[Patents] consultation questions

[ramon@jl1.quim.ucm.es (Ram'on Garc'ia Fern'andez)]

On Tue, May 08, 2001 at 07:52:37PM +1000, Lachlan S. James wrote:

> As a VC, I agree.  A startup has absolutely everything running against it: 
> low/no sales, low/no money in the bank, low/no market reputation, etc. ... 
> EXCEPT (hopefully!) innovative, energetic people capable of thinking 
> differently. 

Sorry, like plenty of people you have a very wrong view of the
software industry. Joel Spolsky (former program manager of Microsoft
Excel), can explain it much better than me.  If you are a venture
capitalist you *must* read his essays.

"I'm convinced that most people think about software companies in an
upside-down way. The common belief is that when you're building a
software company, the goal is to find a neat idea that solves some
problem which hasn't been solved before, implement it, and make a
fortune. We'll call this the build-a-better-mousetrap belief. But the
real goal for software companies should be converting capital into
software that works. If you understand this, it's easier to make the
right strategic decisions.

[...]

There's a different way to think of software development.  Imagine
that the goal of your software company is not to solve some specific
problem, but to be able to convert money to code through
programmers. That's a little bit strange, but bear with me. A software
company has to think of recruiting the right people as its number one
problem. If you are successful, this can solve any other problem. Hire
smart people, and they will produce good stuff that you can sell and
make money off. Then everything else follows.

[...]"

The complete essay is at
http://joel.editthispage.com/stories/storyReader$17 ;.

The table of contents of Joel's essays is at
http://joel.editthispage.com/stories/storyReader$94 ;.


Ramon