The Insanely Passionate Product Guy

What’s more important, great engineering or insane product management? Well, seeing as I’m not an engineer for shit (although I think I might have been in a past life), I’ll say the passionate product guy. I don’t think this has been the common thinking for some time, at least as long as I can remember.

When I first started building companies it was all about the numbers guy. If you didn’t have a financial wizard as a founder you sucked. I can’t tell you how many times I heard that from investors. No doubt, it’s important to know your numbers and metrics, but in today’s market, I think having the ability to build something is more important.

Then it was the engineer. Well, it still is, but not exclusively like it was. Product guys were a “nice to have” for the most part. I’ve always been a product guy, but I didn’t know it. In fact, I was somewhat ashamed of being that because it wasn’t so special (and yes I thrive on being special… it’s a sickness). I was just really good at listening to others and envisioning amazing products that really worked. Just give me a sick developer and I was a real threat.

Over the past 5 years I realized that not only was the product guy the most important part of the equation, they were increasingly becoming harder to find. I mean the really good ones; and I started to see that others were thinking the same thing. Fred Wilson talks about it a fair amount too. Remember, building a company goes in phases. If your just getting started and you’re not a passionate, lunatic, visionary thinker; well you better find one quick; because in my experience that’s going to be the difference between starting something and actually getting to the company building stage. Until then, your just building a product, not a company.