Startup Founders Should Flip Burgers

http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2009/10/15/startup-founders-should-flip-burgers/?awesm=grp.vc_BM&utm_campaign=GRP&utm_medium=grp.vc-twitter&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_content=tweetmeme

by jasonlbaptiste • 17 years ago

20 25 17 years ago

bothsidesofthetable.com

jasonlbaptiste• 17 years ago

I think the key take away of the article is this: Even if you're the "business guy", you should have some technical understanding of what's going on. It's a benefit for actually making strategic internal decisions or simple investor pitches. Sit in on tech discussions, learn the basics, or hell even take some simple CompSci courses at your local community college (basic theory). I know you're strapped for time, but it will be well worth it.

shykes• 17 years ago

Another takeaway, maybe more relevant to the HN audience: if you're a technical founder, you need to get your hands dirty on financial modeling, customer development, and all the other non-tech stuff that "will ultimately owned by functional experts".

nkassis• 17 years ago

I credit my mom for making me take all business classes as electives. I wanted to do something like physics but she made a good point that if I wanted to run a business one day, I probably should know what Accounts Receivable means.

edw519• 17 years ago

I know OP used "flipping burgers" as a metaphor, but for my brother and me, it's very real.

We both worked at McDonald's in high school when it was difficult to get a job there and they ran a very tight ship. It was the hardest job either of us every had. We had to do everything: cook, clean, take care of every customer, make sure everything was in place and everything was properly scheduled. We had to smile the whole time, and when everything was done, we had to come back and do it all over again the next day.

We may have complained how hard it was back then, but now we both realize how valuable those work habits would be in every single job either of us has had since. The lessons easily apply to any start-up.

Now if I could only get a hot Big Mac without making it myself.

anigbrowl• 17 years ago

Fully agreed. Even better, a job at an independent diner or suchlike - at a franchise, many of the supply/purchasing/pricing decisions are made for you, whereas at a locally-owned business you'll probably glean more information about the economics of things from the owners. I also spent about a year in construction when I was younger, experience that I've drawn on many times over and which was worth far more than the pittance I was actually paid.

gcheong• 17 years ago

Reminds me of a quote I read from Charlie Munger:

“I get flack for saying [when I visit a college and give a speech], “This is a nice college, but the really great educator is McDonald’s.” They hate me for saying this and think I’m a slimy creature. But McDonald’s hires people with bad work habits, trains them, and teaches them to come to work on time and have good work habits. I think a lot of what goes on there is better than at Harvard.”

RK• 17 years ago

I was at a McDonald's a while ago and they had a job ad that said something like 20% of the entire US workforce had been employed at McDonald's at one time. I found the number very hard to believe, but interesting if true.

RevRal• 17 years ago

I learned a good lesson too.

When I was a management trainee, my training manager abandoned me (physically left). I was two people short, meaning I was dealing with drive through (taking orders, filling orders, and taking money) and making the food. The dude at the fry station, it was his very first day. Oh, and it was lunch.

I made a mistake and the customer contacted the franchise owner about it. I'm guessing she yelled pretty loud because I lost my position, even after explaining what happened.

Actually, I don't know what the lesson was.... needless to say, I got out of there. I don't miss being a teenager.

The whole thing still bugs the hell out of me, like I somehow went up against three destructive forces and I still can't make sense of any of it.

dstik• 17 years ago

If flipping burgers isn't for you, I received a great piece of advice once, take some time and work for a used car dealership for a few months. Point being everyone should learn how to sell, how to be a salesman, you can be the most technical person in the room but without the ability to "sell" people on your product or articulate what makes it worth while, you are missing a key element. And face it, if you can be successful selling used cars (or cars in general, in this economy) you'll have a very practical skillset.

tomjen2• 17 years ago

I would rather risk being bad at selling and get to keep my soul.

petewarden• 17 years ago

Up-voted from oblivion not because I agree, but because it's a common attitude that I held for a long time, but which now drives me nuts.

Maybe my soul leaked away while I wasn't looking, but I've had to spend a lot of time selling in the last year, and the typical hacker contempt for 'marketroids' is way off the mark. It's a deep, deep art that deserves respect.

Can you cut corners, be a douche-bag and rip people off? Sure, but it doesn't work as well as you think, and show me a programmer who hasn't shipped something that has made at least one person's life a misery. All the used-car salesmen in the world have nothing on the Windows OS developers if you want to compare suffering inflicted on the world. I still can't look someone in the eye if I know they spent good money on the F1 '98 game I worked on: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formula_1_98

thetrumanshow• 17 years ago

I had a pastor who worked as a used car salesman during the day because our small congregation couldn't afford to pay him a full-time salary.

