Who is Doing the “Real” Work?
Some “Salesy” business people find an unmet market need.
They have a vision that customers will pay big bucks to have a problem solved.
The Business Founders focus on the business and bring on a “Coder” to build the solution to the problem in return for ramen, red bull, and token equity.
The Coder dutifully creates the solution, like a carpenter methodically builds a sturdy table. After seeing the Business Founder’s brilliant marketing and sales pitch, the company is overwhelmed by customer demand.
The Coder complains that there is too much work for one person, but the Business Founders understand that they have to keep resources focused on bringing in more business to stay ahead of the competition.
The wildly successful launch quickly leads to a 3-way bidding war between Amazon, Facebook, and Google, and the company is acquired for millions, just 11 months after it was founded.
The Business Founders are proud of the valuable opportunity that they identified. They know that without the sales engine that they created, the company would be nothing.
They split the money equally between themselves, generously peeling off 0.1% for the Coder for doing the grunt work of building the widget, since the Business Founders did the “real” work of strategically leading the vision, pitching, financing, managing, marketing, growing, and selling.
Some “Nerdy” engineers identify a new technology that they could create.
They have a vision that customers will pay big bucks for the technology.
The Technical Founders focus on the technology and bring on a “Sales Guy” to take care of advertising, sales, and partnerships in return for pizza, beer, and token equity.
After a whiff of the amazing technology, the company is overwhelmed with demand and the Sales Guy dutifully takes the endless line of orders, like a Walmart cashier on Black Friday.
The Sales Guy complains that there is too much work for one person, but the Technical Founders understand that they have to keep resources focused on improving the technology to stay ahead of the competition.
The wildly successful launch quickly leads to a 3-way bidding war between Amazon, Facebook, and Google, and the company is acquired for millions, just 11 months after it was founded.
The Technical Founders are proud of the valuable technology that they created. They know that without the product that they created, the company would be nothing.
They split the money equally between themselves, generously peeling off 0.1% for the Sales Guy for doing the grunt work of selling their brilliant technology, while the engineers did the “real” work of strategically leading the vision, researching, architecting, prototyping, designing, manufacturing, QAing, and supporting.
It is easy to assume that the things that we have not done are simple.
The more that we learn about something, the more complex we realize it is.
Both sides are challenging and necessary.
- Good Business + Bad Product = Failure
- Bad Business + Good Product = Failure
- Good Business + Good Product = Magic
An effective product can only come from a deep understanding of the industry, customer, problem, and desired outcome.
An effective business can only come from offering an effective product or service.
- No product builds itself.
- No product sells itself.
- Both sides are essential.
- Both sides are equal.
