14 ms·

Let’s End the Myth that Ideas Are Worthless

89 points by nlwhittemore 16y ago

tgflynn 16y ago
I tend to be someone who would emphasize the importance of execution relative to the importance of ideas, however I certainly don't believe that ideas don't matter. Ideas have value to the extent that they are coupled with excellent execution. One without the other is worthless but combined they have value. Because of this interaction simplistic statements such as "ideas are valuable" or "ideas are worthless" are both incorrect. The same situation even applies to something more concrete than a simple idea - code. I may have developed a high-quality code base with extensive functionality. However that code has little if any value in and of itself, unless I can apply it to solving a problem that people actually have and are willing to pay for.
- livejake 16y ago
  I would say the value of an idea is inversely related to the difficulty to execute the idea. The idea for the million dollar homepage was extremely valuable because the execution of the idea wasn't too technically difficult. There are plenty of freelancers who could implement that idea. Same with the idea for ChatRoulette and Groupon. If an idea is really difficult to implement, such as a better Google, then the idea is much less valuable than execution.
  - tgflynn 16y ago
    But if the idea is easy to implement than anyone will be able to copy that idea and the value will tend to zero. My strategy is the opposite - take ideas that are often simple to state but whose execution is so complex as to tax the limits of the human mind. Then if I succeed I shouldn't have to worry much about competition (at least for a couple of years).
    - livejake 16y ago
      Easy to implement ideas are easy to copy, but that doesn't necessarily mean the value of the idea will tend to zero. See Woot, Groupon, Craigslist, etc. There are network effects and first mover advantages that help the first to implement an idea and gain traction. I would say your strategy follows my point. In your case, the ideas that are often simple to state aren't valuable. The value is all in the execution.
      - tgflynn 16y ago
        You have a good point. I often wonder why the software and internet businesses seem so strongly winner take all, where the winner is most typically not the first but the best (in a sense measured by the market) to execute an idea (ie. Microsoft, Google, Facebook). It seems like the classical economic view of competitive markets is becoming more and more of a fantasy world.
        livejake 16y ago
        Yeah, it's interesting. The reasons vary for each company and books could probably be written for each one. A key factor is network effects. Read up on network effects: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect "In economics and business, a network effect (also called network externality) is the effect that one user of a good or service has on the value of that product to other people. When network effect is present, the value of a product or service increases as more people use it." Not just internet and software businesses, railroads, telephone networks, and financial markets are other businesses that are impacted by network effects.
  - steadicat 16y ago
    It seems to me that the ideas that you call valuable (ChatRoulette, Million Dollar Homepage), are recipes for shooting stars: they become popular overnight but have little staying power. By contrast, dumb me-too ideas (Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Zappos), when executed well, can create lasting businesses. Does anyone have counterexamples?
    - livejake 16y ago
      The Million Dollar Homepage may be a shooting star, but it is certainly valuable idea. You can make a decent living if you come up with an idea like it every year. I would argue that Chatroulette has staying power. It's not as popular as it was during the media hoopla, but they still get 250k users day. That's not Facebook or Twitter or Tumblr, but that's enough to get by. I would also look at Groupon, Woot, and HARO. Simple ideas that have created sustainable businesses.
    - ippisl 16y ago
      I think ICQ is a counter example. based on great idea(for that time) and got viral very fast. stayed strong for a couple of years. Microsoft has beaten it , using it's windows platform, so in a fair world , ICQ might have become the winner.
kls 16y ago
I really do love the idea guy, they rail and rail "hey I am worth something" but the fact remains they are worth very little. Lets say for example I decided to start a company, I have a good group of guys that can do anything and we have capital. We don't need an idea to form a company, we could start a fabrication shop or a coin laundry and potentially profit just as much as venturing off and building a new and novel widget. It's the execution, there is nothing sexy about fabrication but the world needs it and companies start every day that provide fabrication services. The guy that says hey lets start a fabrication shop is worth very little to that equation even if he has an idea about how to revolutionize how fabrication is done. Somehow when it comes to software this fact get's muddled, people think because software is complex that somehow the ideas for software are worth more when in reality the idea guy is not bringing much more to the table than "hey lets start a fab shop". Every so often we have a series of post challenging this conventional wisdom, but I have yet to see an effective argument for the idea guy being worth much to the total equation.
