The 15 Roles Absolutely Necessary in a Startup, No Matter How Small it is | Hacker News Reader

The 15 Roles Absolutely Necessary in a Startup, No Matter How Small it is

micahelliott.blogspot.com

74 pointsjshajan41 comments

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Summary - the blogger envisions the bare minimum of roles needed in a startup and lists them all as different hats.

The Hat List

* Visionary/Architect

* Lead Developer(s). AKA Hackers.

* Sysadmin

* Toolsmith

* Webmaster

* DBA

* Graphic Artist

* CSS Designer

* Content Creator

* Customer Support

* Tester

* Marketer

* Manager

* Lawyer

* Chef

The roles don't necessarily equally different people - the smaller your startup, the hats combine into larger multitasking sombreros.

The Sombrero List

* Developer

* Sysadmin

* Artist

* Marketer

Overall, I found this to be a useful exercise. Although I'd disagree with which hats are the bare minimum and how they'd combine into larger sombreros, it got me thinking about what my personal list would look like and it wouldn't be too different (remove Marketer & Sysadmin, add another Developer, rename Artist as Designer), so in that sense it was still pretty useful as a thought experiment.

Personally, I'd hate to be referred to as "the blogger". "The author" seems a bit less dismissive.

It's all in the viewpoint - I don't see "blogger" as dismissive at all and see "author" a bit pompous for the level of writing.

I don't see what the level of writing has to do with whether one is an author or not. You're the author of your comment, and a graffiti artist who draws a penis on a wall is the author of that graffiti. Author merely implies who created the thing.

Anyway, all I was commenting is that I find it quite unpleasant when I write blog posts and people refer to me in the third person, as either "the author" or "the blogger", but between the two, "the author" seems less dismissive and I'd pick that over the other. It's worth keeping in mind that the author probably reads these comments too.

I think the best way to explain our differences is that we have varying preferences for specificity - I like "blogger" because it means "author of a blog post" the same way that I like "commenter" as "author of a comment".

And yes, just because you like the more generalized description of "author" doesn't change that they'll all 3rd person labels, which I'm not sure is pejorative either.

What do you do if you find yourself having to wear all these hats, while the founder forwards emails and reads FastCompany all day? I don't see a hat for that.

You realize you're working for a lifestyle business; his.

Thanks for that term, hadn't heard it before. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifestyle_business

That's exactly what it is, and I want out.

Then leave. From the sound of it, you've already proven that you can wear all the necessary hats anyway, so you should feel pretty confident about it.

Are you a 2-person company?

Yeah. I'm employee #1.

Then, if what you say is true, why do you put up with it?

Does he pay a salary? Did you receive an appropiate equity share for the work you put in relative to his? Or, to put it bluntly, what do you need him for?

I get a salary that would be laughable by most standards, partly because I'm a young autodidact with a BFA, and partly because I live in a part of the US with very little web dev opportunity. I'm stuck here while my SO finishes grad school. I think it's time to start looking again, this time remotely.

Toss some links in your profile of stuff you've done. There are always folks on here who get asked for recommendations or who are looking to hire.

Think it through before quitting. You're getting paid to be a startup CEO-in-training. I did this for 4 years for somebody and it gave me the practical experience I needed to launch my own startup. My situation had the added bonus of the founder being a gifted salesman, and I learned how to sell from watching him.

That sounds a lot like what my ex-cofounder did. I resigned from the company.

I had a similar situation many years ago. It lasted about 3 months - which was about 2.5 months too many. Complete waste of time.

This actually happens to a lot of startups. Usually it doesn't happen until after a certain amount of funding has been raised (often after the series A). If the CEO has checked out and is just pretending to work, the company is doomed - find a new job.

Have a talk with the founder. Reading about good management isn't enough.

This particular piece of advice is something I want to highlight:

Learn about system administration. I don't have much data to back this, but I've found that many of the famously successful hackers have at one time in their careers been sysadmins. E.g., ESR, Robert Morris, Tim O'Reilly, and many more. Try browsing resumes of your hacker heroes and see if any of them don't have this qualification. Such work gives you an important practical perspectives on usage patterns, systems topologies, hardware limitations, lifecycles, automation, tool availability, user-friendliness, user-stupidity, etc.

This is very important piece of advice-- any great developer should be a minimally competent sysadmin (and any great sysadmin should be a minimally competent developer).

I like to summarize it as:

1) Coders, to code

2) Designers, to make stuff people want (interaction / product design, NOT visual design)

3) Hustlers, to get the stuff to the people

That's almost the same conclusion he reaches in the blog. The only difference is that he includes the System Administrator role, for actually setting up and maintaining the platform that the code is going to run on.

The pruned down list seems to be missing the very important "business development" role (which generally is mixed into other stuff.) Who's calling leads, creating deals, making contacts (substantial ones, not marketing-based ones) in the local business and technology community, understanding new feature requests, and basically making sure operating costs and revenue projections are on track?

Agree in a general sense.

He introduces the list as "...that I see as important to making a new site come together."

