Ten Geek Business Myths

hpcanswers writes "Venture capitalist Ron Garret has posted a list of eleven (despite the title) common mistakes entrepreneurs with a technology background make. A common theme is that good ideas sell; in reality, what a customer wants sells. By extension, having a Ph.D. and holding a patent are not particularly helpful if the intended end-user does not have the same level of understanding of the widget as the creator does."

Another Microsoft screed?

Microsoft is probably the canonical example of a successful business, and it has never had a single brilliant idea in its entire history. (To the contrary, Microsoft has achieved success largely by seeking out and destroying other people's brilliant ideas.)

Another Microsoft screed? Did Ron Garret just get fired from Microsoft?

Re:That explains the "take me back" kiss ass, then

This whole article smacks of one critical difference between entrepreneurs with an idea and business majors.

Entrepreneurs with an idea think that money exists as a tool to bring ideas to realization, and they want their idea realized. The money to them is rather irrelevant if it's just doing the same old shit.

Business majors think that ideas exist as ways to make money, and they want their money. The realization of the idea is rather irrelevant to them if it's not the best way to make money.

At the end of the day, both can be opportunities for each other, but neither needs the other.

A brilliant idea can make a business major rich and powerful, but they can still get rich with the same old capitalist tactics they're familiar with and nary a novel idea in sight.

On the other hand, a lot of money can motivate people to support your idea and get it out into circulation, but there are other ways to motivate people than money. For an example of this, look at RMS.

It's my opinion that the best way for an individual to get their idea out there is to not only discard the existing business models, but to create models where other parties particpation is rewarding in and of itself, rather than some distasteful task they are being bribed into completing. If you can do that, it will scale globally and you don't need a dime to pay them. If you can't, you'll probably get crushed by the existing players with WAY more money than you and either be destroyed or absorbed.

Unless you're an existing player with tons of money, of course. Then you can bribe people to get behind whatever silly idea comes into your head.

Re:That explains the "take me back" kiss ass, then

Heh... am I the only one that finds it deliciously ironic that a venture capitalist is advising brilliant phds with good ideas that they needn't worry about other people stealing their ideas and shouldn't protect them?

Kind of like a wolf telling you that you don't need to worry about fencing in your sheep.

Re:That explains the "take me back" kiss ass, then

I have to agree. Vulture capitalists can be the worst offenders when it comes to stealing ideas. They will never agree to any kind of NDA, and if they like what you present, but not your team, they'll sometimes go build a team on their own to pursue your idea. Of course, if they really do hate your team, you probably will fail anyway.

Those were all really good points in the article. I've personally stumbled into most of those traps (being the prototypical geek). Just for fun, I'll list some of my mistakes that correspond to his points:

#1 - A brilliant idea will make you rich.
In 1991, I started DataDraw as a company on the side that would sell software to make teams of programmers more productive. It's a great idea, with huge potential to benefit the whole planet. All it requires is that all those programmers out there understand how they can be more productive, care, and then take action to change. The harsh reality: they don't figure it out (go read datadraw.sf.net if you think you're really smart); they don't care (it's all just money after all); they don't like to change (show me your computer language of choice, and I'll guess your age within 5 years).

#2 - If you build it they will come.
Err... see #1. The next company I started also suffered from this problem. A friend and I started OpenASIC to solve the terrible communication problems between EDA tools. I wrote a very complex and fairly complete LPM module generator, simulator, and various readers and writers. My problem this time was that I BELIEVED what the customers were saying. Just because every major EDA and FPGA company issued press releases supporting LPM doesn't mean that they actually want anything to do with it (it's basically now an Altera specific format). Learning the difference between what a customer will buy, and what he says he will buy is key.

#3 - Someone will steal your idea if you don't protect it
I've had ideas stolen by professors and managers, and I've been stiffed by clients who decided not to pay me after they learned all they needed. The underhanded BS that happens in startups is unreal. Stop worrying about protecting your ideas, and worry about the guy who's gonna try and steal you blind.

#4 - What you think matters
I agree and disagree with this point. Many geeks imagine that if they like something, then so will customers. That's just plain wrong. However, if you actually listen to the customers, and go build what they ask for, you're sure to go broke. You have to be like Steve Jobs, and figure out that people want to pay more for a music player (not less), and that looking cool, and being bone-head easy (so dummies can use it) is what counts. You wont get average customers describing themselves as vain and stupid, but you'd better understand that most people are!

