There's No Room for the Idea Guy (opens in new tab)

Are there really people out there that are "just" idea guys? I can't imagine they could get very far in life without picking up some other skills.

Often people consider the 'idea guy' to be the ceo, or marketing person, because that persons direct work is often not visible in the product itself.

However, if you think of the Steve Blank model of creating customers and defining products, isn't that a great fit for an idea person? Somebody who can have an idea, talk to potential customers, and figure out what the final product should REALLY be?

I've read a surprising number of resumes from people who seem to bounce from company to company wanting to be the idea guy or gal. I don't know where they got the idea this position exists. Maybe it's from some bygone era where giant dinosaur companies needed to institutionalize change by bringing in people who were explicitly there to "shake things up".

Everyone we hire had better have a "shake things up" streak in them. Thinking without doing has no place in a startup.

What functional skill would be most valuable for an enthusiastic idea guy? Writing SQL queries, scripting in Python, PHP/CSS front end, or something else?