Not "startup", "site."

I could be wrong, but Twitter doesn't need to focus on lead-gen...

Twitter also lacks an income, but I digress.

One could argue that viral marketing is business development. The main difference is that in the former, your customers are doing the work for you, while in the latter, you've got a defined role.

I'd be careful to suggest though that this role isn't being done at all.

My only point is that he does not have a broader view in which bizdev is a super important role in and of itself.

I think the author is suggesting that the "Marketer" fulfills this specifically in the vertical he's approaching.

I appreciate the call-out of an important omission from the article. I've learned that having a bizdev on the team is truly critical. That whacked me on the side of the head when I started thinking about Twitter's strategizing (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/13/twitter-decides-to-hire...), and thinking about the shaping of various features that customers are not getting a chance to weigh in on. I've tried to wear the bizdev hat myself but it is all-consuming. Now I have a full-time bizdev partner and it's making a world of difference in focus/direction. The XP practice of "on-site customer" is really enabled by having bizdev pull the customers close early on.

Another valuable role I've discovered is that of the incubator (I'm not YC; doing OTBC in PDX). It's another secondary role similar to Lawyer, but can be very supportive in making sure you're focused on doing all the business stuff that hackers can easily lose sight of. I'm presently being shown the value of having a solid business plan, perfecting multi-length elevator pitches, and refining the more formal investor and sales pitches. This is all possible thanks to experienced entrepreneurial coaches who really want to see you succeed.

Lastly, the "consort" is a non-obvious role -- someone who can give validation to your thinking, and exchange predicament stories with you. You may find him through the incubator, or at a hacking event, or wherever. My main consort is an extremely capable hacker and our regular discussions are gold.

So with the core team containing the right hacking, creative, and outreach balance, you can make progress. But I want to stress that the supporting people (Lawyer, Consort, Coach, et al) provide a lot of necessary elements.

"Uses web framework, creates functionality; knows Python/Ruby, Javascript, AJAX, Flash(?), HTML, databases."

This is a very weak description of what a hacker is by the way.

Can you offer a better one?

I also just want to chime in and say that I absolutely HATE websites that feel like they're been over-designed.

perfect = hackernews

horrible = digg.com

I feel like the "uses webframework python $buzzword, javascript $buzzword $buzzword $buzzword" speaks to this. SOOO many websites have got too many distracting buttons and things to click on, and no actual <i>content</i>. Look at something like craigslist...its perfect. It's clean, and it gives you only the information that you want.

Look at hackernews...same thing, nothing but content...yes there is some of that web2.0 (i hate that term) sauce on it, but it is a compliment to the content, not the main attraction of the site.

My personal taste is similar to yours, but I've learned the hard way that your visual design should be shaped specifically for the market you are targeting.

I don't really prefer one way or the other. If digg's content was at the level that HN's is, it wouldn't be that bad.

A man with a shovel, instead of an up arrow? That's like

  ADD X TO Y GIVING Z.

instead of

  z=x+y

so yes, it wouldn't be that bad, but food from Per Se wouldn't be that bad if you ate it at McDonald's, either.

Digg's design is not horrible. C'mon. They've won design awards with it and have millions of users. Hacker News has no design, which appeals to an audience that would love to think that code (a.k.a. content) is the only thing that matters in a business' success and that everything else is superfluous.

Digg's audience is more into fashion/style/cool stuff. So they should get some colors and a few gradients here and there.

I actually think Digg's design is very low-key.

I agree - digg has a fairly elegant design that's easy on the eye, without being obstructive. I don't think hacker news would suffer a great deal if a :little: more attention was paid to visual design. It doesn't really matter, I think people come here for the content, and that's fine.

Rater than comparing hn with digg, the comparison I saw somewhere was with http://www.newspond.com/ - an example of a site that looks nice (if you like gradients and glasy, round corners), at the expense of usability (only 3 posts per screen height etc). The first time I visited it, I was genuinely impressed by what they've archived, visually. But I've never been back since.

The biggest mistake you can make in visual design is to be guided by taste rather than understanding how different styles work psychologically and what is suitable to your target market. Some hackers deride "design" because they've either never worked with a talented designer, or they don't understand what design does. However there's quite a bit of science to design as well, it's just not as quantifiable as code.

And someone to pay the bills and maintain accounting...

It's a great list as long as your startup doesn't intend to ever make any money! No accountant, no business people, nothing of the sort? Speaking from experience, the business management side is very important if you want your venture to be successful (or take advantage of success when it comes).

These are/can be all business people.

* Visionary/Architect * Marketer * Manager * Lawyer * Chef

Accountant is something you rent/outsource.

Points where I know I'm exceptionally weak:

- Graphic Artist.

- CSS Designer.

- Tester.

- Manager.

- Lawyer.

I'm not trying to be negative, but assessing what I need to outsource or partner to get my company strong.

A low cost way to handle the role of "Chef" is to outsource it the microwave and packs of raman, at least fo me.

don't forget an accountant

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