I started a company in 1996 called FPGA Technologies, with the purpose of creating embedded FPGA IP for SoC applications. I listened to all the SoC guys complaining about rising tooling costs, and heard their very enthusiastic response to my proposed FPGA cores. So, I went and built it... and got out when I realized that the customers were wrong. FPGA cores are waaaay to big to make sense in SoC applications. Stupid vulture capitalists keep on funding these poor doomed startups that want to do the FPGA IP thing. It makes a great elevator pitch, but a lousy product. The latest is M2000, which will most likely go broke when investors get fed up with them.

#8 - I need $5 million to start my business
That's funny coming from a VC, since few VCs will consider investing in a company that needs less than $10M to go public. They often have hundreds of millions of dollars to invest, and they can't waste time tracking every $1M investment.

However, I believe there's a huge opportunity for geeks like us to get semi-rich doing non-VC funded startups. In 2000, I moved to North Carolina, and started ViASIC. We have some angel investors, but no VCs, and our investment to date has been qu

Re:That explains the "take me back" kiss ass, then

go read datadraw.sf.net

I think I see the problem with your old business.

You didn't make anything available except a code download.

No documentation. No description of capabilities, purpose, performance, extensability, flexibility, etc. No examples of what the code could be used for.

Just code.

I have code that could do amazing things, but I'm trying to make it useful, documented, and have examples before I try to do anything business-related with it. Without the documentation and examples behind an attention-holding introduction, no software has a chance to do anything but bit-rot.

I'll go for your lesser challenge of five...

IOW, one for each year that they have existed. As it is, I doubt that you could come up with 5 that others do not point to and show that it came from elsewhere.

I'll just go for five brilliant ideas:

• Bundle your OS part with the purchase of any PC compatible machine, not just the hardware we built.
• Only license your core apps (Office, SQL Server) on non-threatening operating systems to prevent switching.
• Bundle TCP/IP connectivity with the OS.
• Bundle a web browser with the OS.
• Make LDAP accessible to mere mortals (AD).

(Of course, these five are also reasons why some people hate Microsoft.)

Besides, the guy is giving MS a compliment (backhanded, but still a compliment).

If his target audience is techies (who value "innovation"), then it's not a compliment - period.

Re:I'll go for your lesser challenge of five...

TOS and Kickstart already had IP-Stacks.

Well, in the sense they were available, yes, but the guy was talking about Microsoft going one step further and bundling it. I never owned an Atari ST, but I can tell you that none of the TCP/IP stacks for the Amiga were ever bundled with it in Commodore's lifetime.

AS225, Commodore's own stack, was never even released outside of a handful of developers. Amiga users had to rely upon AmiTCP or KA9Q (renamed "AmigaNOS") to get it to work. AmiTCP was free software (BSD license, IIRC) up until the 3.0 betas, but controvertially went shareware with version 4. KA9Q was... uh... yeah. You didn't want to use it.

To go on to other mainstream platforms of the time: So far as I'm aware, it wasn't until the late nineties that MacOS had a stack bundled with it. Stacks were available before 1990, largely due to the Mac's entrenchment in academia, but they weren't bundled with the system. OS/2 Warp 3 "came with" a TCP/IP "stack", but for consumer versions it was close to useless. It only supported SLIP, and wasn't modular, so you couldn't just add a device driver for your Ethernet card (or just PPP) and it'd work, you'd have to throw the entire stack out and buy the premium version from IBM.

So really, other than Unix, no mainstream operating systems came bundled with a full TCP/IP stack until Windows 95 did. I hate to say it, and maybe it'd have happened anyway, but Microsoft did pioneer there.

Quick list of the Myths

In case of a /.ing

Myth #1: A brilliant idea will make you rich.
Myth #2: If you build it they will come.
Myth #3: Someone will steal your idea if you don't protect it.
Myth #4: What you think matters.
Myth #5: Financial models are bogus.
Myth #6: What you know matters more than who you know.
Myth #7: A Ph.D. means something.
Myth #7: I need $5 million to start my business
Myth #8: The idea is the most important part of my business plan.
Myth #9: Having no competition is a good thing.
Myth #10: After the IPO I'll be happy.

