It might help focus the discussion if you quoted some specific thing I've written about business guys that you disagree with. You may find if you look that your impression of my attitude towards them doesn't correspond to what I've written.
Indeed. I think it's highly improbable that you undervalue business guys. That is not my claim. My claim is that simplistic readings of your more subtle points (done by some in the News.YC community) about business result in the type of attitude I described. I'll edit this comment with examples in a few minutes.
Perhaps one of the more relevant essays is "What Business Can Learn From Open Source". The average workplace is accurately described as torture, however only a small percentage of business people (the ones in charge) are responsible for perpetuating such a stupid waste of resources. Not all or even half of business people are like this. You certainly don't claim this is so, but News.YC does exhibit an anti-business bias. There was a really good comment thread from the perspective of a business person posted recently about this, but I can't seem to find it. There's a really interesting larger discussion here, but I feel the lack of assembling evidence on my part is constraining.
I must admit, the "aversion towards business people" critique of HN is not my experience - I'm a business coach, and for me C+ was a grade I got once in Phys Ed.
I enjoy the start-up culture, and especially the tech focus of our community, but if you guys didn't love business like I do then I would have grown bored 340-something days ago.
He might be referring to applicants into YC. YC generally doesn't accept startups with all business guys and no tech founders, though it readily accepts startups with all tech guys and no business founders.
At the very beginning, you've gotta build. As for knowing what to build, the assertion has been that hackers can learn that. They don't need to have it filtered by a business guy.
I'm guessing that's where he gets his impression from. But then again, until he points to specifics, I'm just guessing.
In short, function over form. What function (value) can a founder bring to the startup? If the function serves its role well and did it well enough, the founder can (earn the right to) exercise some form. Like arrogance or anti-suit attitude.
