If you put Ron Conway and Paul Graham on a stage together talking about investing you learn some interesting things.
At about the 23 minute mark of the video PG starts talking about team size. Four is bad. One is a bit better. Two and three teams seem to do best. This started quite the discussion across the Internet about startup teams. A part of that discussion is listed web log style below.
Technical Co-Founders Are A Myth; Michael Pope.
What To Look For In A Business Co-Founder; Jason Baptiste.
Business Cofounders Are A Dime A Dozen; Joshua Volz.
The Magical Founding Team Mix For Web Startups; Dharmesh Shah.
As I said before this whole meme started, I like three. You need a developer, most important person in the bunch. If you don't have a person that can build a functional product you are doomed. Number two is a a front end developer that can also design. Design is very important in this day and age. You need these folks to work together as a product team. A business person is nice but not necessary number three (tough thing for a business guy to say). This biz person needs a combination of what some of the links point out. The business person needs to bring money, the access to money, customer development skills, the ability to do deals, marketing skills, and a strong grasp of technology.
I also agree with lots of folks that it is easier to teach technical people business skills than business people technical skills. Lots of advisors and mentors that are willing to take talented technical folks under their wings and teach them the ropes.
How about you? What are you looking for in a co-founder?
As is often the case PG has an excellent essay up on "What Happened to Yahoo" (no exclamation point from him).
While the entire is a must read the money quote for me is:
Yahoo treated programming as a commodity. At Yahoo, user-facing software was controlled by product managers and designers. The job of programmers was just to take the work of the product managers and designers the final step, by translating it into code.
One obvious result of this practice was that when Yahoo built things, they often weren't very good. But that wasn't the worst problem. The worst problem was that they hired bad programmers.
In technology, once you have bad programmers, you're doomed. I can't think of an instance where a company has sunk into technical mediocrity and recovered. Good programmers want to work with other good programmers. So once the quality of programmers at your company starts to drop, you enter a death spiral from which there is no recovery.
Good stuff. The question is how do you build a hacker-centric culture. PG has some thoughts. I saw a good example this morning.
We are sitting around the kitchen counter eating breakfast when the Kokomo Kid asks "You know anything about SQL?" "A little, why" was my cautious reply.
While it just so happens one of the companies where she works as a controller, QuantiSense, sent out a throw down challenge. Who is the best SQL expert? They distributed one of the tests that they give to developers when they are being interviewed. The test went to the entire staff. The entire staff was expected to complete it, including writing a little code snippet at the end. So my wife, who is the part time controller, is reading SQL code and trying to determine the output of a command string. It just so happens that the sample table had a few null values. She could not determine how to treat them as different versions of SQL treat null values in different ways.
So my wife, the controller, who before this morning had never ever looked at a line of code in her life sent this note:
What variant of SQL are you using? Don't I need to know this in order to understand how Null values are treated?
When you get your controller to ask what version of SQL you are using to figure out the output of a query I would say that you might be on your way to building a hacker-centric culture.
Two years or so ago I reached out to the Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs to offer them some space for their monthly meetings. It was a bit of a lone wolf effort but one I think was appreciated.
And as a result the group has grown. Grown into an event that attracts darn near 100 participants every month. One hundred people showing up every month to discuss Internet entrepreneurship is good thing. The downside is that the room we have this event in seems to heat up. Nobody seemed to care. Until tonight.
Stephen Fleming, the newly selected Vice Provost of stuff that takes too long to explain, read a few tweets about the room getting warm, got in in his car with his wife at 8:00pm, and hand delivered some fans to make the experience a bit better. Leadership by example. Contagious commitment.
Bravo.
Cam Lanier is a man I respect a great deal. He was recently honored as a Distinguished Entrepreneur. The guy has only been responsible for about 20 new ventures that created 15,000 jobs and an aggregate capital formation of something north of $9 billion.
Cam is not only very successful, he is a true Southern good ‘ol boy.
Here are some of Cam’s rules courtesy of the MIT Enterprise Forum of Atlanta. My comments are below his rules.
“Raising dogs on paper” or “The power of the model will fool anyone, including Bubba!”
Anything can look good on paper. Except when you are training the dogs.
“Big boys and little boys can't play in the same sandbox” and its corollary “Never do a 50/50 split."
Large and small companies just have different strategies and values and 50/50 deals rarely work.
"It's gonna take twice as long and twice as much money."
Always. Start-up businesses never keep their original business plans.
"Management is everything."
It's important to understand your own capabilities and where you fit in a business.
"The first $50 million is the hardest."
Amen to that.
"You can't out-crook a crook."
If you find yourself in business with someone who is dishonest either get them out or get yourself out immediately. Life is too short.
"If the ox is in the ditch, and everybody gathers 'round the ox, it's time to double up."
If everyone is still supporting a business during times of trouble then it's time to buy in to a bargain. If they are not gathering around it might be time to go bottom fishing.
"There are only two things that make the world go 'round: the need to love and the need to be loved."
You have to care about people or they won't care about you and your business. And by the way, you can’t fake it.
"If you have recurring revenue, you must understand the 'rule of 78'."
I love recurring revenue models. Gotta hit your numbers early in the year and you must understand churn.
"Free cash flow is the only thing that really matters."
If a business can't buy itself over time, it isn't worth owning.
"Everybody's got a number."
Entrepreneurs will quit working hard once they reach their number. A smart entrepreneur will know when they hit their number and know that it's time to move on. My number is written down as a goal. Is yours?
"SPDWUPJCD"
Successful people do what unsuccessful people just won't do.
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