Re:Quick list of the Myths

Myth #11: The marketing department can run a engineering company.

I had a job interview for a QA position at 3Dfx a year before it went under. The interview with the QA manager went OK even though I kept asking myself if I wanted to work with someone who has a mohawk and body piercings (not exactly uber-professional). Then I had to be interviewed by the marketing hack. At that point, I did not want the job and they didn't offer the job since I had nothing to say to the marketing hack. Shortly after that, 3Dfx announced they were screwing over the board manufacturs by making their own boards to compete against them. Of course, they all jumped ship to nVidia and nVidia picked up the 3Dfx engineering team out of bankruptcy. No word on what happened to the marketing hack.

uhh

wouldn't that make knowing what customers want a good idea?

One obvious omission...

...use soap, water, and deodorant liberally.

You can let yourself slide back in to the "code daily, shower monthly" schedule after that seven-figure VC check is in the bank, k?

PhDs

Myth #7: A Ph.D. means something.

Reality: The only thing a Ph.D. means is that you're not a moron, and you're willing to put up with the bullshit it takes to slog your way through a Ph.D. program somewhere.

I agree with the second part of this statement, but take issue with the first. I deal with PhDs all day, every day. Many of them are indeed morons who happen to have a great depth of knowledge in one miniscule area. After several years of doing this job, I've concluded that the only thing a PhD proves is that you were able to devote several years to a PhD program.

Re:PhDs

Perhaps you would like to step into the role of a PhD who *does* perform research and development? I've found that most of the time when people say stuff like this, they have no real idea of what is involved in either obtaining a PhD or working as one.

The PhD not only demonstrates that you are capable of thinking critically, it shows that one is able to communicate, analyze and create new "content" and make advancements. Speaking as a PhD, the job is much harder than I ever thought, though it is fun and I would not do anything differently. Having to write grants, write papers, teach, perform science, deal with administrative duties all at the same time is a much harder job than most folks realize. Of course that is just academia. If you add in work in the private sector on top of that, you have even more responsibilities (though prospects for more money). Some PhDs of course stick to industry and do quite well. That's all fine and dandy, I just like the additional challenge of academics in addition to commercial work.

Re:PhDs

True.

But there is also the point that (for some) education is a worthy pursuit in and of itself. It's value is intrinsic instead of instrumental.

Since I began my PhD studies, I have worked (all expenses paid) on three continents, including taken my family on a semester-long assignment to Europe, and influenced national policy. I'm actually putting off defending my prospectus for a week because I have to meet with the National Academies to finish up a report with them. Because I've made the right connections (and I would like to think I'm proficient at my work), I'll leave school with very little debt (I'll owe about as much on my car as on my student loan).

If I had to go into industry and I never used my advanced degree for anything in the professional world, I would still consider my graduate work worthwhile. In fact, I would still consider the last six years of my life the best of my life.

That said, I do know a great deal of PhDs who are, in fact, morons.

#1: Hubris. #2: Laziness

It's ironic. The two things that make engineers so good at engineering are the two things that make them so unsuited to running a business.

Hubris is a trait of engineers that makes them strive for greatness in their products. After all, you can't really have good pride if you're constantly getting negative reactions to your stuff. However, it also leads to a close-mindedness and tunnel-vision in regards to other technologies and solutions. A good businessman must be able to survey the market and understand the positioning of his product. Someone who thinks that they have such a great solution that it is applicable to any and all problem domains is selling snake oil. See Netscape and Sun's Java for two examples of solutions that were billed as much more than they realistically were.

Laziness is a good trait for engineers because it forces them to seek efficient, easily-implementable solutions to everyday problems. Automating tasks is absolutely essential to creating value in a company. However, the business side of running a business is not reduceable to a script. There are serious tradeoffs that must be weighed all the time in order to guide a business down the road to success. These can't be automated. The laziness trait leads engineers to seek easy solutions when they should be seeking difficult-to-find synergies. Well-designed software is modular with simple interfaces. Well-run businesses are well-integrated and derive their strength from business units coordinating with each other, not simply acting as a pipeline from one end to another.

It is communication!

I personally feel that a key reason that a PhD may struggle in the industry is miscommunication between him/herself and the real world.

