How Many Geeks are Needed to Start a Tech Company?
Apparently not as many as it takes to screw in a light bulb.
So you’ve decided to start a tech company — congratulations! Good for you, you’ve taken the first and hardest step. What are you planning on developing? A cutting-edge new app? A cool new game, perhaps? Whatever this exciting new technology may be, rest assured that building it will be incredibly difficult. To make this process easier, I’ve laid out the steps I’ve followed with my team. Follow these steps, and learn from my mistakes for smooth(er) sailing.
Step 1: Find Some Geeks
The first thing you’re probably going to want to do (after you find investors, easy right?) is find a few tech geeks to supplement your superb business knowledge and instincts. They’ll also be key to writing the actual application, but let’s not sweat the small stuff. So, you hire and partner with these geeks. . . now what? Well, now you get to work, and that is where the real fun begins.
Step 2: Buy Computers
You need to go out and buy computers for you and your geeks to use. Easiest step, right? Wrong. If you’re doubting that this is an extremely difficult thing to do, try going with a tech guy to any Apple store, Microsoft store, or a Best Buy. You attempt to go in with a plan, you walk in, and the geek instantly walks away, roaming the store like (literally) a kid in a candy shop. However, in this example, your business partner is more like a kid walking through a candy shop managed and staffed by other sugar-addicted kids, all excitedly talking about the different ingredients in their favorite candy bar.
After a few painful hours in the store, you head home to set up your new computers. This is by far the most complicated and annoying thing you will probably do throughout this entire process. For people that can code an application, these geeks are pretty incapable of installing something like Windows in a timely fashion. Everything, from setting up an email account, to sharing a Dropbox folder, takes them hours.
Not only do things take hours, but they also seem incapable of answering your basic tech set-up questions.
Take this exchange, for example:
Me: “Hey (insert geek name here), I’m trying to share this folder with Joe on Creative Cloud and it’s not letting me. Can you kindly come take a look and let me know what you think is going on?”
Geek: “Have you tried turning your computer on and off?”
Me: “That’s totally unrelated to my problem.”
Geek: “Try it anyway.”
Me: “. . . Fine. . .Done. It still isn’t working.”
Geek: “Try Googling it.”
Me: . . .
Really though, why do I have a geek if I can just Google it myself? What do I have you for?
Eventually, your geeks will be able to solve any problem. You did, after all, select them yourself, and they’re the best and brightest. It will just continuously annoy you how long it takes them to solve simple problems (and yet, how quickly they seem solve the complex ones).
Step 3: Find an Office
So, you search far and wide for the perfect space at the perfect price. You find one, and bring the geeks in to see it. Don’t be surprised if their reactions goes something like this:
Geek 1: I’m not sure about the lack of windows, it’s harder to code when I feel like I’m in a cave.
Geek 2: I think there are too many windows. There will be a glare in one of my six screens.
Geek 3: I don’t care.
How do you make a decision on this office space with two different opinions and one indifferent? Just decide, without consulting them, and save yourself the headache.
Step 4: Start Building
Computers? Check. Desks? Check. You’re now ready to get going. Be prepared, however, to deal with endless requests every step of the way. It will start with them exchanging every piece of technology you bought them. Following this, each time your geeks implement a feature or move the needle forward, they will come up with another request to make them “more productive”. Be prepared to build requests for things like standing desks and 1000 monitors into your budget early on.
In conclusion, geeks are kind of a pain. A necessary pain, but a pain nonetheless. They make every step along the way endlessly more difficult than it needs to be, they can’t answer simple questions, and they’re super needy. Without them, however, none of this would be possible. Our dream and vision for this company and this product would still be just that — a dream and a vision. Thanks to my geeks, that vision is becoming a tangible reality. Thank you guys, I don’t know where I would be without you. I’ll try to remember that the next time you ask me to turn off and turn on my computer again to fix a simple mistake.
