Do you really need the MBA?

This one’s for all the I’ll-do-CompSci-then-MBA-and-become-a-manager-in-a-software-company types.

From Eric Sink on “Geeks Rule and MBAs Drool”:

The following is an example of one of the most common questions I get from developers
who are creating a brand new software company:

Where can I find a partner to be a co-founder and handle the business side of things?

My answer: Don’t.

It is common to see software companies starting out with two founders, a geek and an
MBA. Do you really need the MBA?
If I were to oversimplify the message of this article, I would make two statements:

1. Developers add more value to a software company than anybody else.
2. The truth of statement 1 is inversely correlated with the size of the company.

If you really want a partner, don’t find an MBA, find another geek like yourself. Don’t be
afraid to allow your company to be very developer-centric for a very long time. By doing it
this way, you’ll avoid a lot of problems and you’ll learn a lot.

Come to think of it, isn’t this how Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft, and most of the successful ones started – “By the geeks, about the technical problems, for the customers”.

And I mean geek as in hacker, not its actual meaning (hopefully, the self-proclaimed geeks know that! ;) ).