The purpose of a start up is to serve their customers. I think that we at HN tend to downplay the importance of business guy's role in this task. They abstract many of the "mundane" tasks of scaling a business and let the technical guys focus on coding the product. I can't find the essay, but PG did mention that a business, in its simplest form, is a product that serves customers. Though there has always been an "us vs. them" mentality between the two, the ultimate goal is to best serve the customer.
This business guy vs hacker thing is a false dichotomy and I'm sick of hearing it. It's good to work with others, and it's good to specialize, but there's no reason one person can't be competent at both.