Given the technical capability and the dedication, a PhD with certain sales/marketing knowledge could take off quickly.

Myth #11

Blogs are a good source of business advice

Re:Myth #11

[Myth #11:] Blogs are a good source of business advice

Why should I believe you? Do you have a Ph.D?

- RG>

#1 is right

Myth #1: A brilliant idea will make you rich

No a brilliant idea will make some other company rich because a single person doesn't have the capacity to make a full item. I've had many ideas that made other people rich in my life. I never run out of them. But I still live in the boonies :P

shocking

to sum it up, most geeks are out of touch with the common user...
I am really attempting to act suprised.

Re:shocking

Best exemple of this: iTunes.

A lot of people on Slashdot will complain that it takes too much memory, is heavy on the CPU, doesn't have enough settings/parameters, have DRM in store-bought songs.

Normal users see a pretty program that's easy to use, that does everything that they want, including buying a single tune for 0.99$ on an otherwise 10-20$ CD. Add "connect cable to sync iPod automatically without doing anything else" and you've got a winner.

When the linux community finally understands that (too many) choices are bad (and that automated everything isn't evil), linux on the desktop will be a real viable alternative. In the meantime, OS X is the only real-world alternative to Windows.

Now let's sit back and see my score go to "flame/troll" by some linux user that doesn't see (or doesn't want to see) the point I'm making here.

One exception to #1: Patents

I think that there are more than a few cases where all it took was a good idea for someone to make a ton of money.

Just don't count on it paying for retirement..

No competition.

Myth #9: Having no competition is a good thing.

Reality: If you have no competition the most likely reason for that is that there's no money to be made...

He should take a look at a company called Microsoft. Creating a no-competition environment seems to have worked out well for them.

...There are six billion people on this planet, and it's very unlikely that every last of them will have left a lucrative market niche completely unexploited.

Two words: iPod and iTunes ..... I'm not saying they are easy to find one but there are a few lucrative market niches that have been left completely unexploited and the funny part is that most of them are so bloody obvious that most people manage to overlook them.

Re:No competition.

"Two words: iPod and iTunes ..... I'm not saying they are easy to find one but there are a few lucrative market niches that have been left completely unexploited"
Actually those are really bad examples.
the Ipod wasn't close to the first music player. ITunes wasn't the first online music store.
Apple just really did a great job of taking two existing ideas and implementing them well.
What the guy missed was.
"Great ideas will not make you rich. Great implementation of great ideas will make you rich."

Re:No competition.

He should take a look at a company called Microsoft. Creating a no-competition environment seems to have worked out well for them.

Microsoft had many early competitors. They have competitors now.

iPod and iTunes were not new ideas. There were other MP3 players, there were other music managing applications, and there were other music download services. What Apple did was deliver a product that simply better than what the competition was offering at the time. Apple had competition when the introduced these things, they also have competition now.

The article talks a lot about the author

So we have a PhD who still thinks LISP is the best thing since sliced bread and has experiance building networking hardware that was fast, but not compatable with Ethernet. Sounds like a real academic to me. He does have a good point in "make sure customers for your product exist before you start your company", but overall the article reads like a bit of venting steam from an academic that tried to make a go of it in the "real world" and discovered just how different life is on the outside.

11!

Nigel Tufnel: The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and... Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most amps go up to ten? Nigel Tufnel: Exactly. Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it's louder? Is it any louder? Nigel Tufnel: Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where? Marty DiBergi: I don't know. Nigel Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do? Marty DiBergi: Put it up to eleven. Nigel Tufnel: Eleven. Exactly. One louder. Marty DiBergi: Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder? Nigel Tufnel: [pause, blank look and snapping chewing gum] These go to eleven.

In short

'x' won't make you rich, your customers will.. Decent nailing of a few good points people tend to forget.

Beem there, done that...

