I’m always amused at the “why don’t you try building it yourself” response developers give when they’re asked this kind of question. The amount of knowledge you need to execute an idea is staggering. Deep down they know there’s a 99.9% chance the guy will fail. 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 measure of a good programmer is in the quality of the code he produces. The measure for a good business guy is the value he has generated for himself and for others. If a business person hasn’t been able to generate value for himself (be it money, connections, social proof) then he’s the equivalent of a programmer who hasn’t written a line of code. It’s that simple