Some of these Ask Me Anything threads on Reddit are really fascinating, and often times, you'll get people who are/were heavily involved in the cs/startup/business industries. I'm not sure if you guys view these sort of submissions as spammy, so I've tried to not submit every AMA thread that I find relevant and interesting. Anyway, lots of interesting information in this one.
I think this comment by the exec may be relevant. (He is talking about his thoughts on starting a company, which he is a part of now.)
"A cool technology or product is not a company or a business. A real business is as much about sales & marketing as it is about product. Even if you have invented a flying moon car that runs on urine, if you can't sell it, you don't have a business. Do not start a business without a marketing person and a salesperson."
You may not agree about starting with a marketing guy and a sales guy, but I think that if these are shoes you can't or don't want to fill, you must hire them soon.
This guy was hired right out of college and worked his way up in a massive corporation over 10 years. I would trust his opinions on starting a new company very little.
There's no doubt he can talk to the talk. That's the primary mechanism for promotion in a big company. I would be very careful about mistaking his opinions for actual experience.
Also keep in mind, he graduated with a CS degree, not a business degree, and he's in a small business now.
"I was hired soon after college (computer science degree) and rose up the ranks from product development"
So this guy started with a CS degree, hired into product development for a major tech company, and was promoted from there.
I'm not saying that necessarily translates to starting a company, but I think his advice holds a little more knowing that he worked both sides of the equation (Product development and management).
In case you're unfamiliar with the IAmA series on Reddit (which I see is getting positive feedback from HN readers, needless to say), a 'starred' post such as this one means that the OP has verified his/her identity with a subreddit moderator.
Just wanted to point out since this new process was implemented only few days ago.
The IamA subreddit is developing an interesting culture. There are some issues of people faking, but in general it shows an interesting cross-section of life in a very addicting and supportive way.
Redditors seem to take a certain pride in being uneducated. Better to spend months reinventing a square wheel poorly than to Google a bit and find a paper on how to design round wheels.
I take issue with the "So true" statement. It's either true or false, not a degree of true or false. That would be fuzzy logic or something and that's just bullshit.
