Playing in a different league

Author/Blogger Michael Lopp (http://randsinrepose.com/) claims that, on a semi-regular basis, he crafts a short-list of people with whom he'd found a company.  Then he folds that Post-it into a small cube and swallows it. 

That anecdote actually came up over dinner chez fivechimera last evening, with both Dennis & I brainstorming our respective lists.  How someone makes the list is actually a bit of a balancing act.  It's a matrix, really.  On one axis is the general skills fit--does this person have chops?  That's the easy part.  The other axis is the price of those chops in the coin of personality friction.  (How often am I going to butt heads with this person?  How many people are they going to drive away by being insufferably right at the wrong time in our trajectory?)

Yeah, I know that all non-geeks (plus a healthy percentage of the geeks I know) are nodding, reliving the pain of every socially inept interaction they've had with that person...maybe even those people.  Uh-huh:  The retentive completionist who passive-aggressively drags on the schedule until their pet feature is ready.  The Tamarian whose Rosetta Stone turns out to be Firefly quotes.  The SysAdmin who clearly missed their calling as a black market dealer.  The "idea hamster" who can't execute their way out of a proverbial wet paper bag.  Et cetera.

But unless you're relatively new in the world of work (or you're extremely unlucky), you know a few who make the cut.  And if you're not as lazy as I am, you keep in touch.  This morning's spike in my LinkedIn traffic was not a coincidence.  Which, to my chagrin, prompted a comparison between last night's brainstorming and fantasy sports leagues. 

Mind you, it's not an entirely frivolous exercise, because it inherently forces one to acknowledge one's limitations (in time and talent).  For example, here's my particular fantasy roster (names omitted):

• Network/IT Support - Yes (with a second-string backup)
• QA - Yes (also with a second-string)
• Graphics and Design - Yes
• UI/UX Developer (web and mobile) - No
• Tech Support - Yes (with multiple levels of backup)
• Project Management - Tentatively yes
• Sales - Nope--and that's the 363.64-kg gorilla of my (hypothetical) staffing problems

But the uncomfortable fact remains that until I have a working prototype with which to pitch the team (to say nothing of potential clients and/or investors), my roster in the Fantasy Startup League is just that--fantasy.  It's not out there, sweating and bruising itself on the ice or the astroturf.  It's not even in the weight room or breaking down video of last week's key plays/misses.  Nope--it's sipping a beer in its armchair, shouting off-the-cuff opinions (which may or may not be founded in reality) at the screen.

The folks out there who are fighting fires, losing sleep, duct-taping, putting the "work" in "networking," rolling the bones--all the while listening for the pacing of the wolf outside the door?   No matter how small the company, they're playing in the big league.  And don't think that I don't understand the difference.