Two Initial Strikes Against The Biz Dev Guy
Posted on May 14, 2008
Filed Under Development, Entrepreneurship, Startup |
My last blog post on this topic received some fabulous comments well worth reading and I do believe that the consensus was that both types are ultimately required in order to create the needed combination towards the potential for success.
However, I want to further discuss what strengths and weaknesses both types (Biz Dev and Tech) bring to the table and how they end up complimenting each other. I’ll make some recommendations along the way in my Quick Crash Course. Than I will bring it back home towards qualifications, because no matter which one of the two you are…if you’re not qualified for the startup you aim to start then the odds are still against you.
Two Initial Strikes Against The Biz Dev Guy
1) He can’t code or program and that leads into 2) He doesn’t normally know diddly squat about coding languages and development…
This might not be the case of all Biz Dev Guys, but from my experience of the ones I’ve encountered, this is very true of most first timers. (It was certainly true of me)
In a web startup, it’s no shocker that development is key. The Biz Dev Guy starts out with a huge deficit since he or she doesn’t know how to develop and doesn’t know the intimidate details of development.
It’s much harder and more complicated then what you think and can possibly imagine. It’s also muy importante that you learn and know what’s going on.
Quick Crash Course On Initial Things to Know
99.9% of developers you will speak to will prefer the language they work with – some will bad mouth the other languages but the more professional developers will give you a list of pros and cons.
All languages have their pros and cons – none are necessarily better than others.
Within a language you often have other open source modular framework of the language…so for example you have PHP and than you have Drupal and Joomla!. One developer is not necessarily familiar with the other framework and the frameworks don’t integrate. BE CAREFUL! (It’s a pain in the ass)
AVAILABLE MANPOWER AND KNOWLEDGE is more important and critical then the language/framework itself.
Developers will make you feel real good about their particular language/framework – TALK TO MANY.
Because you don’t know anything about development – get a developer to review all code, verity tests and do quality control on the work of the developers you work with.
What looks pretty via the User Interface (UI) can be a complete mess on the backend.
UI and backend development are completely different from each other. Actually, if you don’t know this already you’re heading for an extremely steep hill!!
Development/programming easily takes over 3-5 times longer than anticipated.
Developers/programmers are not generally good at reporting what doesn’t work or what turns out to be more difficult than originally planned.
Going to end with the key point that I wish someone had clued me in months ago – Check the Available Manpower!! I can tell you that for Ruby on Rails – the manpower is hurting.
Conclusion
Thoroughly educate yourself and ask many questions. Go ahead and sound stupid – it will save you much aggravation in the end.
Talk to other business types in web startups and find out what they’ve learned the hard way about development. What have you already learned? Share it with others.
The truth is that whatever you want to implement on the business end of things it will impact development – their is no avoiding it.
Comments
One Response to “Two Initial Strikes Against The Biz Dev Guy”
Leave a Reply
Subscribe- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
- Twitter: AnnBernard
-
- @vpickering Thank you very much Victoria. I really do hope this is finally going to be my year!
- I give up on putting together my gift to myself. Going to get someone aka a professional to do it.
- I'm buying myself home gym equipment for my Bday present.
- @josephgrossberg Thanks. I'll have a look at it when I get home. Hopefully it's an isolated case. Spam is not how we'll know we've arrived!
- @josephgrossberg ??What kind of Spam?? Definitely not something I want happening - or at least we can negate it from the start.
-
It seems in my experiences in going to events in NYC (StartUp Camp) and within the DC Tech community that finding a developer for your startup is a challenge. At Sun’s StartUp Camp in Oct. 07 there was only 5 developers there amongst 70 people. I run into more people like us; business/creative types who are looking for developers too.
Based on my experience and all the people I have met, the east coast tech scene is driven by Business Dev/Creative types!