I think what you are proposing is a false choice but I understand why you want to frame it this way.
Having been an entrepreneur for the last fifteen years, I have come to learn that my job description as an entrepreneur is simple, "if I could describe it, it ain't my job".
In other words, in the beginning of the startup, you have to do whatever it takes (be an engineer, be a salesman, be a negotiator, etc.) but once the company gets off the ground, then you need to give that responsibility to someone else. But by then, there will be other tasks that are not well defined that require your attention. And the cycle continues until the company is no longer a startup and the entrepreneur has lost his/her place in the company (or he/she matures into a manager).
At the end of the day, an entrepreneur's job is to connect the dots. It is a deceptively simple description of what we do.
"Perhaps it's getting falser as techies increasingly don't need business guys as cofounders."
The reason the barriers to starting a business are falling is because the tech side is getting easier and cheaper. The business skills one needs remain unchanged.
I agree. My own experience is that entrepreneurs tend to greatly underestimate the difficulty of selling. Particularly on this forum, we talk a lot about "making something people want" as if that's all it takes for a startup to succeed but we don't talk enough about "making customers pay for what they receive". My own experience is limited to selling to enterprise customers. In that case, the necessary condition is to provide a solution that puts out a fire that is burning someone's butt. But it is far from sufficient. In the end, it all comes down to convincing someone to risk their career and the financial future of their family on an unproven product from an unproven startup. Having a killer product is only the first step.
As the tech side gets cheaper and easier it may become harder to differentiate based purely on tech. This would seem to put a premium on entrepreneurship vs. naked technology. The easier it is for a lot of people to start tech businesses, the more the business model you choose makes a difference. It's possible that business guys increasingly won't need techies as cofounders.
I agree. Once you get past the idea phase of an early startup, everyone is essentially a builder. Even salespeople, business developers, and negotiators are contributing towards "building" the company. Once a company moves beyond the startup phase, the role of the founder begins to change -- the founder then needs to find a place in the company or move on to the next challenge.
I have been writing a book based on my own entrepreneurial experience. I am half way done. My last chapter is entitled "The Nail that Keeps the Air from Leaking" and that pretty much describes my own experience as an entrepreneur building a company from scratch.
Once the company is profitable. It is really boring. Then the challenge is to find a way to leave (without others feeling that you have abandoned them). And there are so many ways to do it wrong but the main one is that we tend to overstay our welcome which is human nature, so the founding entrepreneur becomes both a bug and a feature.
What you wrote is a very apt description of my idea of the 'entrepreneur', but it definitely isn't the "builder"/"Woz" kind of guy, so much. Maybe in the right circumstances, builders can handle that stuff (like PG in my example), but I don't think it comes as natural as it does to people who really fit into the role you describe.
Steve Wozniak was not an entrepreneur; he was an inventor and a great engineer. He didn't even want to leave HP to start Apple. Steve Jobs was an entrepreneur but I would argue that he was also an inventor and a great engineer (great product engineer). Obviously the two Steve's are different. Not being one doesn't automatically make you the other one. And that's what I mean by false choice. You are who are you are and all of us are a little of both if not a little of everything. Entrepreneurs by definition do not fit nicely into slotted description. That's why we decide to be entrepreneurs.
Jobs has done enough to be a personality of mythological proportions, but I don't really see him as an engineer or hacker without really stretching the definition of either term.
I understand "hacker" to be a self-created definition for a computer programmer with an altitude. If this is true, then I think there are few of us who would fit this description, including Steve Jobs. But an engineer is a much boarder term and if the definition of an engineer is someone who has a four-year degree from an accredited University, then you are right again, Steve Jobs is not an engineer. My apology.
With an altitude? There are a lot of good ones outside of places like Colorado:-)
Joking aside, I am going to respectfully say that I'm not sure you have fully digested the meaning of 'hacker' as we use it here. This comes fairly close:
(watch out for the mangled parens), although of course many people aren't working on open source projects. An 'attitude' isn't really part of the picture, IMO, as some of the best hackers I've met are also extremely nice (and well adjusted) individuals. When you're that good, you don't need an attitude to communicate how good you are.
To keep using PG as a useful specimen for examination, the reason I think he's more hacker than entrepreneur is that an "entrepreneur" (in my mind) is less likely to go out and build something that is (once again in my mind) completely useless in terms of making money, like, say, Arc. It's just a fun thing to build that scratches his itch.
With an altitude (to succeed), with an altitude (to create), with an altitude (to make a difference in our World), with an altitude (to ensure fair play and to be a good citizen), and finally, with an altitude (to fight the good fight in spite of all odds and adversities). That's what I had in mind. Thanks.
I think the "distinct" part is what makes it false choice. "Builder" (ability to create a product personally) is good. "Entrepreneur" is good. Having either one in spades may be sufficient for success. Having some measure of both may be as well.
It's pretty easy for me to think of people that are in one category or another, but more difficult to think of people who are a good mix. PG might qualify... who else?
To make this into an easier true/false question lets look at the http://www.startupschool.org/speakers.html Of these Marc Andreessen, Jeff Bezos, DHH clearly qualify, and likely some of the others as well (I don't know enough about them).
Having been an entrepreneur for the last fifteen years, I have come to learn that my job description as an entrepreneur is simple, "if I could describe it, it ain't my job".
In other words, in the beginning of the startup, you have to do whatever it takes (be an engineer, be a salesman, be a negotiator, etc.) but once the company gets off the ground, then you need to give that responsibility to someone else. But by then, there will be other tasks that are not well defined that require your attention. And the cycle continues until the company is no longer a startup and the entrepreneur has lost his/her place in the company (or he/she matures into a manager).
At the end of the day, an entrepreneur's job is to connect the dots. It is a deceptively simple description of what we do.