A couple ofpeople have noted that in my responses - titled "It's the Tech Guy Obviously!" and "What about the Business Guy?" respectively - to Ann Bernard's initial post "The Tech Guy vs The Biz Dev Guy" that I've been hard on the BizDev Guy. As in incredibly hard, ripping him to shreds, openly mocking him, and just short of bringing up elderberries. I'm sorry gentlemen, but it's time to take a look at ourselves...

What does the Tech Guy lack?

This is a followup to my previous post - "It's the Tech Guy Obviously!" - which was written in response to Ann Bernard's "Tech Guy vs Biz Dev Guy". As she is my partner in WhyGoSolo, lots of disclaimers apply. An yes, all the pronouns here are male... oh well.

In my first post, I dinged the BizDev Guy pretty hard because - to be blunt - he's ignorant of the technical issues. Which, in my opinion, are the biggest and most fundamental at the beginning. As I noted last time:

The Tech Guy might incorporate as the wrong business structure, he might have a terrible UI, he might not have any market research to support his project. All of those things are easily fixable and since he has a prototype, it's simple to figure those pieces out.

I feel like it's all been said already, but since that's never stopped me from talking before... ;)

Wow, SocialDevCamp was amazing.

First, the opening were great. Ken Yeung was good enough to catch some of the opening discussion on Viddler. Look past the chaos for a minute and see how order appears and negotiations happen implicity. It's amazing how when you have a lot of smart people around and competing interests that we can work something out without anyone being *too* disappointed. We started with 25+ sessions and were able to filter it down to 16 pretty easily. We had 4 sessions going concurrently throughout.

For sessions, I attended:

In terms of disclosure - and you couldn't figure it out from this site - I'm a technologist. I always have been and can't imagine being anything other than the Tech Guy sitting at the table. That said, I do tend to have - and share! - business insights and perspective... some of them are even valuable...

Yesterday, my friend and colleague Ann Bernard asked an interesting question in The Tech Guy Vs. The Biz Dev Guy. In fact, I wrote on a similar issue just a couple weeks ago in Managing Technology in a Startup. In that, I focused on making sure there was a Tech Guy at the table in a startup. That technical issues and information were considered on Day One. That the technology was not treated as an afterthought. But Ann's question is a bit different:

Who do you think has the greatest battle to fight and who is best setup for success? The Tech Guy or the Biz Dev Guy??