(Yicai Global) July 11 -- In this technology-driven era, a striking number of programmers have left big companies to strike out on their entrepreneurial own. The chief executives of large internet companies, like Pony Ma who founded Tencent Holdings in 1998, Mark Zuckerberg getting Facebook online in 2004, and Zhang Yiming, the founder of Toutiao which has enjoyed prosperity in recent years, all come from technical backgrounds.

For programmers, the option of a business start-up is driven by market attention, with their technical abilities greatly sought after in the outside world. It is also pertinent to their promotion. Most programmers enter a comfort zone after working for a big company for a lengthy period and handling the modules and projects familiar to them.

At this point, however, a sense of crisis overwhelms them -- the chute of ascent grows ever narrower and technical improvement becomes harder, noted Chen Yunwen, chief executive of Data Grand, who has nearly 10 years' experience in internet companies such as Baidu and Tencent.

Yet starting a business leads to another distinct path where programmers must meet higher requirements. Most entrepreneurs with a technical background have the advantage of keenness and ability to apply new technologies, but a gap remains to be filled in their cognition in terms of corporate management, i.e. seeking partners, team expansion, team management and mining customers. This is an "obvious disadvantage" for most programmers, said Chen.

"Programmers may be capable of developing an excellent product. But this is certainly no guarantee of business success," Chen told CBN Weekly. We have interviewed several entrepreneurs with a programmer background and sector investors. Some of them have management experience in large companies, while others embark on a voyage of exploration from the very start.

If you are a programmer preparing to start a business or in the early stage of startup, their stories and experience can serve as a good reference. We have thus summarized the following six tips for close attention:

First, develop a marketing mindset.

Financing will not pose a significant problem for a programmer's entrepreneurship. Technology is the best capital. Since programmers tend to emphasize the thinking mode of analyzing problems from the essence, in this impetuous financing environment, investors will view this feature as appealing.

Investors always recognize programmers' clear and logical thinking. However, to increase the probability of successful financing when demonstrating their products to investors, programmers might resort to a marketing mindset -- rather than merely demonstrating their coding -- to better attract investors. Mao Wenqiang serves as the chief technology officer of Rishiqing, a startup dealing in software that serves collaborative developer teams and project management. In initial contacts with investment institutions, Mao highlights the features and development logic of their products in his presentation.

Investors, however, are more concerned about business issues like data obtained, future development direction, and merits and demerits of their competitors. Mao learned to write business plans, reorganized his content and eventually got financing.

Second, startup teams need complementary capabilities.

Aside from engineers, the core team of Facebook also includes chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, a businesswoman who once worked for Google, who oversees issues beyond technologies. Facebook realized profitability for the first time in the second year after she joined it.

Entrepreneurs also need to take note of other departments' roles in facilitating a company's advancement. A company not only needs technology talents to research and develop products, but also requires them for other functions like the business, marketing, and operation, de rigueur points to address when an entrepreneur hunts partners. 

When investing in startups established by programmers, ZhenFund specially advises such entrepreneurs to invite partners able to coordinate with business, marketing or sales teams to balance the comprehensive capability of their staff.

Third, learn to communicate with clients.

For Chen, during the early stage of a startup, to learn clients' demands and communicate effectively represent the most challenging tasks. The largest obstacle to communication is that technicians consider a matter from the perspectives of technologies and solutions, whereas clients are more concerned about what problems the software solves from the angle of services.

To this end, the solution lies in the combination of the thoughts of both programmers and clients from different standpoints. The former must introduce their products using baby talk, and dumb down techno-babble that often confuses clients.

It might take a long time for programmers to explore such new expressions, but the core is to shed the mindset of solving problems merely through technologies and consider issues that concern clients, like what the user interface is like, where the buttons are, and how to use them more smoothly, rather than getting entangled in core technologies.

Fourth, keep an open mind.

You cannot start a business on your own. The founder must be able to actively access and use resources and seek help from outside in a wide range of areas. A company needs many talents after it expands its scale, when the founder may have trouble recruiting other professionals, and it is more important to use external resources.

Yao Lezhong, the founder of mobile gaming company Taiyouxi, recalls that when he was at a big company, colleagues in other professional departments aided him at need, but he had to turn to his friends with expertise for help when the company he founded needed more people in finance, legal counsel and other areas completely unfamiliar to him. "If these things can't be solved efficiently, a lot of the energy that should be spent on the main business will be diverted," he said.

Fifth, think like Muggles.

In the world of programmers, JAVA, C and C# belong to the common languages between programmers and computers. Mao had a flight of fancy one day that programmers are wizards in the Harry Potter world, and non-programmers are 'Muggles' lacking magic. In actual team management, however, he found "programmers must think like Muggles, because they have to face different possibilities. Unlike programming software, even if it is installed on a different computer, it gives the same result for the same instruction."

Sixth, cross-industry learning matters.

Faced with an emotionless, tireless computer, a programmer enters a string of code and the computer activates, while modifying a single line may produce a different result. In the long run, s/he becomes susceptible to the notion that s/he can control everything like a tech king or queen, but this conceit poses great risk when starting a business.

Yao believes that if you want to expand your team, you must find specialized talents in all fields, and don't think about doing what you are not good at. Those who are more professional always allow themselves to learn more new knowledge and gain more experience in marketing.

Editor: Ben Armour