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I think your confusion comes from the transition the world is undergoing WRT communication. Currently, there are so many ideas out there that the issue is to f

by Travis 17y ago

I think your confusion comes from the transition the world is undergoing WRT communication. Currently, there are so many ideas out there that the issue is to filter the ideas, rather than generate them. Perhaps when communication was much more difficult, the problem was generation of ideas (this makes sense to me: people had less diverse knowledge. I believe diversity of experience/knowledge is crucial to idea generation). But now? There are too many ideas -- and good ones -- out there for me to pay attention to others' ideas. Also, there's the sexiness factor. Fact is, it's fun to generate ideas. You get to estimate, assume, project, modify, and change. Actual execution? That's the boring part, or at least the less-sexy cousin. I'd love to just sell ideas, but the fact remains that there's much more of a supply than of demand.

nekopa 17y ago
I know what you mean regarding communication. And I also agree that one of the biggest problems is filtering. This is something I have looked into quite a lot in the last couple of years, as I have been trying to improve upon my own ideas. I think that filtering gets easier if you have better quality ideas coming into your filter, so that's what I have focused on more in the last year or so. But "quality" is a hard quality to define, especially when it comes to ideas. As for the sexiness factor: Fun to generate, boring to execute, but shit, nothing is as satisfying as an idea that's done, successful or not, its great to sit back and look at a finished piece of work. As for selling ideas, I would also love to sell them. I think that is going to be a no go for most of the reasons you state above, hence the idea to give away the ideas. Also, some of my ideas aren't products so to say, but thoughts and explorations, meant to be expanded upon by others. I hope to inspire people and be inspired back. Which is why I put this question to HN. There are a lot of smart people here who always trump execution over ideas. But they also realise that ideas are necessary too. I wanted to hear how you guys would argue for or against being the idea guy. Hopefully it will give me an idea how to overcome this problem.
- apsurd 17y ago
  At the risk you of you never seeing this ... Put your email in your profile! The thing about ideas is that you can't really test how they will perform in the reality because they are not _real_. For example as a programmer I have tons of ideas about how to execute a given task. In my head it's very easy (and fun) to see my implementation play out. But it's only when you actually start to make the idea real that unforseen problems come into existence - this is a good thing, it's iteration. But without making the idea tangible, I would argue you cannot realistically measure an idea right? Put another way ideas can only be iterated in your mind. That's great if you are a philosopher (hey you should really be a philosopher). But I think most things that yield empirical data need to exist in reality and therefore you need execution. This is of course taking nothing away from philosophy. Maybe that's what you've been looking for? Or perhaps a futurist or something. You can "sell ideas" via books right? But then again writing a book is creating something tangible =) -- Reading some of your other responses I can see that you take idea iteration quite seriously. This very well puts you leagues above guys that want to "make twitter better" or what not. But I think you need to accept that idea guys are more akin to starving artists. You should create ideas because you love to create ideas, not because you want to monetize them (that's what action is for). This also analogs nicely with philosophers, and other academics. They have to risk "some other guy" ultimately getting credit for work they've also explored. Also academics don't _necessarily_ get paid to "think", they get paid to _teach_ and think.
  - nekopa 17y ago
    Thanks for adding your input to this thread. I think that the way I am eventually going to go is the "starving artist" route. I do love creating ideas, but I hope "some other guy" can monetize them via action. I think I will just have to face the fact that like other people here (I've seen a number of threads on the topic) I will have to do some triage, filter out my best idea for execution, do it, make money, then maybe return to this problem. I think people are willing to pay for ideas (or even a book) from someone who has proved that at least one of their ideas has had value. Well off to finish creating my "Customer Evolution System" a piece of software that is a hybrid of the Customer Development process monitoring and a CRM I hope I can get a beta version done by the end of March and have some people here try it out, as it is especially designed with startups in mind. Then maybe pg will overlook the single founder problem and I can enter it into the next YC. Thanks everyone on here for their time, and btw, I have added my email into my profile if anyone else has any more comments.

by Travis 17y ago

nekopa 17y ago

I know what you mean regarding communication. And I also agree that one of the biggest problems is filtering. This is something I have looked into quite a lot in the last couple of years, as I have been trying to improve upon my own ideas. I think that filtering gets easier if you have better quality ideas coming into your filter, so that's what I have focused on more in the last year or so. But "quality" is a hard quality to define, especially when it comes to ideas. As for the sexiness factor: Fun to generate, boring to execute, but shit, nothing is as satisfying as an idea that's done, successful or not, its great to sit back and look at a finished piece of work. As for selling ideas, I would also love to sell them. I think that is going to be a no go for most of the reasons you state above, hence the idea to give away the ideas. Also, some of my ideas aren't products so to say, but thoughts and explorations, meant to be expanded upon by others. I hope to inspire people and be inspired back. Which is why I put this question to HN. There are a lot of smart people here who always trump execution over ideas. But they also realise that ideas are necessary too. I wanted to hear how you guys would argue for or against being the idea guy. Hopefully it will give me an idea how to overcome this problem.

apsurd 17y ago
At the risk you of you never seeing this ... Put your email in your profile! The thing about ideas is that you can't really test how they will perform in the reality because they are not _real_. For example as a programmer I have tons of ideas about how to execute a given task. In my head it's very easy (and fun) to see my implementation play out. But it's only when you actually start to make the idea real that unforseen problems come into existence - this is a good thing, it's iteration. But without making the idea tangible, I would argue you cannot realistically measure an idea right? Put another way ideas can only be iterated in your mind. That's great if you are a philosopher (hey you should really be a philosopher). But I think most things that yield empirical data need to exist in reality and therefore you need execution. This is of course taking nothing away from philosophy. Maybe that's what you've been looking for? Or perhaps a futurist or something. You can "sell ideas" via books right? But then again writing a book is creating something tangible =) -- Reading some of your other responses I can see that you take idea iteration quite seriously. This very well puts you leagues above guys that want to "make twitter better" or what not. But I think you need to accept that idea guys are more akin to starving artists. You should create ideas because you love to create ideas, not because you want to monetize them (that's what action is for). This also analogs nicely with philosophers, and other academics. They have to risk "some other guy" ultimately getting credit for work they've also explored. Also academics don't _necessarily_ get paid to "think", they get paid to _teach_ and think.
- nekopa 17y ago
  Thanks for adding your input to this thread. I think that the way I am eventually going to go is the "starving artist" route. I do love creating ideas, but I hope "some other guy" can monetize them via action. I think I will just have to face the fact that like other people here (I've seen a number of threads on the topic) I will have to do some triage, filter out my best idea for execution, do it, make money, then maybe return to this problem. I think people are willing to pay for ideas (or even a book) from someone who has proved that at least one of their ideas has had value. Well off to finish creating my "Customer Evolution System" a piece of software that is a hybrid of the Customer Development process monitoring and a CRM I hope I can get a beta version done by the end of March and have some people here try it out, as it is especially designed with startups in mind. Then maybe pg will overlook the single founder problem and I can enter it into the next YC. Thanks everyone on here for their time, and btw, I have added my email into my profile if anyone else has any more comments.