Zach Coelius

A guy on news.yc (a great resource for startup related info) left a question that got me thinking.  He said "

A almost all of the responders told him to learn to code.  What you would expect on a site that is full of hackers.   Yet I think they are wrong.  There is a super important place for non-technical people in startups:

I left a response:

I have to disagree with all
the hackers in this discussion. Code is super important, but a startup
is still a business. Business is a team sport that requires many
different talents. If you can’t code move out to San Francisco or
someplace where startup congregate and find a startup that needs your
talents whatever they may be. Learn the ropes and meet people. Repeat.
Thats what I did. There are lots of non-technical people who have done
well this way. Read Mark Cuban’s posts on motivations they are the best thing you will read today. He was
non-technical and kicked ass.

I moved out to SF as a non-technical biz guy two years ago and now I run a VC backed startup.  It can be done.

R and I are headed to the Trinity Alps this weekend for a much needed three day vacation.  I am quite excited.

I hear the trout fishing is awesome.

I have to admit that for the last couple of months I have been feeling the fear about the economy and by extension the tech world.  At a VC panel at the Imeme conference I asked Mike Moritz and Fred Wilson what they advised their companies to do when the future seems a little shaky.   Their response was a little weak at the time.  Fred Wilson rectified that today with a great post about startups, stages and the economy.  Well worth a read.

A you can probably see I have been getting into placing pictures on my blog lately.  Here is an amazing example of photoshop work.

I find that when I don’t feel like doing something (today it is working on another damn patent) blogging is a great procrastinating tool.  Its productive while fun at the same time.  Who could ask for a better combo? 

On a side note a lot of us out here in the tech world are curious what is going to happen to the current tech boom if the economy softens.  I think we are in for a long tech boom in general, but we may be in store for some short term pain.  A lot depends on the Google stock price.  I am not confident that small business owners won’t significantly lower their Google spend in a recession.   If that happens GOOG will tank and everyone out here will feel the pain.  Or not.  We’ll see.

Update: Jason has similar things to say here. Henry Blodget outright calls it a crash here. I am super bullish on tech in general but equally curious about the economy.  It is one of those we’ll see things right now

On the plus side R and I found the Rodin sculpture Garden at Stanford last night after we went to the Demo party.  Awesome. I love Rodin and it was like manna from heaven running into it.

Fred Wilson has an amazing post on the value of time for a startup.  I blogged a response over at the Triggit blog.  Fred’s is one of the best posts I have read in a long time.

Somehow I feel off the wagon a few days ago and joined the facebook frenzy.  Yep. Logged in and spammed everyone I know to become friends.   Argggg.  I blame it on the fact that we are looking to hire people and Facebook seems like a good way to let my friends know.  It still hurts though.

Triggit is hiring.  Again. Always a good sign.  Right now we are very seriously in the market for a web designer.  As well as the usually collection of engineering talent, (ie we are really interested in talking to generalist engineers familiar with web services)  . If you or anyone you know is looking for work have them ping us jobs @ triggit.com

Brad Feld is continuing to fight the good fight here against the stupidity of software patents.  As a startup patents are intended to protect guys like us from having our ideas stolen.  The only problem is that they are largely impossible to actually use.  It takes five years to get a patent, at which point who cares anyway since the state of the art will be far beyond where we are.  Moreover what startup can actually afford to pay the lawyers to enforce a patent?  And on and on.  They suck…

We spent the weekend with the parents in Bolinas.  A very cool little community…