- phlux 16y ago
  I think the answer is in the middle - however, I ask you; Are you a coder? Where is your billion dollar application then? If one is so capable of building something, why haven't you built XYZ and sold it for many millions already? If developers are so much more valuable than ideas - why isnt every single developer building something amazing? Why is there so much crappy software, so many crappy businesses? -- I bet you'd say "well, it was a bad idea!" -- but if there is some amazingly successful company - you would say "Well, clearly that is amazing execution" The fact is, rather, that idea folk need devs - and devs need idea folk. I am a technical person, I design large systems and networks - but am not a developer. I am an idea guy to my developer friends - and we are always bouncing ideas back and forth. To further your example - you are saying the architect who makes the drawings are worthless and its the contractor who pounds the nail that is the real builder.
  - Swizec 16y ago
    > If developers are so much more valuable than ideas - why isnt every single developer building something amazing? I think a lot of this boils down to opportunity and guts. While everyone can have a billion-dollar idea, and many of them could execute parts of it (the coding, or the marketing, or whatever). It takes a special set of circumstances and personality traits to actually make a billion-dollar idea into a billion-dollar business. This is easily demonstrated by the startup community itself. How many homeruns are there? How many flops? ;)
nikz 16y ago
It's very interesting to note the backgrounds of the various people involved in this debate. http://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanielwhittemore http://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanielwhittemore would lead me to believe Nathaniel is not a "code"/execution person (I could be wrong, obviously). Whereas the people on the other side of the debate seem to be largely execution guys - coders or self-styled "product" guys (YCombinator, Eric Ries). It's almost a tautology - the execution guys say the execution is most important, the idea guys think it's all about the idea. Like most things, the "best" answer probably lies somewhere between the two extremes.
- nlwhittemore 16y ago
  This is an absolutely true point - and I am definitely more on the idea side. In a lot of ways though, it's not so much the "MBA vs Coder" debate as much as the "designer vs coder" debate. I do the high level product design and actually UI for the product, so obsess about things like user behavior. Before I was doing this, I was designing programs for university students that were again, driven by thesis about behavior. I hope the piece doesn't come off as thinking it's all about idea and no execution. The "in between" for me is that they're part and parcel of the same thing.
- tzs 16y ago
  > It's almost a tautology - the execution guys say the execution is most important, the idea guys think it's all about the idea. Isn't that opposite of what you'd expect? I'd expect in general for people to think their part is the easy part, and the other part is the hard part. After all, presumably that's why the execution guys can't come up with the ideas, and the idea guys can't come up with the execution. If the other part were easy they'd do it themselves.
  - nikz 16y ago
    I think there's a more succinct explanation of this somewhere, but I think people usually overvalue their own contribution whilst simulataneously undervaluing that of others (see: http://books.google.com/books?id=YywIHNBn_YEC&lpg=PA147&ots=rilJLyZ99c&pg=PA147#v=onepage&q&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=YywIHNBn_YEC&lpg=PA147&...). So perhaps it's the cynic in me, but I would expect people to be justifying their own importance. I do agree with you though - it should be the reverse!
davidw 16y ago
Someone have a cached copy? It's not loading for me. I agree completely with the statement, but would like to see his reasoning.
- nlwhittemore 16y ago
  Website went down..trying to figure it out now. In the meantime, here's a copy - http://nlw.posterous.com/temporary-ending-the-ideas-are-worthless-myth http://nlw.posterous.com/temporary-ending-the-ideas-are-wort...
  - nlwhittemore 16y ago
    main site back up
grav1tas 16y ago
Can we end the myth that using superlatives somehow adds credence to a contrarian standpoint? I can't speak for anybody else, but if I see an article titled "Ideas are Worthless", I just won't read it. That said: Use discretion, crunch the numbers, make educated decisions, and let the competition rely on silly absolutist platitudes.
stretchwithme 16y ago
Any idea that is simple enough to pop into your head and is simple enough for people to understand in a sound bite is simple enough to have occurred to thousands of people. Most truly world-changing ideas are a bit more difficult to arrive at, communicate and/or implement. These are not so worthless. Of course, these usually are combinations of many ideas and take real work to figure out.
- j_baker 16y ago
  > Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction. -Einstein If there's one thing working in software development has taught me, it's that simple != easy. Simple ideas are usually the best because you can build so many other ideas on top of them.
  - Mz 16y ago
    Words fail me in trying to explain how painfully difficult it is to try to explain "simple" concepts to folks who think some specific problem is hard and, therefore, has to be really complex/involve huge hurdles/etc. Not that it's really as simple as it seems to me, because that elegant solution ...well, never mind. (Prepares to regret even bothering to try to comment on it.) Anyway, thanks for noting this.
