Startup Founders Can’t Live in Silos

May 19, 2010 by Ben Yoskovitz 25 Comments

The “classic” founding team for a startup is one business guy and one tech guy.

Sounds logical but the model is flawed and risky. The risk is this: If either founder feels like they can live in their own silo (either business or tech), the startup will flounder and the likelihood of failure increases significantly. You can’t have a business guy in a room by himself making all the “business” decisions. And you can’t have a tech guy in the room next door just “building technology.” The business is the technology. And the technology is the business. They’re inseparable.

Startups are lonely. That’s made worse with founders living in silos.

Simon Coste – Fotolia.com

Alex Sysoef

Great points! I work with partner and we are both Tech guys who share business load, we just have a higher emphasis in certain areas of our business but still shared otherwise.
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garydpdx

Bravo, Ben! Another perspective, along the same lines, is this piece called, “If you are in a startup and have a title, you are not doing enough work!” …

http://leanstartups.com/2008/10/if-you-are-in-a…

And its follow-up, “Dangers of Big Titles” …

http://leanstartups.com/the-operations-guy-big-…

Basically, in a start-up, everybody needs to be all the way in. No barriers. Thanks!
Markus Stein

Too Risky…
Steve

You're right, I see this a lot. In the best business partnerships I've had I (business guy) try to learn all that I can about the technology so I can translate everything to practical business advantages. I encourage the same from my technical people.
Sergey

Thanks for your nice information. It will help me in great ways. Thanks a lot.
M_Dilli

Well, in my opinion it will depend on the nature of the business and also on the size the business is expected to have. If it is a home-based start up the founder and the “tech guy” could be the same person. If you are not talking about home-based businesses then I would say the situation would change and the company would probably need to start including more people, with other capacities to their teams. But that will be as the startup starts to grow.
bkjrecruiter

Good points… I am a Recruiter that is focused on Niche/Startups… from my experience in 13 Years/250+ hires, I agree with your silo hypothesis biz/tech, etc

Best, B-
Visiitkaart

One or two guys are good as founders, as start up or creation team may be good only at the beginning.
michele

thks for your information
Benjamin Yoskovitz

I certainly wasn't saying that companies should remain two people. In fact, I think the optimal startup founding team is 3.
Benjamin Yoskovitz

Startups clearly need to hire more people when the time is right. The point of this post isn't to say that startups should be 2 people. In fact, I think co-founding teams of 3 are better. The point of this post is that if you have 2 people in a co-founding team and one person is tech and one person is business, that they can't live in silos.
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Endrianur Rahman Zain

Founder and startup have a different goal in their life. No one can argue that.Sometimes they can be in silo, as long as they have same goal. Maybe for a start but not forever. So I think it's depend on the situation. You can not generalize that.
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Anthony Webbs

I agree, it depends with the nature of the business. Like most tech start ups, the “tech guy”, “project manager” and founder are one and the same person.
tata

thanks for your info…very useful for me..!!
video izle

very nice explanation, thank you for this information.
plr

Hi i’m coming to visit yo.. good post. friend .. thanks for u share
06:32
medyum

thanks for information
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You are right, to start a new business you have to be very careful if you want to stay in that business for long
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Startup Founders Can’t Live in Silos

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