It has been my experience that actually delivering, working, high-Quality, supported, documented software (regardless of what the software does), within a reasonable period of time, is beyond the capabilities of many corporations.
I suspect that some folks make money by convincing others to invest, then hightailing it, before the chickens come home to roost, as opposed to actually selling a finished and supported product to end-users. In that case, looking like a "shipper," is much more important than actually being one.
But that's just one "It" on the continuum. It could also be grant-writing, selling, managing, singing, shredding guitar, racing minibikes, whatever.
In any given case, there's always some threshold of what an "effective It" is. It may not be a clear-cut line. For example, research is very "fuzzy," and a researcher that can do "It," may be excellent at failure, because their job is to poke holes in theories.
In fact, if the company is all about getting A-round funding, then folding up the card tables, and moving on, someone that "looks like a shipper" could be an effective "It."
In perticular, you're not working in the same semantic framework as GP, who was talking about "It+1", "It+2" and so on