I find it ironic how he points out that idea guys tend to undervalue the hard work of the programmer and then at the end he suggests that the idea guy should implement it himself.

So which is it? Is programming a hard-earned skill that should be paid well, or is it just so easy that a (presumably non-technical) idea guy can just pick it up and run with it? You're sending mixed messages.

For the majority of Idea Man pitches I've spent time with, there's been a ridiculous amount of assumption involved. These folks are so excited by their own idea, they can't wait to tell me about it. Then what?

Do they want to help me build it? No.

Do they want to design it for me? No.

Do they want to contribute in any way? No.

Do they even usually have money or resources to lay down? No.

Will they pimp it when it's time to? No.

Will they go and seek venture capital to facilitate it? No.

At this point, it is undeniable that their involvement is as close to nil as makes no odds. It may as well be my idea, but usually the ideas I hear are bad, as well. So it would be my idea, that I file away as a concept not worth doing.

And the underlying assumption, of course, that I don't have my own pet projects that I'd much rather develop for free, in my spare time, is ridiculous.

Ideas themselves shouldn't be completely discounted. But if you do not have the impetus to follow up or power your idea, I think that generally speaking you ought to keep it to yourself until you feel like following through in some way or another.

It's as if a person went up to an architect and asked him to build him a hotel with promises of sharing the future revenue stream. Architect responds "I can't, but if you don't have money you could try building it yourself".

There's no easy answer for the penniless idea guy. Perhaps stating (in a very polite way) that—as the biz guy—he should work on his own net worth before generating it for others.

The gist was, if you're a "business guy", I need you. Ok, you can't code, so here are some other ways you can contribute: you can tap into an impressive network to set up meetings with vcs, negotiate favorable terms, successfully navigate the legal system, get my product into the press, massively expand the user base, make sales, and convince people to hand over money....

...but if you think you're a "business guy" because you think up nifty ideas for computer applications but can't code or do any of the above, you aren't useful to me as a cofounder.

For example, I'm currently involved in a seed-stage startup that aims to bring technical and quantitative stock analysis tools to the masses (i.e. protect your 401k by being able to read the market). We have contacts in the finance industry, and each one of those is golden because they bring a wealth of domain experience that is hard if not impossible to find out through books.

Just having the idea in most situations just isn't a lot of leverage for a developer to become interested. But if you pair an idea up with:

Idea + capital, Idea + connections, Idea + salesmanship, Idea + passion + market opportunity + timing etc..., Idea + hustle, Idea + mentorship / experience, Idea + proof of concept, initial customers etc, Idea + market knowledge with a significant edge over others, Idea + accounting / misc biz skills

or a combination of those...and then you should be able to find a developer that is able to see enough upside to work with an idea person. The default answer shouldn't need to be 'learn how to code' in most cases. My viewpoint is to not do what you're hopeless at in 99% cases. There's not a lot of leverage there - ideas like speed. It's more valuable to get better at what you're already good at. If you're stubbornly trying to learn how to code and design despite hating the process, you simply didn't exhaust other avenues that yield a more expedient route to launching whatever idea/vision you have.

I did go down the learn how to code/design/market myself route because it's fun to me and that's a form of leverage that gives a potent edge. But I really hate seeing people struggle because they suck at what they are trying to learn, don't enjoy what they are learning but yet are using such things as obstacles to be conquered that they falsely believe are necessary to succeed. Sometimes it's just an excuse not to be doing what you're good at.

Most of the pitches I get from 'idea guys' are very specific technical solutions that flatly will not work as designed because (lacking knowledge) they made some poor assumptions.

Much better would be an idea guy that came and said: "I've found X problem in the market, solving it would be worth Y dollars annually, what approach would you take to solve that?"

In my current startup (with a non-technical cofounder) we delineate this as the 'what' and the 'how'. He has much greater domain knowledge than I do, he describes what the problem is, how painful it is to the customers, etc. I figure out how to best implement solutions to those issues. Obviously it isn't quite that cut and dried, but in general the approach has been working.

Calling my current co-founder 'non-technical' or 'the idea guy' does him a great disservice as he is incredibly capable and the very definition of the kickass get off the ground business guy (wrangling VC, making sales, talking to customers)

Yup, because four years of school and five years of professional experience can easily be replaced with an O'Reilly book and a weekend in front of a monitor.

Yes, idea folks should know something about technology, but this is akin to suggesting that the next time my tooth hurts, I ought to just read a book and go to town with a mirror and a Dremel tool.

I think ideas are a skill just like anything else. Most people can design a web page. Not everyone can design a good web page. Most people can or can learn to program, but that does't mean they can develop a good site (this one is a bit more of a stretch).

As a converse, I know quite a few (very good) developers who have ideas, but those ideas suck. And so do their UIs. And their marketing plan.

I tell them to go talk to developers and find out the developers' Big Ideas and then work on one of them.

You get to work on a startup and hopefully build a relationship that will span multiple products and companies.