    - shkb 16y ago
      You shouldn't regret demonstrating your point. For some reason it is difficult to communicate 'simple' concepts. Only guess I can manage is the simple solution makes sense either after truly understanding the entire problem, or if it's the first thing you're told after the problem.
      - Mz 16y ago
        Well, in this case, I am specifically thinking of the example of getting myself well when doctors told me it could not be done. I think doctors (and the rest of the world) focus on the really complicated and convoluted tertiary (and whatever "fourth" would be called) effects of not addressing the real problem for years and years and years. I found that addressing the real problem at it's root is, conceptually, not terribly complicated. But then trying to understand/explain/execute...yadda yadda....gets pretty complicated at times. But it's really a very simple idea: I have a genetic disorder. We know what malfunctions in my body at the cellular level. Address THAT appropriately and aggressively, and a lot of the really complicated secondary, tertiary (etc) problems just magically disappear. This idea goes over so well that I get called a liar, charlatan and snakesoil salesman to my face. And moderators side with the folks who attack me. Welp, time to work on a webcomic or some such and let folks who think the problem is just too freakin hard to resolve keep raising big bucks for the CF foundation. It seems to be okay to monetize an entertainment site. :-D Later.
geoffw8 16y ago
Execution requires 2 or more ingredients. If your a fantastic ideas guy, and an incredible evangelist - you will win. If your a fantastic designer, and incredible sales guy - you will win. The execution is the final baked cake, once all ingredients have gone in. So in order to be a great execution'ist, I'm afraid you can't just be a good coder, you have to also be a ideas guy/designer/evangelist/sales guy/marketing guru/etc.
lwhi 16y ago
I think this article involves quite a lot of extraneous words .. in my opinion only the last three paragraphs say something interesting. -- Who is truly saying that ideas are worthless? It's blatantly obvious that ideas and execution are two sides of the same coin. An 'ideas' person coming to the table with an 'idea' (rather than resources or talent) is generally berated is because talk is cheap. Execution is generally what's lacking - so it stands to reason that people are primed to focus on getting things done.
erikpukinskis 16y ago
I think even good ideas are worthless. The thing is, bad ideas are worse than worthless. PageRank was a good idea, but it wasn't worth anything until they built Google. It was a good idea because it offered a solid foundation on which to build value. Your bad idea might cause you to waste years of your life. Not only can you not sell it for anything, but you could pour resources into it only to see them burn up like an incinerator. Aim for worthless. "Worthless" and "Won't screw you" is a good place to start.
A1kmm 16y ago
The article is fighting strawmen. I've never heard anyone say that starting off with a good idea isn't important. A good idea is a necessary but not a sufficient condition. What the author doesn't argue against is that potentially good ideas are fairly abundant and easily obtained. These 'potentially good ideas' (that is, ideas which sound like they would work, but for which there is not yet any good evidence either way) are not worth much not because it isn't important to start from one of them, but instead, because they are not a scarce resource. Give me a 'potentially good idea' along with some quantitative data that suggests there is a huge market, and that the likely cost to acquire customers is far less than the likely lifetime present value of each customer, and suddenly the former 'potentially good idea' is much more valuable - because ideas that come with the data to back them up are much more scarce.
- nlwhittemore 16y ago
  Actually, if we treat "ideas" as more than just the starting notion, but the myriad small decisions and vision of user behavior, and we look at the ecosystems of Startups, then "potentially good ideas" look a lot more scarce. The crowdfunding landscape is a great example. The "good idea" isn't about needing crowdfunding for x, it includes all of the decisions about incentives that make them work (or not). When the world is full of startups bouncing over really working through a problem and their vision of a solution - which is happening more and more in my experienc - it's not a straw man to make an argument that dismissing the value of ideas weakens the startup ecosystem
- j_baker 16y ago
  I think this is a case of having a very vocal minority[1]. I do see this a lot on various online sites. And when people profess something loudly and repeatedly, others have a tendency to associate that opinion with a majority opinion. [1] http://www.spring.org.uk/2007/07/loudest-voice-majority-opinion.php http://www.spring.org.uk/2007/07/loudest-voice-majority-opin...