I used to work for a major US research university in their commercialization department. We were the guys who pitched ideas to venture capitalists, wrote business plans and tried to keep the inventors down to earth. I fully agree with what was said in the article, especially how important is to know your customers, but I'd like to add a few points:

• Sales team. The first person you'll ever need is the VP for sales. Then you'll need a good, experienced sales team. No matter how expensive they are, these people will make or break a business. I ended up leaving my job and joining a startup precisely for this reason.
• Time frame and financial needs. One thing all startups underestimate is the need for quality assurance. Generally, testing for defects takes more time than assembling a product. Thus, the time to market should be at least tripled and the cost doubled from what you expect.
• Intellectual property. True, patent protection is overrated. However, there are thousands of inventors and companies waiting to sue your ass off if you infringe on their patents. More important than filing your patent is to research whether you infringe on others' patents or not, and settle any licensing issues. This will get very costly, and in this case getting good lawyers is worth their weight in gold. We pay roughly $5000 per patent examined, but they decreased the number of patents we thought we would license from 40 to 2.
• Company share. Many inventors don't want to relinquish control over the company, and want to maintain a majority stake at any cost. Most investors wouldn't agree with that, with a good reason - a researcher running a company is recipe for disaster. And as the classic saying goes, it's better to have 5% of $100 million than 100% of nothing.
• IP ownership. I talked about infringing on others' IP already, but what about the inventor's IP? The inventor must transfer all the rights to the invention to the company. Otherwise, the inventor will exercise undue influence over the business, and sooner or later (rather sooner) this will create conflicts between the inventor and the management.

There are plenty more rules of the game, but this game is too flexible to make any of them universal. The best thing is to give over your technology to a seasoned entrepreneur and just ride along.

Re:Beem there, done that...

Good list. On the IP front, the article made one very stupid comment:

"Patent protection does serve one useful purpose: it can make investors feel warm and fuzzy, especially naive investors. But I strongly recommend that you do your own patent filings. It's not hard to do once you learn how (get the Nolo Press book "Patent it Yourself"). You'll do a better job than most patent attorneys and save yourself a lot of money."

I am a patent litigator, and I would LOVE to defend someone from infringement based upon a patent that was written pro se. While I agree that the Nolo book is one of the best, don't file anything other than a provision patent application yourself. The filing of a provisional will give you 1 year to market your application to VCs and other investors before having to lay out the money for a real application. A quality patent prosecutor is worth their weight in gold if you ever plan on licensing or litigating the patent, and good prosecutors are not that much more expensive over the course of the application than cheap fly-by-nighters.

Patent Protection

I particularly liked #3. I was always told that - "If you don't go right out and patent your idea, someone will up and steal it right out from under you."

But he just reiterates what I've read in many other places (although he puts a different spin on it).

I've read that you are essentially protected, as an inventor, by the act of inventing. You have created the work on which other things may try to be based, but you are protected by virtue of the fact that you first created it. The patent puts some extra teeth into the matter, but most of it is completed by the creation itself.

I've never quite heard it reasoned, however, in the way the author did.

It's also refreshing to read this from a business perspective instead of from the perspective of "Inventors - pay us money to patent your ideas, and then you'll be rich (if you can find a way to do something with your idea)."

Everything they taught you in school is wrong

Sucess in school is merit based. It's not like that in real life. If anything, success in kindergarten is a better predictor of sucess in post school life, before they brainwashed you with all that merit based nonsense.

Re:Everything they taught you in school is wrong

If success is not merit based then what is success based on?

First and foremost "Success" is ultimately an abstraction. It's highly subjective. Academia's merit-based system quantifies "success" in a manner which is inconsistent with the real world.

Generally speaking, you can't take a test and as a result, make yourself happy or financially secure or loved in any substantive sense.

Plus, in the academic world, showing up is a major factor, which won't cut it in the real world if you really want to advance.

For the purpose of illustration, let's say success is point B and you are point A. In school, you get to point B by sitting on a vehicle that is on a track that is clearly headed towards point B. All you basically have to do is keep your hands and arms inside the car, push a little, and you'll get there. Compare this with the real world, where point B is never in one spot for very long -- it moves around, and there aren't really any reliable maps or means of transportation. You're left alone to get there, and everyone that was on your academic ride is now a competitor and less-motivated to help you. This is why so many people come out of college and don't know what the hell to do. College doesn't teach resourcefulness as much as it teaches compliance. The typical academic skillset does not lend itself well towards entrepeneurial pursuits.

Myth #9 No Competition is a good thing

The good news is that it is very likely that your competition sucks. The vast majority of businesses are not run very well. They make shoddy products. They treat their customers and their employees like shit.