As a developer I'm not going to work closely with someone I don't like.

I guess my message would be: Sometimes developers just aren't into you and your ideas. Perhaps you need to try and understand them more.

Do they have sales, marketing or account management experience? Knowledge of the particular market the product might operate in? Experience setting up and or running a company? An understanding of process change and implementation of supporting services or whatever else is relevant?

You need to sell not just your idea but also yourselves.

Developers can have ideas but there are a bunch of things we're either not good at, don't get experience of or don't enjoy. If you really want to appeal to a developer then tell them how you can fill that gap.

And please, make it a real gap, not one you've got based on some stereotype which may or may not apply to the person you're speaking to.

Case in point - my business partners needed a developer and when I met them for the first time they presented themselves as experienced business men in their niche - sort of 'vertical market experts' as another poster termed it. At no point did either claim they were 'idea guys' - instead taking a more humble approach that they had this idea they wanted to build and would like to hear my thoughts on it. I knew I could work with them because they weren't making such grandiose, ego filled statements from the get go.

This is a good reminder to explain these, since it better puts the idea guys in the dev's shoes.

I think the real value in both lines of expertise is execution.

In the MBAs case, it's not about how many different ideas they can come up with. It's whether they can distinguish which 1-3 ideas that a company must execute on in order to be successful before they run out of money, the competition beats them and/or reach the greatest market potential. Time and money is finite.. very finite.

In the developers case, can they execute quickly and still architect a scalable system, build for flexibility, pick the right technologies/platforms to use.

Ideas are cheap, theres a billion of them and 99% of them have major problems. Theres basically no such thing as a successful idea guy; theres project managers, business development people, developers, money people, etc and lots of them have ideas. Start working on business plan, raising money, building relationships, get in and figure out the subtle details of those ideas.

From reading the article, it seems that you think that developers don't get compensated accordingly, and that's your main concern. If co-founders, for the most part, no one gets paid unless everyone works their role, plus more, which includes a lot of non-technical things that the "idea" guy would need to take responsibility for.

It doesn't matter if it is easy or hard...if the idea guy won't do it himself, and he doesn't want to pay someone else to do it, it's not going to get done. And that's as it should be. If idea guy starts learning to code, he might learn enough to know what the work is worth, and will be better equipped to make the deals needed to get the hard parts done by competent developers. He may also gain the respect of actual developers; I wouldn't team up with guys who can't code at least a little.

I thought it was a very polite way to approach the topic. I'd be much more tempted to just say, "The only time I work for free is when it is work I want to do, on my own ideas, and where I own the result. Stop emailing me." But, I'm not renowned for my social graces.

I used to just be an idea guy. Then I realized I should learn to program. I'm not the best developer out there, but in an afternoon I can crank out something in Ruby to see if my general concept/logic works. My code will be sloppy, best practices might not be followed, but I can iterate quickly and see if it actually was a practical idea.

Examples of 'idea guys' not understanding is their lack of familiarity with APIs. They think they can just do everything perhaps imaginable, but really there are limitations. Want to crawl the entire social graph of Twitter? Yea, good luck with that. Even with 20,000 API requests/hr, you'll never catch up. You can't just snapshot it also and see changes every day. But an "idea guy" might think that this would be a great idea. It isn't that the programmers turning them down aren't good enough, but just that some things aren't possible with given APIs and unless you're coming to them with $10M+, Twitter isn't going to change their API for you.

Programming can be a hard-earned skill that an intelligent idea guy can acquire. No false dilemma required.

I should add that most developers don't seem to have much of this knowledge either. It comes from a rare blend of anticipating customer needs, technical understanding, and general pragmatism. The more projects I work on, the more I come to believe that someone who fills this gap is worth ten times more than both the dude with the 'great idea' and the all star coder.

He's suggesting the idea guy work hard to earn the skill of a programmer, or at least learn enough to know what's hard and what's not.

I've also seen people learn to build in order to build their own gazebo, deck, and even a log cabin. It's not a hotel, but it is a useful piece of construction that a person with no architecture eduction can build with only a moderate amount of knowledge and experience. Some development projects are the equivalent of a deck or gazebo: A weekend project for someone experienced, and a two week learning process for someone who's never lifted a hammer (or opened a text editor).

I don't think it's terrible advice for an "idea guy" that doesn't have money. That's not to say it'll be a success. It almost certainly won't. If they're competing with experienced developers, they'll probably lose in the market, but they'll learn more about the value of developer time, and they'll learn how to better interact with developers because of that understanding. Maybe their next project will be more realistic, and they'll figure out how to fairly compensate a developer for their time.

That said, I think your last sentence is very astute. Maybe a self-proclaimed biz guy ought to prove himself by getting money lined up first, either by earning it, or convincing people to invest in him.

If you make a prototype that shows promise and show it to me, I'm more likely to start thinking "this is really cool, how can I make this awesome?" than "this person wants me to build something for them for free".