So, your real answer to 'got data to back that up' was 'no'.

I've seen coders grow in to a business role and be confident, but I've never seen a business guy grow in to a coder role and be confident.

If I had to bet on two startups, one with just coders and one with just business guys I'd bet on the coders.

Coders tend to be problem solvers, they see business issues as problems to solve (and for the most part they are), business types tend to think in terms of how to get other people to do the work for them, when left to their own devices it usually doesn't go very far.

The 'ideal' startup in my view is 1 business guy for every 5 to 10 hands on types, instead of the usual, the exact opposite.

I'm pretty sure I'm biased though :)

I'm saying there's no data either way. How would you suggest even obtaining a reasonable unbiased selection of companies to test the hypothesis ?

It's very hard to avoid selection bias, if for example you took a sampling of companies that received series A funding and were reported on crunchbase, you'd be missing a huge selection of companies that failed to make it that far (which could be because they lacked the business expertise to get financing, or could be because they lacked the execution capabilities on the technical side).

Not to mention crunchbase overwhelming focuses on consumer startups rather than b2b startups, which naturally introduces more bias.

Almost every business in the world is about problem solving, only a very small minority of them are technical, it's ludicrous to suggest that "business types" aren't good at problem solving.

> Probably explains why a large number of coder only startups fail due to lack of customers...

Was your statement, and it was only reasonable that you were asked to back that up. If you then say 'there is no data either way' then I'm wondering what you base your judgement on.

I've seen several 'coder only' start-ups go to very great heights so naturally I was curious if there would be some common element in those start-ups that you knew about that would differentiate them from the ones that I know about.

Business types in general are good at running a business from a management perspective, making sure that people perform at or near their potential. That in itself is a very worthwhile skill and it is an essential component, usually closely related to having people skills.

But those same people would be completely lost when it came to solving - relatively simple - technical issues.

Since you are posting this on a form where the majority of the start-ups that get looked at and launched are of a very technical nature that was the context you made your remark in, to now extend that to 'the whole world' broadens the scope considerably, but I think that it still doesn't change the nature of your argument, and so far there is not much to substantiate it.

Problem solving is a universal capability, it means that when presented with an obstacle you will find your way around, under, over or through it.

Business people have this but their 'talent' may be limited to doing that in a non-technical way. Most coders I know can apply that talent to all kinds of problems, including business ones.

That is why I think that a group of coders stands a much better chance of getting a company off the ground than a group of 'just' business people.

Well there are two basic reasons tech startups fails technology failure and business failure. I assumed it was self-evident that a lot of tech start-ups fail on the business side (both those founders by coders and those founded by business people). Look at the list of YC company failures, they're almost all business failures rather than technical failures.

Ok, but I'd take it as read that YC brings a bit of business acumen to the table.

I think a better conclusion to draw from that is that start-ups fail in large numbers, period.

The fact that they crash mostly for business reasons doesn't mean that those companies don't have business people associated with it. It simply means that running a start-up is hard, that your chances of success are small and that the business part of it is one of the hardest parts.

If the co-founders get everything right, but screw up the business bit then they don't stand a chance. But whether or not they have a business background hardly matters since almost all start-ups will have someone in the background with that expertise.

The bigger problem is that bad ideas get funded just as often (or even more often) as good ideas. And that good ideas will identify themselves in a really simple way, they get off the ground with relatively little effort in the business department, there is time enough to take a 'business guy' on board after you've become somewhat successful.

Google is a nice example of that.

i think 99% of the deadpool companies were just bad ideas, like hunch, or oneriot (too soon?), but to even get up to bat, you have to have both business and coding skills.

Exactly. And by failing (even a couple of times) you are going to learn more about how to run a business (or not) than by getting an MBA.

It takes a lot of stamina, guts and willpower to get to stage one to begin with.

After you've been part of that a few times it gets easier to spot problem areas before they become lethal.

Another thing that really helps is to observe how others fare and to observe closely if they succeed, and closer if they fail, just to make sure that that particular mistake isn't one you're going to repeat (don't worry, you'll have a wide range of original ones to choose from).