<i>I will readily take a business-minded, action-oriented cofounder who gets shit done. I have absolutely no interest in a hustler.</i><p>In my mind, that is the absolute definition of a hustler, someone who will get shit done. Predicating that hustlers are sleazy, or have questionable ethics, or don't value technical skill sets is the same as assuming that "hackers" are people who break into computers.<p>Sure there are probably a lot of sleazy "hustlers", just as their are malicious "hackers", but in my mind the definition of a hustler is someone who comes at the same problem as a good hacker would - with the same tenacity and willingness to try new things and the inability to quit in solving a problem.<p>In which case I absolutely want a hustler on my team, just not a shitty one.<p><i>Admittedly, I've done Micah some disservice by referencing his article. The Hustlers he describes aren't the sleezeballs I keep encountering, but unfortunately they share the same space and a more literal interpretation of the term includes them.</i><p>So it sounds like the summary is that good hustlers are hard to come by, just as good hackers are, not that they aren't good to have. The title seems to suggest otherwise.
I've known a couple of examples. There was the hustler who was booted from his own startup because he was a shallow jerk that no-one wanted to work for. The company is doing very well without him.<p>Then there was the founder/hustler who made promises to customers without even consulting his development team, despite this repeatedly coming back to bite the company in the rear-end. He's still doing it today.<p>I think it's great if someone is willing to do whatever it takes to make a deal... but the deal isn't over until the product is in the hands of the customer. When promises are made that can't be kept, it lowers everyone's morale (customers, developers, hustlers, etc). Hustlers need to look at the big picture and understand what the real cost of closing a deal is.
The problem is that there no hustlers in Bay Area/Nor Cali. The culture's home is New York, and more along East Coast (Miami).<p>A lot of my friends (in Brooklyn, NY) are hustlers.<p>Nor Cali and New York basically two opposing cultures.<p>Hipsters will never be hustlers.<p>Make no mistake, hustlers may not know how to setup an EC2 instance but they know how to make bank.<p>(I'm using my definition of hustler, which is someone along the lines of "Naughty" per pg's essays, especially someone who operates in "grey" areas (not illegal).)
In my experience, hustlers (the 'naughty' kind) are good for making everyone think you're making real progress while your company is actually going sideways. We had a couple hustler-types who spent a lot of time blowing smoke simultaneously up engineering, BD and customer's asses.<p>It was only after they were gone that we were able to disentangle an elaborate web of false expectations and outright lies and start making actual progress again. Particularly mischievous was the way that these guys often created constant panics for engineering due to the unrealistic promises that they'd made to customers - they would then regard this as 'good management' (look how hard we're making everyone work).<p>Bonus points for the fact that these guys were working on their own startup "on their own time" (sort of).
My proposal: stop using the word "hustler". While many people in the startup community have gotten used to the "aggressively active or enterprising person" definition, for most people, the first definition that comes to mind is "a person who lives by stealing or other dishonest means; a thief, pimp, etc."<p><a href="http://www.answers.com/topic/hustler-slang-term" rel="nofollow">http://www.answers.com/topic/hustler-slang-term</a>
Tomato, tomato.<p>Just splitting hairs about what people call a hustler. this post is just as easily titled "I've met a bunch of shitty hustlers".<p>Plenty of good "business guy"/"hustler"/"business-minded, action-oriented cofounder"s have just as much trouble finding good engineering talent.<p>Yes, finding quality people is hard. That's part of the game.
For what it's worth, the term "hustler" is used pretty frequently as a colloquialism for pro-actively selling in a range of industries. I've heard it used in reference to musicians, writers, actors and artists.<p>In the Ricky Gervais series "Extras" in the episode with Patrick Stewart when Ricky accosts him to look through his script Patrick says "I know I know, you're hustling".<p>There's also the popularisation of the term in the hip-hop culture (gotta hustle y'all, we gotta hustle) where the term represents achieving despite extreme adversity.
I actually think I could fill either the hacker or hustler role in most teams, but would prefer to work with one or more other people so I can focus on one or the other role.<p>"Sales engineers", consultants, and hackers who enjoy building/promoting their own products are probably all some combination of these roles.
The author's definition of hustler seems to be different from mine. <a href="http://joeyroth.com/poster/" rel="nofollow">http://joeyroth.com/poster/</a>
When I think of "hustler" in this sense, I think of someone who is constantly involved in relationship-building work (although I've never heard the word used in this way, but let's run with it). He may be a scam artist or unethical; he may not be. They're not all bad (but most are). The hustler's social and work lives have fused into one more-than-full-time job, and he chooses his friends based on how useful they are. He usually started out fairly well-connected, and has the huge leg-up of an MBA from one of the big three (Harvard, Stanford, Wharton) business schools, and now has a huge network of contacts. This is only a marginal advantage for entrepreneurs (mid-level investment bankers are useless "connections" for startups) but it lets the hustler feel full of himself because he has other options (i.e. his connections can get him a $250,000 job, so you should feel privileged that he is taking the time to talk to you) than whatever project he's doing at the time.<p>When it becomes insufferable is when the hustler thinks his social connections deserve to trade at a ridiculously high rate against more evenly allocated (and therefore more common) assets like talent and drive. As he sees it, he knows all the important people, but any idiot can code. So he tends to offer terms like 5% equity for writing all of the code to implement his idea. They get what they deserve when only idiots want to code for them.