- VCs aren't interested in "revenue tomorrow" unless you mean a 10x+ exit multiple. VCs want you you to focus on your product because there's an invisible( and sometimes not so invisible) clock running as soon as you take the investment.
- VCs aren't interested in 5-10 year tails on their investments. Most are looking for an 18mo.-3.yr ROI. If you can prove revenue and 'market traction' they'll extend your runway accordingly, however that's a constantly moving target and generally the types of VCs who are interested in the 'long tail' aren't the same that want to give you money at the infancy of your company.
- There is definitely a big difference between a traditional consultancy and a product focused organization but only in the sense of the 'end goal'. If your entire plan is to bootstrap your company by building a consultancy, it's easy to keep a separation of concerns between the two halves of your organization. Usually the "clash" that you're talking about is when a consultancy based/focused organization decides to build a product, not when a product company decides to do some consultancy.
Developers (in fact, all of technology) are considered cost centers at ALL businesses. There's not an MBA on the planet that wouldn't jettison the entire technology cost-center of their business in a heart-beat if they could figure out how to do it and still achieve their monetary objectives.
> Developers (in fact, all of technology) are considered cost centers at ALL businesses. There's not an MBA on the planet that wouldn't jettison the entire technology cost-center of their business in a heart-beat if they could figure out how to do it and still achieve their monetary objectives.
This is pretty funny because in a software company, devs are the only ones creating actual global value (as in, something that a customer could realistically derive value from). Every other instrument in the company is pretty much how to turn value into incoming cash flow or reduce outgoing cash flow.
It'd be like Apple trying to jettison its designers.
This is an extremely cynical comment. First, hard-line profit/cost center thinking is falling out of fashion at top MBA schools like Harvard and has been for years. But also, a reasonable MBA would be able to recognize when the tech team is actually creating value vs. when they are dead weight that could be outsourced. And, it's really myopic (and the kind of thing that people make fun of engineers for) to believe that tech is the only ones adding value. Value (perceived, communicated) is potentially created all up and down the chain.
Oh, I just meant value as it applies to the person who actually ends up using whatever the business is making. Of course perceived and communicated value is most important to a business. After all, if you could somehow convince people to just dump money on you without doing anything for them at all, you'd be the best business of all.
Either they're dead weights or they're not. How does outsourcing change the equation? Certainly not by reducing cost -- not if you want to outsource to non-dead-weight development group.
Seriously? Take a bunch of do-nothing office drones, can them all and get a maintenance contract with some consultant in eastern Europe. What's hard to understand about that?
- VCs aren't interested in "revenue tomorrow" unless you mean a 10x+ exit multiple. VCs want you you to focus on your product because there's an invisible( and sometimes not so invisible) clock running as soon as you take the investment.
- VCs aren't interested in 5-10 year tails on their investments. Most are looking for an 18mo.-3.yr ROI. If you can prove revenue and 'market traction' they'll extend your runway accordingly, however that's a constantly moving target and generally the types of VCs who are interested in the 'long tail' aren't the same that want to give you money at the infancy of your company.
- There is definitely a big difference between a traditional consultancy and a product focused organization but only in the sense of the 'end goal'. If your entire plan is to bootstrap your company by building a consultancy, it's easy to keep a separation of concerns between the two halves of your organization. Usually the "clash" that you're talking about is when a consultancy based/focused organization decides to build a product, not when a product company decides to do some consultancy.
Developers (in fact, all of technology) are considered cost centers at ALL businesses. There's not an MBA on the planet that wouldn't jettison the entire technology cost-center of their business in a heart-beat if they could figure out how to do it and still achieve their monetary objectives.