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This is the blog of Jeff Barson. I'm currently running HireVue Labs, former Director at Sendside, founder of Surface Medical, Nimble, Medspa MD, Freelance MD, Frontdesk, Uncommon, and Wild Blue... angel investor and startup advisor. Oh, and I'm a artist. More >>

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    "Everyone wants to kill the king. But the prince, he just sails along telling all the ladies, 'One day I'm gonna be king.'" ~
    Vince Chase, Entourage

    Entries in Paul Allen (1)

    Saturday
    Apr172010

    Paul Allen: CEOs Who Code

    I was reading tonight a Paul Allen post about CEO's who code.

    I tried to leave a comment but I think I was unsuccessful. At least I didn't get the 'moderation' confirmation that's common on Wordpress blogs.

    Paul's post was dead-on with this.

    There’s an amazing feeling of satisfaction when you build something that works – and better yet, something that is used by thousands of people.

    Now, I'm not a coder by any means. In fact, any mention of coding by those are not immersed in C+ or Java or Ruby on Rails or whatever is probably too much.

    For myself, I've had to learn a little CSS, HTML, SEO and enough of other stuff that I can often cut and paste real code to get things to work the way I need them to.

    The first 'application' that I created was cobbled together from some off the shelf shopping cart software and, what was then, newly discovered RSS feeds... but it worked. (Way before Groupon I might add.)

    As soon as you have the title of CEO (and it's a real company) it's irresponsible to be coding. A CEO is responsible for the direction fo the entire organization, and that requires that a CEO's head be above the trench line and not down in the Java.

    That being said, CEO's who understand how code is developed, structured and what's possible are a huge asset to a technology company. Before you can create something new you must understand what's possible and the shortest, most efficient way to get there.