I have always thought that this was the worst kind of conflict of interest.

kalvin• 17 years ago

Confessions of a Car Salesman: http://www.edmunds.com/advice/buying/articles/42962/article....

HistoryInAction2• 17 years ago

I recommend doing political phone banking. You're selling not only a person--the candidate--but also what he or she represents. If you can sell an idea, pretty much a vessel where people put their hopes, dreams and fears, then you can sell a product that actually exists and will actually fulfill some need.

I typically had to about the end of my first line to judge how the call was going to go. If I was interrupted during that first line, the trick would be to get out of the call without having earned a vote for the opponent. Sometimes, I'd just bounce up against personal armor and the call would be a waste. Sometimes, you'd find a 'fellow traveler,' and the call would be easy and enjoyable, with the only limit of not talking for too long and destroying your efficiency. On the other hand, calls like that do wonders for your morale.

The rare times were when someone was willing to be engaged, but only from one specific approach. Those rare calls, maybe 5% or less, would give you about 30 seconds to guess on the approach. In some cases, it's being ultra-respectful, on the other agreeing to listen for five minutes before getting a commitment.

All in all, political phone banking was one of the more thoughtful job duties I've had, at least in retrospect. Like the other jobs mentioned, it's incredibly wearing with the daily grind of making quota.

motoko2• 17 years ago

I worked at McDonald's. It helped make me the man I am.

Mark, have you also considered advice to burn estates? It is analogous from the under up as your flipping burgers is from the over down.

lamby• 17 years ago

> I worked at McDonald's. It helped make me the man I am

A lot of people say this. How can you be sure you are not just kidding yourself into thinking the time you spent doing something actually quite unproductive was useful?

motoko2• 17 years ago

If you were a man of titles and wealth from a family of the same, and you overheard a lean stranger say to a man of some skilled employ to you: "The best servants burned down estate once..." how would that make you feel?

...Especially, if you knew that was true?

Keep feeling; invert class.

btilly3• 17 years ago

This reminds me of a piece of advice from Brian Fox (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Fox) which is that anyone who wants freedom should get enough jobs as waiters to be confident that you can do it at need.

The reason is very simple. If you are in a strange place in desperate circumstances, an experienced waiter finds it fairly easy to get a job. And very importantly, you get to eat on your first day in the job. This makes it a very valuable fallback to have.

If you're a waiter in a decent restaurant, the food will also be pretty good. Furthermore once your circumstances improve, it is a job that you can leave easily.

(Note that Brian Fox's circumstances have definitely improved. He had a successful startup back in the mid-90s.)

alain94040• 17 years ago

If you're into extreme survival mode, why not go directly with growing your own crops and vegetable garden :-)

btilly3• 17 years ago

This is not advice for survivalists. It is advice for people who want to lead an interesting life. In his case he wanted the freedom to travel and work on free software back in the 80s. His skills as a waiter provided a safety net that gave him the freedom to do that.

Growing your own crops would be an absurdly horrible strategy. Imagine that you're in a strange city and your wallet was just stolen. You have just a few days of reserve cash. Would you at this point prefer the fallback plan of, "Plant these seeds, wait for them to grow" or "Get a job as a waiter, eat immediately"?

incandenza• 17 years ago

It's interesting that this also seems to have factored into Richard Stallman's philosophy. Since he considered working on closed software unethical, and noted that he could always survive as a waiter, he felt he couldn't justify working on closed software based on the excuse that it was necessary for financial reasons.

btilly3• 17 years ago

This is unlikely to be coincidence. Among other things, Brian Fox was the first person ever hired by the FSF.

TalentOnCampus• 17 years ago

You gotta cook the beef & acquire the client so If ur in the restaurant biz it’s time flipping burgers and if ur in the product startup space it’s time on the phone [works way better than email] Everybody talks about innovative products. Innovative sales & marketing is ignored We have made inroads into accounts like Dell, Yahoo, Walmart & Google and it all started with tracking big guns at these organizations attending conferences, getting their phone numbers from conference organizers, calling up & requesting a meeting at venue – also to mention an innovative pitch. Definitely could not have been done by a sales ace to start with but definitely something we can teach a sales guy to replicate Bottom line – if the founding team does it themselves its easy to build a scalable process

Mz• 17 years ago

My ex worked at McDonald's and then later was career military. He once indicated they were much the same: In both cases, you have a uniform, photos of the chain of command are on the wall, and they work you like a dog. (Or something along those lines.)

Startup Founders Should Flip Burgers

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