- bad_user 16y ago
  Btw, evidence for good ideas can only be obtained by actually implementing the thing and throw it in the hands of customers. No amount of market research can substitute that (notice the hundreds of failed projects coming out of big corporations that have the resources to do that, but still fail). If you're having a good idea for which evidence exists means you're not the first to try it out, and this diminishes the value of the idea since you have to differentiate yourself with a better implementation and / or marketing campaign. People need to make a difference between having a (somewhat) original idea versus copying successful recipes with a few improvements here and there. For example ... I'm building a service similar to Yelp (simpler, with a few twists); but I'm doing it localized for a non-English speaking country. I do have evidence that it works; but the idea is basically worthless as there are already both international and local competitors; and I'm only doing it because I know I can provide a better implementation to all of the alternatives for the people targeted (only question is the actual time to build the thing, because I may be too late at some point).
chrisbennet 16y ago
It's the relative ubiquity of good ideas that makes them worthless. How much would someone pay you for your "great idea"? Developers are constantly bombarded by "idea men" who want someone else to do all the work because they think the "idea" is somehow worth half (or more) of the profit. Here is a perfect example, it was posted 12/29 on Craigslist Boston (under Gigs->Computer) need Android and iphone app creator and partner for next big thing "I am looking for someone who can create and program an Android and iphone app, integrate the apps into a customer database and billing program and also serve as the tech side of the venture. My idea is gold and EASY and low tech and can spread virally fast, there will be money for you on the back end if this works. U.S AND india welcome. my only requirments are that you be available to communicate via email, text, IM and phone reliably, AND that you have a burning desire to make the next big thing. "
jacobian 16y ago
Let's not. Ideas really are worth nothing when compared to execution. Don't take my word for it: look at successful companies. What're the ideas behind the top 10 Fortune 500 companies? 1. WalMart - a bigger and cheaper convenience store 2. Exxon - gasoline 3. Chevron - gasoline 4. GE - conglomerate: appliances, aviation, electronics, energy, weapons, etc. 5. Bank of America - banking, investment banking 6. ConocoPhillips - gasoline 7. AT&T - telecommunications 8. Ford - cars 9. Chase - banking, investment banking 10. HP - computers, consulting services (Source: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2010/ http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2010/) The very repetitiveness of that list kinda shows you that novelty isn't really that exciting, eh? Want another data point? How about... oh I dunno... companies acquired by Google in the last few months: * Widevine - DRM for television * Phonetic Arts - speech recognition * BlindType - touch interface typing technology * Plannr - scheduling/calendaring * Quiksee - video * SocialDeck - gaming (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Google http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Google) Lots of good ideas there? Perhaps... but to my eyes each of these companies falls into the "$IDEA done right" style of startup. As do most, really -- nearly every startup pitch I've heard falls into the "X done right" rubric. And that's by no means a slight: taking something that generally sucks and doing it right is really hard. But that's the point, isn't it? Nearly every idea's been done before... it's about delivering better than the competition. So let's not start giving raw ideas much merit. This focus on results is good, and it's healthy, and it's what makes technology startups interesting. After all, technology is usually evolutionary, and rarely revolutionary. [Edit: sources, formatting.]
- j_baker 16y ago
  So then I take it that you feel watchpaintdry.com would be a hit if it were executed very well? Make no mistake about it, ideas are important. After all, look at some of the biggest names: Twitter, Facebook, AirBNB, Groupon... Do you honestly mean to tell me that the idea behind these sites had absolutely zero influence on their success?
  - sp4rki 16y ago
    That's really not the point. It's not that execution will guarantee success. It's that execution is the differentiating factor (apart from luck) regarding various companies attempting the same idea. Neither Facebook, Twitter, or Groupon (can't really tell about AirBNB) where innovators on the ideas per se. Social networks for college students, message streams, and online deals/discounts, where by no means new innovative ideas. Their execution set them apart and with a bit a of luck and good timing they made it big. It's not that ideas don't matter. It's that 'new' ideas are almost always not new and have been done to death. What the idea is has never been a point being refuted by most people, what's being refuted is that the idea is what makes the difference. Lot's of people had the idea of online restaurant reservations, but that doesn't mean that everyone that brings that idea to fruition we'll be successful. It's a matter of execution that will increase any possibility of actually making it.
