Yup. I kinda thing this whole entrepreneur vs builder thing is just a rationalization for programmers that they don't have to be good at entreprenorial stuff and they have an excuse. True, few people are good at it, but it's the same proportion as in every other population, maybe they're even more frequent due to the programmers already being smart and sortof open. There's no inverse relation.
The bad news is that any valuable skill is rare and hard to learn. You're not going to get is as easy as a new programming language - it takes lots of time and trial&error, and not a little luck (and talent, the same thing).
It's not a "rationalization" - it's a recognition that people are different, and good at different things, and how to work with and around that. As I said with the original posting, I admire PG for having 'shown the way', or at least one way, for builders to have a go at a startup.
You can look at it the other way: lots of entrepreneurs aren't that strong technically. Some go out and try and learn, some try to find other ways around the problem - by partnering with tech people, for instance.
"Identifying where I am now means I can't change myself" is one way of looking at this. Another, of course, is that by identifying where you are now, you can plot a course for what you want to do next.
I've been a "builder" my whole life, terribly shy, no clue about sales or marketing or business, just glad that other people took care of that so I could get paid to do interesting work. For the last couple years, I've been doing things to get over the shyness, and have had a lot of success. Now getting learned up about business, because I want to own the thing I'm working on and have it pay the rent.
That's why I'm on HN. Looks like a lot of us here are doing that.
I find the idea of calling them "entrepreneurs" to be just WRONG. What I think you're saying is "biz guy"... Which are critical for some startups, but useless for others.
Varying startups require that someone steps up to the plate to perform a variety of tasks-- and for each startup, the needs are different.
Tridge is considers Australia's best hacker. But he has no interest in forming any company. The only time he was convinced was to help form a company was with Linuxcare. Along with Rasmus Lerdorf (PHP), Martin Pool (Apache), Paul 'Rusty' Russell (ipchains) and Richard Morrell (SmoothWall)
He is interested in superior technological solutions.
He does not care about term sheets (aka term shits) or vesting rights etc.
He get paid VERY WELL for stuff he loves doing.
What is better than that????
BTW, he was ANU chess champion and often played blindfolded.
