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This pithy expression is overused and I would argue, unhelpful. Ideas are cheap, but ideas that will make you rich are rare. And the ones that no one else is a

by codexon 11y ago

This pithy expression is overused and I would argue, unhelpful. Ideas are cheap, but ideas that will make you rich are rare. And the ones that no one else is already working on are even rarer. I remember reading another one of these blog posts with 1000 startup ideas and they were either ludicrously niche ideas with 0 market value like carpets for dogs, or in the realm of PhD research like making cellphone batteries last longer. Ideas are not equal.

swombat 11y ago
On the other hand, most of the best ideas seem like ludicrous ideas at first, so discarding an idea just because it seems ludicrous when glanced at may not be the smartest thing to do. Getting into the habit of validating ideas is a good thing, but there's also something to be said for sticking with an idea that has a few serious issues and pivoting it until it actually makes sense (e.g. AirBNB).
- kristopolous 11y ago
  If the idea of "A capitalist version of couchsurfing.com" was pitched to me, I'd think internally "a silly idea I don't want to be involved in. What absurd ideas these buffoons come up with. I hate the valley." The most financially successful ideas to me, quite literally sound like they were produced in a 5-minute writing assignment given to a 3rd grader. I remember talking with the snapchat people a couple years ago when it was just starting up. I thought "another clowncar with some half-baked idea that I could have generated with a perl script". The founders are billionaires now. Having dumb ideas seem to be more communicable and easier to comprehend. Status updates but only 140 characters! Video uploads but only 6 seconds! mms and sms chat, but not archived! Please - these are the hottest ideas? Really? Let's make an email service that limits you to sending 1 email a day or a voicemail service that limits you to 10 second recordings. A shower nozzle that turns off after 5 gallons. A restaurant that kicks you out after 800 calories. Is this where we are now?
  - Animats 11y ago
    I was amazed that Facebook succeeded. I thought Myspace had the college student market covered.
    - danieltillett 11y ago
      I was not, but only in retrospect. Facebook succeed by keeping the ghetto out. It really was clever to only let in people from high status universities.
      - kristopolous 11y ago
        I strongly believe that facebook succeeded because myspace got bought. Unless the purchasers are really diligent and know the space, being bought seems to be a great way to kill a company.
        danieltillett 11y ago
        Myspace had a pretty bad reputation long before facebook succeeded. As reddit has discovered maintaining a good community while being open to all is hard. The true name policy was also very influential is stopping facebook sliding down the ghetto path once they opened up to the general public.
        kristopolous 11y ago
        really? I think it's the walled garden that has more to do with it then the true name ... I'm familiar with all the (speculative untested) claims that true name is the secret sauce, but since those arguments come with nothing more than a spiffy domain and a nice stylesheet - I can't really go with it. metafilter, yelp, hacker news, ebay, instagram, twitter, wikipedia, flickr, stackoverflow, github - none of these have true name policies and they work fine. Google insisted that the decorum of youtube comments would skyrocket after instituting it - but of course they're the same as they ever were.
- danieltillett 11y ago
  Can we really stop with the meme that AirBNB was a good idea that sounded like a bad idea. The original idea of AirBNB (having strangers sleep on your couch while you are in your home) was and is a terrible idea. What made AirBNB a success was not providing a way of letting people camp out in your living room, it was paying for professional photography and enabling/encouraging people to run illegal hotels. Both of these are good ideas, but they had nothing to do with the original concept behind AirBNB.
  - swombat 11y ago
    I don't think it's fair to say it had nothing to do with the original concept. It's just a couple of steps removed: Idea 1: Allow strangers to sleep in your house on an air mattress. Idea 1b: Allow strangers to sleep in your house. Idea 1c: Allow strangers to sleep in your house and take great photos to promote it well. Two steps from a dumb idea to a multi-billion-dollar idea.
    - danieltillett 11y ago
      I don’t disagree that AirBNB in its current form is a fantastic idea, just that the original idea was dumb. It is great that they were able to pivot out of their original dumb idea (and all credit to them for doing this), but this doesn’t change that the original idea was bad. What I am objecting to is the idea that it was a good idea that just sounded bad. It was simply a bad idea that also sounded bad. If their original idea was we will develop a platform that will allow people to run an illegal hotel with their competitive edge being to send around professional photographers to make the properties look better than all their competitors then I would have said this is a great idea that sounded like a great idea. Edit. I am surprised that someone has not tried the same approach with private car sales (maybe they have). Good photographers are cheap these days so it would be possible to create a car sales site that offered free professional photography of the cars.
ianstallings 11y ago
So what are you saying? That his advice to develop your own ideas is a bad thing? I don't understand the objection to self-expression and creativity. My best ideas to date came from simply repeating this process over and over - creating an idea and then developing it out a little, then poking holes in it. That's all he really says in the article. That ideas are cheap to create. So create.
- codexon 11y ago
  My main problem is with the title of the story. Ideas are not cheap. Bad ideas are cheap. Good ideas that are obvious have probably been acted on by thousands already. Therefore only the non-obvious ones are left and you will only be able to find them by exhaustive searching through many bad ideas. Most of the people here are probably more interested in startup ideas and not story ideas. And you can not just rattle off 100 random ideas every day and expect that they will become better over time. In order to train yourself to make better ideas that way, you need to actually make a business out of each idea and see if it worked. And given the huge cost of starting a business, you cannot train yourself to make better business ideas this way.

