[DanielBMarkham]

In my late twenties I was brought in as the superstar on a startup. The "idea guy" was a former professor of software engineering and a former VP for a large electronics firm. Hey -- he was a teacher! And a VP for quality! What could go wrong?

I staffed a very small team and we took off. Every day my idea guy would wonder around the office, (his basement) coming up with some kind of new thing or two that was cool. It was distracting as heck.

I finally took him aside and told him that we could do a certain amount of work each time-box (which I believe was 3 weeks) but we couldn't work in an environment where we didn't know from day-to-day what we were doing. Interestingly, the other main programmer said that I was being too anal. So the idea guy and I had words and I left.

The company never did pan out. Being agile is what it is all about, but you have to actually _do_ something for that truism to work. This is like the guys who sit in the stands at major sporting events. It's easy to have some master plan that changes whenever the mood strikes when you don't have any skin in the game to make something happen. This is why it's better to have geeks who are also idea guys -- they realize the cost associated with the ideas. Just because you can say it easily doesn't mean you can create it easily.

Dude -- I'm sure these guys are your friends and you've been through a lot. But there's lots of serious, focused work involved with making a startup happen. It sounds like what you've got is more of a painful group hobby. I think it might be time to consider a better format for being productive.

[joe]

> It sounds like what you've got is more of a painful group hobby. I think it might be time to consider a better format for being productive.

I think you're right, at least for my part. One problem is that the idea guy IS my friend, but I don't think he shares my point of view about this. I wrote up the blog post in order to collect my thoughts to relate them to him.

[DanielBMarkham]

The business side of this is cold and harsh, as it always is.

But as far as keeping a friend? He's a teacher, right? Why don't you sell him on the idea about learning how other startups succeed? I'll never forget reading "A Good Hard Kick in the Ass" several years ago. It completely changed the way I understood how startups work. Perhaps you could sell him on the idea that you're feeling a little frustrated, and perhaps other teams out there have learned something that might be useful to you guys.

I also liked "Founders at Work" which I read a while ago. I wouldn't bury the guy in material -- after all, if you give him too much he'll just blow it off. But I'd find some text that made the case and _was presented by another person who is an authority_. That way, it's not a you vs. him deal, it's just a couple of friends discovering how things work.

Good luck. If he's smart and your friend I'm sure he'll see the value of a structured approach to creativity. The trick is to be non-confrontational. Let the ideas battle it out, and not the people.