Startups: it’s not all coding and design

by Giff on May 30, 2012

I’m starting a band. I can’t really play any instrument or sing, so I’m looking for a few musical co-founders.
– Tweet by @Greenberg

A ton of people retweeted the above note. It’s a great zinger aimed at folks who can’t build digital products trying to start digital products companies.

After the initial chuckle, I couldn’t help but examine it literally.

Let’s look at music for a second. It takes a lot more than music to be a successful band in this era of waning distributor power. Take a look at Amanda Palmer. Her current Kickstarter success (> $1M) is only the latest in years of online innovation from her. She is a master at leveraging content and social media to engage, grow, and monetize her community. A huge amount of what Amanda does to drive her success is not actually writing or playing music.

So goes a startup. There is a mountain of work to be done beyond coding and design. Sales, marketing, and bizdev (each startup has their own mix) become critically important quite quickly. You don’t need an MBA to handle the business side of things, but you do want someone who enjoys it, thrives doing it, gets respect for it (because externally they’ll be facing a ton of rejection), and will relentlessly make it happen.

The barb behind the joke has merit because yes, when startups are in the “cool” phase as they are now, you get a lot of clueless people jumping into the pool, usually over-inflating what they are bringing to the table.

But while I got a good laugh from the tweet, I do wonder if things have gone too far, especially when I see comments like this from Naval Ravikant, “It’s hard to integrate non-engineers – they aren’t valued.”

There are three pillars to a successful digital startup: engineering, design and business. Those roles can be split amongst people or shared amongst multi-disciplinary individuals, but above all build a culture where each feels valued, where trust and collaboration can thrive, and where everyone feels motivated to excel.

Related post: Ben Horowitz, Is Now The Time To Hire MBAs?

  • http://blog.asmartbear.com Jason Cohen

    Love that initial quote!  And great post.

    Amanda Palmer though… yes she’s very creative in business practice, but she’s also insanely talented and powerful. As someone who came up from busking — something you have to respect — she is unstoppable.  In short, was both raw talent and business acumen in that case.

  • Startupjerkfest

    good point.

    as a technical founder, i too grew angry at the large qty of wannabees eager to be the next Zuckerberg, and I felt the same way as the Greenberg tweet. 

    but I’m not too worried about it anymore, because now i realize those without ability will quickly be shamed out of the pool, and we wont have to worry about them (unless too many of them drown in the pool and ruin the connotation of the word startup – if it isn’t ruined already).not all coders can do market research, talk to prospects, plan strategy, sell, and survive being rejected ALOT. just as not all business people can learn to write code or design a product to be beautiful and functional.those of us who are multi-disciplinary may be able to do it all, if we can survive without sleep for 6 months. so we will need to reply on others to reach the milestone.the thing that bothers me is how “certain” people have pushed the concept that you can simply outsource the technical portions of coding and designing the product, after your brilliant mind has figured out the business model. that is a lack of respect from the other direction. and anyone smart enough to code and design will quickly figure out that they are being disrespected, and will not do a “great” job to ensure the product is a success.I agree with you, each leg of the table needs to respect the others.

  • http://giffconstable.com giffc

    Yeah I’m a big fan.  She’s a great entrepreneur — talented and unstoppable — who puts art and fulfillment first. I loved her disclosure of where all the kickstarter money is going.

  • http://giffconstable.com giffc

    thanks for commenting — yeah there are misconceptions and silly ego-trips that happen on all sides, but through thick and thin, highs and lows, good cycles and bad cycles, entrepreneurs persevere :)

  • http://twitter.com/alexkehayias Alex Kehayias

    In early stage startups we definitely value the technical side over the business side because getting something out the door and iterating fast enough is the prevailing wisdom. Also the tech founder is taking on most of the risk early on, because building a product takes a lot of upfront effort. Just like anything else though you can be a shitty coder/designer/marketing/bd/product person. I went from the business side to the tech side (as in I’m now the tech co-founder in my team) after relentlessly learning to code so I have an appreciation for both. I used to be biased towards the business mind. In learning to code I felt more empowered, but there’s two sides to the equation that we shouldn’t forget about: product and distribution. If you can’t kick ass in both you won’t get anywhere anyway.  

  • http://giffconstable.com giffc

    I am the same way – in fact I think that any business person who wants to do a digital startup from the ground floor would be well served to work on their technical or design skills. Not only will they feel more empowered, and get more respect, but they will be able to help speed iterations and turns of the ship. In the old days, you used to see biz founders sitting on their hands while the product was being built for months on end, but the ethos of ship quickly, even if quietly, and iterate quickly, has altered that dynamic a bit. Of course to be useful there, biz founders need to learn a bunch from the ux community too. Frankly, ground floor startups benefit from having *good* generalists.

  • http://www.hypedsound.com jonathanjaeger

    There’s a difference between an “idea person” and a non-technical person who has great insight into product, distribution, recruiting, and every other aspect that isn’t coding. Even better if they have money and already invested into the company in one way or another (hiring/prototypes/etc.). Just depends the degree of skin in the game.

  • dl

    seems like most are thinking once they have developed an awesome tech product they are bound to be successful > don’t think so > if there’s no customers = ZERO.

    if anyone in the team are constantly thinking “you are not technical/you can’t code etc” you have bought in the wrong team or people to worked with. This is not a School project, you need different expertise from a team to get the product out in the market (marketing+tech+support+operations+Etc).

    Have a great product but nobody heard of = hope it get noticed = NOPE
    Have a great product but people heard of = chance of surviving
    Have a great product and people wants it = chance of surviving and grow

     

  • http://adamlieb.me/ Adam Lieb

    Great point Giff. I agree completely with the designer/hacker/hustler combo, and yes you can find 2 of those in 1 person. I think there is a prejudice against pure hustlers, probably unfairly. 

  • http://www.Spidvid.com Jeremy Campbell

    Business people are overlooked, design and development are key early on, but long term it’s the dollars that really matter!