So true. At my previous employer we spent years waiting for the competition to blow us away, because our product sucked and we treated our customers like shit. But the customers didn't have any place to go, because every vendor in the market sucked.

Need coffee...

I thought it said "Teen Geek Myths Busted", and started wondering if the whole acne things was a falacy...

Gads, where's the coffee machine?

Dept Tag?

Someone explain the dept tag? Who or what is "Kari"?

Ignore him, build something you like

As someone else said, entrepreneurs have different goals than venture capitalists.

Build something or sell a service you like. Don't base the product on *just* you and your buddies, but if you do no like what you are making or providing, you'll hate yourself. Feeling good about yourself and having someplace worth going to every morning is worth much more than getting rich from an IPO. There will be plenty of opportunities to do something you don't like even when making a product you love. One of the best things about having your own business is that you can walk away. It may take food off your table, but you have the *choice*.

Doing something you like just plain sells better, too. Customers know when you are really excited about your product, and they know when you are just handing them a line. The worst sales job is selling something you don't care about, or worse, that you actively hate, to people you do not respect. Respect your customers, find out about *their* needs, but, at the end of the day, deliver something you care about or walk away. I never made it rich as an entrepreneur, but I would do it again in a heartbeat.

If I wanted links to blogs...

If I wanted links to blogs pretending to be news articles, I'd be at digg.

On the Money

I think most of these myths are right on the money. It has always amazed me, for example, how many people have foolishly thought that a mere [untested, undeployed] idea could be relatively valuable. And I've often felt that patents are like viagra for investors... ultimately they may be unenforcable, but if you can attract some dumbass investor on the premise that you own "intellectual property" you can cash in.

Most of the dot com failures can be directly attributed to people beliving many of these myths. Priceline.com was one of those companies that I immediately thought, "WTF?" and they're a good example of believing in all of those boneheaded myths.

I particularly like Myth #6: What you know matters more than who you know. I'd add as a footnote to that: "See Bush, George W."

Idiotic at best.

In bussiness, all rules and ideas have exceptions, all of them!
Humans are contradictory in nature, hence bussiness too.
It reminds me of a quote from the Simposons.
Judge: Lisa Simpson, for lying under oath I sentence you to life in exile in Monster Island.
(Judge whispers)don't worry the existence of Monster Island is a myth.
-Lisa running away from Godzilla and Mothra through the Jungle -
Lisa: I though that Monster Island was a myth!
Person running away: Actually Monster Island is a peninsula!

The only myth is that in a world were people live in extreme poverty
a profit driven society is morally acceptable.

As the old joke goes...

"Venture capitalist Ron Garret has posted a list of eleven (despite the title) common mistakes entrepreneurs with a technology background make."

There are 10 types of people in the world. But ten of them think base-eleven is ridiculous.

All things political

but the sad fact of the matter is that compared to you, most people are pretty dumb (look at how many people vote Republican ;-)

Someday I look forward to a day when not everything you read has to be political. Forget about which side is being picked on here, it is an article about geek myths! Why the Republican bash?

Oh yea, /. requires all articles to have a bach against Republicans or (even better) George Bush.

This may explain Google

By extension, having a Ph.D. and holding a patent are not particularly helpful if the intended end-user does not have the same level of understanding of the widget as the creator does."

Somehow this lends itself to explain some of the legitimate criticisms of Google. Having it explain Google's doubt for the Midwest outside the occasional visit to a convention would be a bit of a stretch.

Countering Myth #10

From TFA:

Myth #10: Having no competition is a good thing.

Reality: If you have no competition the most likely reason for that is that there's no money to be made. There are six billion people on this planet, and it's very unlikely that every last of them will have left a lucrative market niche completely unexploited.

I think this entrepreneur [bettybeauty.com] might disagree with that statement.

What sells is what I TELL you to buy!!!

"A common theme is that good ideas sell; in reality, what a customer wants sells."

This is true. Good ideas don't necessarily sell. What a consumer wants, sells. An effective company will either find something that the consumer already really REALLY wants, or more likely convince the consumer that they want the company's product.

It's all marketing. You can sell a good idea or a bad one, or you can go bankrupt on a good idea or a bad one. The product is irrelevant.

Myth #12

Venture Capitalists know something about business.

