Where Are the Hackers? How Can We Live Without’em?
There are three or more separate steps in getting the technology security right.
Owen Davis spoke at my Columbia B-School Lean LaunchPad class, and his words to my students always hit hard. Founder-turned investor, Owen is clearly one of the brightest lights on the NYC tech scene, and founded NYC Seed after launching and selling several companies. Founder: “We know what to build. Give us the money and we’ll hire the tech team.” Owen’s simple two-word answer, “get out!”
These words hit me like lightning, actually reminding me (the “hustler” to my friend and “hacker” Owen), of my own similar comments about “no startup can ever outsource marketing to an agency.
“It’s like like a human being outsourcing or renting his aorta.”
Perhaps even truer when you discuss the tech team at a startup, where product development should always be a core competency, not a purchase. And the always adversarial relationship between outsourcers or software shops and the startups paying their bills heighten startup risk to a great degree, in my opinion. Even when there’s a hacker/hustler team in place, is the hacker a visionary or a coder?
Too often it’s the latter, leaving the team without critical advice on such crucial questions as architecture, strategy, and team development. Who are the right hires, and in what order? Where is the hacker strong or weak, and how does the team compensate?
Importantly, every good leader needs a mentor or several—and the mentor who can coach a strong hacker brings a dramatically different skill set than the mentors a hustler will need along the way. Recruiting both skill sets early in the game can dramatically enhance the startup’s chances for success. The current mad startup bubble brings with it literally thousands of founders with minimal tech understanding, skills or know-how.
Yet they are often blithely out, pitching for funds, when they likely deserve little if any investor support at all. The savviest investors support fully-baked teams, which doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone is a full-time employee. But having access to the coaches and experts—particularly around the core technology—is an important investor concern, just as it’s often a concern to potential customers as well, particularly when it comes to enterprise software or similar “heavy tech” startups.
To me there are three or more separate steps in getting the technology right:
1. Product design:
This is much more than “I have an idea for a startup,” and includes wireframes, database architecture, interface, UI, UX and more. Some of the least tech-savvy founders can’t even describe the difference between UI and UX, or think wire frames go on cool eyeglasses.
2. Software architecture:
If you don’t know #1, then #2 is utterly hopeless. And if you can’t discuss the 27 different ways almost any product might be built, and assess the strengths and weaknesses of each, what happens then? You put 100% confidence in your outsource provider, who almost always sells what’s either most lucrative or most comfortable for the sop.
3. The build:
Is it going well, way behind, heading down a rathole, on budget or off? Do you also hire people to answer these questions for you?
Some founders, typically from the business side, can’t even have a healthy conversation with a techie. They don’t know what questions to ask, can’t tell a bs answer from a brilliant one, and this often leads to horrible hiring decisions, let alone management and design decisions.
How can they bring these skills in-house, without hiring brilliant (and expensive) fulltime software architects? Advisors, coaches, and mentors can often fill the bill. Silicon Valley answers this issue with the “hacker/hustler” metaphor: always more than one founder, with one focused on tech/product and the other focused on customer development and later sales and marketing. To me, outsourcing either of these functions falls in the “outsourcing your aorta” category.
Most investors tend to share Owen Davis’ opinion—without a tech co-founder who plans to manage the build day-to-day, fuggedaboutit.
I’ve used consultants many times to augment competencies of internal techies when new challenges came up or we were about to spend a pile of money and I wanted a “gut check” on my internal person. These are relatively easy to recruit, and I’ve often asked either a friend or another techie I’ve worked with to do the final interviews of CIOs and CTOs for me, since they know the questions far better than I do.
The key lies in a founder knowing exactly what he or she doesn’t know, and recruiting the talent and leadership necessary to assure that the core technology—the heart of the startup—is as strong and well-developed as all other elements of the business model.
Maybe the next stage of internet mania will bring fully outsourced startups with a founder simply recruiting a bunch of contractors and then managing all the contracts for design, build, IT ops, sales, marketing, finance and more. Think of how much a startup like this could save on rent, coffee, and donuts!
Until that unlikely scenario unfolds, non-tech founders need to “seek professional help!”
Related articles:
10 Critical IT Security Protections EVERY Business Must Implement
The Hacker Prevention Checklist
Security and the Cloud: Perils and Protections for Small Business
Small Businesses Owners Beware, Cyber Security Is Under Attack
