Lessons from My AlphaLab Experience

Re: Lesson #3. And where is Woz now? I would be reluctant to put forward that Woz was more important to Apple’s overall success than Jobs or vice versa. Truth is, they were both important and (assuming the author is suggesting Jobs was the 'business' guy and Woz was the 'programmer') Apple would not be what it is today if one or the other didn’t play a role.

One of the most important lessons I learned at my startup as a programmer is the value that commercial business people bring. Yes, we programmers are important at the beginning when the product is being developed, but once the business of the product gets going, the business people become very important.

Check out some of Steve Blank's posts on customer development vs. product development. In a recent slide presentation I flipped through, he states that most startups fail because of a lack of customer development (typically what 'business' people do), and not because of a lack of product development (which is typically what developers do). (And yes I realize that the programmer can possibly do both, but not as fast as two people who work well together can).

At the end of the day, both skill sets are required to make the startup successful, and for one to say he or she is more important than the other is like the fable I once heard about the eyes saying they were more important than the ears who thought they were more important than the hands who thought they were more important than the feet, etc. etc.

I know I will likely get seriously down voted for this type of comment on a programmer centric board, but the programmer 'divas' who think that the world would stop if it were not for their brilliance annoy the hell out of me. To those people I would say that you will get a lot further in the long run if you pool your skills with someone who brings to the table what you lack.

The "heavy hitters" in the room at "demo days" seem to be firm associates. Associates are mostly irrelevant to you. If you try just a little bit, you should be able to get meetings with firm partners. You probably don't have any traction with a firm until you've taken a 1-on-1 with a partner.

Maybe my VC knowledge is stale (it's from 2005) but a room full of VC associates seems pretty unattractive.

The ideal team is probably 3 founders, one being a business guy with product development experience. One reason behind this is an all technical team will more often become obsessed about the technical widgets and features that aren't needed for a minimum viable product.

Technical teams are also more likely to try and do everything themselves when you may be better off partnering for a technology rather than building it. Often certain components of a given solution may be the entire focus of other companies and many companies are very willing to license technology with no upfront costs rapidly speeding up development -- one business deal could equal months of coding.

Can technical people go out and do these deals? Sure just like the business guy can pickup "How to code HTML" book and start to make a website -- neither will know what they don't know until it is too late. Also from PG's "Managers vs. Makers" schedule piece it is very clear that for a maker trying to do a deal could completely derail their ability to build with the distractions.

Is it possible you need business founders more when building something people have to pay for, and tech founders more when building 'consumer web' stuff?

If so, that explains several observations: the anecdote-based disagreements that keep coming up about the need for business folks, the general bias of YC for consumer web startups in the early years (I think they tended to fund all-programmer teams more so than they do now)

It also seems incredibly useful for figuring out what your startup should do, far more useful than whatever idea you have this week. The skills of the initial team are perhaps the most immutable of resource constraints you have. If you don't have a business/sales guy, don't get into selling software just because "37signals told you to." If you are a business guy, don't waste your time on a twitter app or social network.

Like Dijkstra said, "Do what only you can do."

And yes, I'm aware of Mark Zuckerberg, patio11 et al. Are they counter-examples or exceptions?

I was going to write about something about my own AlphaLab experience, but great advice Don!

Btw smackBOTS is now a Top 100 app (free). Going to pen down some thoughts down on that too.

I couldn't agree more with #7. In my experience, once an idea takes on a life of its own, it's very difficult to not execute on it. Some ideas are different than others, but at some point it clicks, and it's like trying to hold back an avalanche. You just have to roll with it.

I agree with much of what is said, especially 'Lesson 1'. I'm surprised how many people just starting a company have expectations of landing millions in VC money, or talk as it such a large sum is a necessity.

http://igeejo.com

I am usually pretty bored by "x lessons from my y experience" posts, but this one hit the nail on the head. Very poignant observations.