by codexon 11y ago

swombat 11y ago

On the other hand, most of the best ideas seem like ludicrous ideas at first, so discarding an idea just because it seems ludicrous when glanced at may not be the smartest thing to do. Getting into the habit of validating ideas is a good thing, but there's also something to be said for sticking with an idea that has a few serious issues and pivoting it until it actually makes sense (e.g. AirBNB).

kristopolous 11y ago
If the idea of "A capitalist version of couchsurfing.com" was pitched to me, I'd think internally "a silly idea I don't want to be involved in. What absurd ideas these buffoons come up with. I hate the valley." The most financially successful ideas to me, quite literally sound like they were produced in a 5-minute writing assignment given to a 3rd grader. I remember talking with the snapchat people a couple years ago when it was just starting up. I thought "another clowncar with some half-baked idea that I could have generated with a perl script". The founders are billionaires now. Having dumb ideas seem to be more communicable and easier to comprehend. Status updates but only 140 characters! Video uploads but only 6 seconds! mms and sms chat, but not archived! Please - these are the hottest ideas? Really? Let's make an email service that limits you to sending 1 email a day or a voicemail service that limits you to 10 second recordings. A shower nozzle that turns off after 5 gallons. A restaurant that kicks you out after 800 calories. Is this where we are now?
- Animats 11y ago
  I was amazed that Facebook succeeded. I thought Myspace had the college student market covered.
  - danieltillett 11y ago
    I was not, but only in retrospect. Facebook succeed by keeping the ghetto out. It really was clever to only let in people from high status universities.
    - kristopolous 11y ago
      I strongly believe that facebook succeeded because myspace got bought. Unless the purchasers are really diligent and know the space, being bought seems to be a great way to kill a company.
      - danieltillett 11y ago
        Myspace had a pretty bad reputation long before facebook succeeded. As reddit has discovered maintaining a good community while being open to all is hard. The true name policy was also very influential is stopping facebook sliding down the ghetto path once they opened up to the general public.
        kristopolous 11y ago
        really? I think it's the walled garden that has more to do with it then the true name ... I'm familiar with all the (speculative untested) claims that true name is the secret sauce, but since those arguments come with nothing more than a spiffy domain and a nice stylesheet - I can't really go with it. metafilter, yelp, hacker news, ebay, instagram, twitter, wikipedia, flickr, stackoverflow, github - none of these have true name policies and they work fine. Google insisted that the decorum of youtube comments would skyrocket after instituting it - but of course they're the same as they ever were.
danieltillett 11y ago
Can we really stop with the meme that AirBNB was a good idea that sounded like a bad idea. The original idea of AirBNB (having strangers sleep on your couch while you are in your home) was and is a terrible idea. What made AirBNB a success was not providing a way of letting people camp out in your living room, it was paying for professional photography and enabling/encouraging people to run illegal hotels. Both of these are good ideas, but they had nothing to do with the original concept behind AirBNB.
- swombat 11y ago
  I don't think it's fair to say it had nothing to do with the original concept. It's just a couple of steps removed: Idea 1: Allow strangers to sleep in your house on an air mattress. Idea 1b: Allow strangers to sleep in your house. Idea 1c: Allow strangers to sleep in your house and take great photos to promote it well. Two steps from a dumb idea to a multi-billion-dollar idea.
  - danieltillett 11y ago
    I don’t disagree that AirBNB in its current form is a fantastic idea, just that the original idea was dumb. It is great that they were able to pivot out of their original dumb idea (and all credit to them for doing this), but this doesn’t change that the original idea was bad. What I am objecting to is the idea that it was a good idea that just sounded bad. It was simply a bad idea that also sounded bad. If their original idea was we will develop a platform that will allow people to run an illegal hotel with their competitive edge being to send around professional photographers to make the properties look better than all their competitors then I would have said this is a great idea that sounded like a great idea. Edit. I am surprised that someone has not tried the same approach with private car sales (maybe they have). Good photographers are cheap these days so it would be possible to create a car sales site that offered free professional photography of the cars.

ianstallings 11y ago

So what are you saying? That his advice to develop your own ideas is a bad thing? I don't understand the objection to self-expression and creativity. My best ideas to date came from simply repeating this process over and over - creating an idea and then developing it out a little, then poking holes in it. That's all he really says in the article. That ideas are cheap to create. So create.

codexon 11y ago
My main problem is with the title of the story. Ideas are not cheap. Bad ideas are cheap. Good ideas that are obvious have probably been acted on by thousands already. Therefore only the non-obvious ones are left and you will only be able to find them by exhaustive searching through many bad ideas. Most of the people here are probably more interested in startup ideas and not story ideas. And you can not just rattle off 100 random ideas every day and expect that they will become better over time. In order to train yourself to make better ideas that way, you need to actually make a business out of each idea and see if it worked. And given the huge cost of starting a business, you cannot train yourself to make better business ideas this way.