that the bullet points with features cannot be implemented, or are simply not the best solution for the users?
I find pg's thoughts on the subject of how problems may end up being redefined as they are being worked on to be very wise advice.
I'm not sure I'd question the commitment of people who were actively building the product either. It sounds like this startup really had some forward momentum with people getting stuff done. I'm not sure the authors expectations were reasonable, and I think he had to work fairly hard to kill this startup.
I agree with the second part of your comment.
On the other hand, some folks take being pragmatic to an extreme, as in no order/uniformity/quality control/structure/thought into design/effort to identify possible future issues and a general just get whatever done in a hurry and push it out the door attitude . . . which is all just as bad as too much formally define roles/establish this and that and the other/talk about and plan stuff to death/posture around with this and that and the other . . .
If you have good people, some funding, a demo and the start of a code base then thats a lot to lose over your expectations on networking and days of the week devoted to the startup. Even if the truth is more networking and fulltime cofounders would have helped.
I certainly may have killed the startup by emphasizing things that I thought were important, but it doesn't make any sense to think I was actively trying to kill it. My point was that I was blindsided by what happened in the end, so now I've gone back to think about how we got there and, you know, these are some of the conclusions I've drawn and of course they could still be wrong.
On the one hand you could feel in retrospect that the conflict points were important enough that the startup could never have succeeding without the direction you were pushing - so you were lucky it ended swiftly. On the other hand if you think your startup had a good chance of success even if you hadn't won those battles, then you may want to look at your conflict resolution.
After spending a few months thinking "okay, so how did it get to that point, and I didn't even realize it" I wrote my reflections. I still think the startup has a good chance of success, but not with the dynamics that were at play then.
It has its place, but just as useful at times is getting together with a group of peers you trust and exchanging notes. Having a few beers and talking about what challenges you're having, what breakthroughs you've made...
I think the tradtional idea of networking is overemphasized among a lot of startups (and sometimes dangerously so) because it's an abstraction away from the work that keeps them alive. You've got to make sure you keep a watchful eye on your schedule and don't confuse attending X and Y event for Z productivity.
Not sure I'm saying "my kind of networking meets X times per month", but I will say this: we organized monthly meetups for the professionals in our market (computer/network security), made it as all-inclusive as we could, and it's been far more valuable to us than the vanity networking we did early on.
Isn't this one of the major recurring criticisms of valley culture? That all those people do is go to parties with the same people every night?
I'm with you on that.
SXSW trips not so much.
It totally depends on the product, but from the YC PoV, you have 3 months to build something that dazzles investors. Generally, YC discourages hunting for networking/bizdev/funding deals because you have EXACTLY ONE SHOT to impress a room full of the most important early stage investors on the planet.
I don't think Wozniak did much networking. I don't know what would have happened if Jobs got mad at him because he didn't.
You can always network after you've got a product, but if you can't do both at once, product comes first.
I know successful (>10M revenue) companies who have mocked up a brochure and sold it this way. Their thought was "if they don't bring out a credit card right away you aren't solving a pain, you dont have a product".
Consumers/users ALWAYS get screwed in those type of scenarios. I don't believe in taking risks with other people's money.
1. Create mockup/demo/realistic brochure/non-functional physical prototype 2. Go to your target market. Count number of targets 3. Try to sell them the product at the target price 4. Once they hand over their credit card etc, just hand it back. 5. Tell them thanks very much for their support, but this was a test so you can make sure the market wants the product, if they want we can contact them when/if the product is ready. 6. Do your stats. What proportion of the target market you sampled bought the product. Extrapolate to the estimated population to get an idea of how many units you can sell. [rinse and repeat to make your product more attractive to the market]
It's the only way I have ever heard of turning a snake-oil, soothsayer business plan into one that can statistically show the uptake of your product in the market.
I refuse to believe that there is no other way of conducting a market study other than resorting to sneaky, dastardly little tactics. Why? because there ARE other ways.
Also, nice strawman, I obviously did not counter with "conduct NO market studies/surveys" - I came back with "that's dishonest and I don't believe in it".
Funny, how I have set up services (granted, not products) that made me money and I did not have to resort to cheap little deceptive tricks.
I would rather have a product I can be statistically confident is going to sell because users have wanted to pay for it. There's no debating whether it's right for the market or not.
Thanks for the discussion by the way, this is fun :). If you do have a better way I'd love to know.
I am seriously curious to know how many times you have seen that work. I would think that many people would resent the tactic and retaliate by not purchasing your product, or they would lose their trust in you (and rightly so, you done suckered them once) and therefore respect. It's interesting to note how many thousands of products have been researched, developed, and taken to market to great success, without deception tactics.
How dissapointing. I have seen PHP do better than this. This is depressing.
I guess we will agree to disagree on the ethics. I personally don't find it any different than deceptive advertising that is used in the majority of sales channels worldwide, the many deceptive claims of products overstating the benefits, understating negatives etc.
I simply refuse to do it because others are, and believe that successful market studies can be carried out without deceptive tactics.
This general attitude and outlook on my behalf actually mostly derives more from sheer pride than from any sort of assumed moral superiority - I simply can't sleep at night if I think that I applied or relied on anything other than my own merit to achieve something, and deceptive/slick tactics make me feel as though I cheated because I was unable to do it the hard way . . . that kind of thing.
I will close by conceding that I may be wrong about this, however, I might also just end up identifying more user needs in a highly accurate manner with my approach, which is conducive to even greater profits.
I had/have the same aversion to selling things that don't exist that you have. But honestly, I think that the next time I do a startup, I'm going to do it that way. I get really sick of speculatively building things that nobody wants. Why not make sure they want it first and then build it?
Plus, two of my favorite startups - DropBox and RescueTime - both used this approach (though perhaps with a little less dishonesty - they clearly marked it "demo"), and their products are better for it.
I think that the objective is a market study, for which I believe there are some tried and tested methods, although it occurs to me that in this field those may not apply as so many other things, however if that is the case, then I believe "how to find out what the users want without selling vaporware/other questionable tactics" is a worthwhile problem to tackle in and of itself.
Selling vaporware is to me similar to using users as unwitting beta testers, I don't believe in it, I think we should be upfront like the examples you cited: if it is a beta let people know, if it is vaporware, let people know, if it is a demo, let people know.
In my opinion it's the ethical thing to do, not just for you but for your users. Why bother creating a product if it's never going to get traction in the market? You won't be able to afford to support it well, and it won't develop into a great business unless you get significant revenue. This is more unethical for the users, as you'll have to fold or let is stagnate. Why risk it?
Often times first thing I want to do is jump into code, and it's the last thing you should be doing. Proving the market is critical, and the only way you can prove it exists (for most companies) is to fake sell.
When people tell you, I would buy it if it had this feature, they are often lying. Unless they are willing to pony up their credit card, you haven't solved the problem imho.