I'm not saying this guy sucks and know nothing about business - I actually agree with a lot of what he is saying.

But am I only only one who thinks that having a load of cash doesn't make you right. Generally, people who have lots of money made it in a quick windfall and invested it well - which basically is not that difficult to do. It's like taking advice from a lottery winner.

There are of course many very skilled business who made astute decisions and deals (in would include Bill Gates in there).

But I have occasionally watched programmes like 'Dragon's Den' or that thing with Alan Sugar or now god forbid Jade bloody Goody, and thought what the 'hell do you know' - sure they are entitled to say 'sorry I wouldn't back you' - it's their money. But they have absolutely no right to say 'mate, sorry but you're wrong, and if I say it won't work then give up' - that's just stupid.

Remember, one of these guys said that the Internet would never take off.

Anyway, I'm just using this as excuse for a rant; as I said I liked his 10 myths.

Myth #6

Myth #6: What you know matters more than who you know.

Myth #6a: It's not what you know, it's who you know.

Reality: It's not who you know, it's who knows you.

Myth #3: Someone will steal your idea

"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats."
-- Howard Aiken quoted by Ken Iverson quoted by Jim Horning, 1979

Re:Number 11)

I thought the parent was actually pretty amusing for a FP, but it should be:
"12) Hot grits..."
in light of this comment on the linked article's page:

Ron said...

        But do you need a Ph.D to count to 10 without repeating the number 7 twice?

        Now, for a limited time only, buy ten myths and get the eleventh myth absolutely freeeeeee!

(throwing away my fresh mod points on this enlightening article's comments)

Re:Is LISP really the most productive programming

I did a lot of Lisp back in school. I've never used it in real life, though. Here's the thing: most programming algorithms boil down to performing some operation over a list of objects. Languages that facilitate this process while alleviating you of housekeeping tend to be very productive. But if the syntax is too unconventional, no one will use it. So you need a language with built-in lists, easy iteration and mappable functions, and a conventional syntax that is easy to learn. Also, it should have lots of good libraries and be "correct" in a certain academic way, so there are no surprises and everything is explicit.

In other words, learn Python.

Re:Is LISP really the most productive programming

I like LISP (Scheme actually, don't know full LISP yet), but is it really so good? I even borrowed Paul Grahams book from the library recently, but only flipped through it. I simply have my doubts about the syntax: is it really OK for productivity? It looks kind of ugly and verbose.

Syntax is not the reason to avoid Lisp.

The biggest reason to think twice about using Lisp is library support. Do stuff in Python or Ruby (or even Perl) that uses regular expressions, ftp and email, date conversions, reading from zipped files, Unicode, MD5 checksums, MIME handling, and so on. Then do the same in Lisp using an out-of-the-box implementation that runs on all platforms. Just try it yourself.

Re:Is LISP really the most productive programming

I don't have a lot of LISP experience, but it looks like once you grok the LISP nature, it's an incredible environment. You can write new language primitives (no more complaining "Well, when I used to program in $LANG, we had the $FOO feature" -- you write an implementation of $FOO and use it just like it was part of the language). It's also easy to write complete mini-languages (or maybe I should say "extension languages"), so you can create a domain-specific language, then write all your code in that language. Kind of like writing numerical analysis programs using Mathematica instead of FORTRAN. It also seems to lend itself to "bottom up" development, making it easy to write (and test) small routines, then use those routines to build more powerful ones.

I've been meaning to get a handle on LISP for a long time now, just wish I had the free time to do so (I've got Paul Graham's book, as well as SICP).

Um, verbose?

What exactly do you find "verbose" about Lisp? I find it makes for extremely succint code that's modeled closely after the concepts of the problem domain, myself. If I can understand the problem domain well, typically the most understandable program I can write will be in Lisp, because it will get in my way far less than any other language.

No, lisp isn't very good at all actually.

Smug lisp weenies have been reduced to "lisp has powerful macros!", since perl, python, ruby, pike, etc all have all the other functionality of lisp that slws used to brag about in the 1970's. Many people consider slws to be just outright wrong though, and that the idea of dynamic languages is not actually good. Try ocaml or haskell, and then notice how not only can you write code faster than you can in lisp, but its an order of magnitude easier to maintain.