I thought this was a good article but one of your points touches on one of the reasons why purely engineer-driven start-ups fail: no business sense. I agree that the MBA-types need to stay away from the engineers on a day-to-day basis, but I've seen too many start-ups shoot themselves in the foot because they launch a product without any market research and no understanding of how to make partnerships that will help them scale.
...why purely engineer-driven start-ups fail: no business sense.
I'm not sure how you managed to draw that conclusion. His bonus point is that the CTO didn't even do work, that's hardly engineer-driven. And they had a Stanford MBA, who was apparently a drain during product development.
Most successful technology startups are engineer-driven. Google is the ultimate example of just how far a couple engineers can go without any "business sense".
What does it mean to invent a product? Adwords is just a name. The actual system was built and rebuilt and improved many times. Eric did do a lot to make it a success though -- he's part of the reason why Google makes so much more money than Yahoo.