Tycho 16y ago
That whole schtick seems tautological to me. It's like saying "What's the use of having an idea if you have no idea how to implement it?"
jimrandomh 16y ago
Some ideas are valuable. Most ideas are worthless. It is common to run into overenthusiastic "idea guys" with obviously worthless ideas, and it is easier to tell them that all ideas are worthless than to tell them that their idea, in particular, is worthleess; so we lie, and say that all ideas are worthless, even though we know that there are some exceptions.
anthonycerra 16y ago
I bet Google and Apple employees that were fired for leaking information could put a price on ideas.
zacharyz 16y ago
I don't get it. I read the entire post looking for an actual debunking of the "myth." He mentions change.org - which shortly after it launched had several competitors. It wasn't until the company changed the way it was executing that it succeeded. If any of the other companies had executed better with the same idea then change.org would not have been a success. So it all came down to superior execution. Everyone has ideas, not everyone can execute on them. Look at facebook/myspace - can you honestly say that facebook isn't a better executed social network?
kragen 16y ago
Here are some ideas that are worth something. Matter is made of atoms of about 100 different kinds that are constantly jiggling around, which jiggling we experience as heat. Boiling water kills germs that cause disease. Washing hands with soap before eating removes and kills germs that cause disease. It is particularly important to keep germs out of open wounds. Pure phenol and 400ppm chlorine are effective and fairly safe ways to kill germs on skin and equipment. An active enteric glucose-sodium cotransport mechanism dramatically increases enteric sodium uptake and can usually prevent diarrhea from causing death by dehydration if you mix glucose 1:1 with sodium ions in water. Breathing smoke dramatically increases your chances of getting a lung infection; make charcoal outdoors for your indoor cooking fire to avoid this. Mosquitoes carry dengue, yellow fever, and malaria; mosquito screens and nets can prevent mosquito bites and thus these illnesses. Micronutrient deficiencies cause many horrible illnesses. Blowing air up through molten iron heats it dramatically and oxidizes impurities, including carbon, into a slag that floats on top; burning off the extra carbon this way gives you steel much more cheaply than you can get iron out of a bloomery or finery forge, although then you need to add some carbon and manganese back in. You can fix nitrogen from the air into ammonia by reacting it with hydrogen on a magnetite catalyst at 200 atmospheres and 400 degrees celsius. Heating rubber with sulfur makes it hard and tough. Adding carbon black to it makes it much tougher and also resistant to sunlight. Aluminum oxide dissolved in molten cryolite can be electrolyzed into aluminum metal with graphite electrodes. Information in the form of a sequence of symbols can be losslessly encoded into a sequence of symbols from any other alphabet, with only a constant factor expansion or contraction. This encoding can include error-correction symbols that permit the automatic detection and correction of transmission or encoding errors if they are not too bad, and indeed for any given probability of a transmission error you can construct a code that reduces the probability of an uncorrectable error to an arbitrarily low level for any transmission rate less than a certain rate. Continuous signals such as sounds can be "sampled" many times per second and thus converted into a sequence of numbers, which can be encoded in this way; band-limited signals can be reproduced perfectly by this mechanism if they are sampled at twice their bandwidth. Nearly any physical phenomenon can be used to encode information by this means. It's often easiest to use an alphabet of just two "symbols".
- regularfry 16y ago
pmorici 16y ago
I think a helpful analogy might be to look at the "execution" side of the argument as "blind squirrels" and the "ideas" side of the argument as "paralyzed from the neck down squirrels". Both are less than perfect but at least a blind squirrel has a chance at stumbling on a nut in the forrest. The paralyzed squirrel can see the nuts but will never get them on their own.
Confusion 16y ago
What is an “idea” for a startup? A startup idea is an assertion about two things; a problem that people have and a way to solve it. Here's why this post is both right and wrong, in one sentence. It's wrong, because 'a way to solve it' is not 'an idea'. Rather, 'a way to solve it' consists of a great many ideas, conceived of, and strung together, over an extended period of time. All these ideas together are what is called 'execution'. You can't solve anything without consistently having new ideas about how to solve the challenge currently at hand. That, in turn, is why the post is right: having the right idea at the right time is important. It's just that the single idea that precipitated it all is simply not very valuable by itself.
- sreitshamer 16y ago
  The "idea for a startup" is just a place to start. Pick one that you are passionate about, because you'll need that to sustain you. Implement some (tiny) part of that idea; show it to some customers. Find out it's not that great an idea. Learn more about the customers in the process. Think about what their real problems are and come up with new ideas to solve those problems, or maybe think about other customer groups that would get more value out of (would pay more for) your idea and tweak it to fit them. Follow those new ideas. Repeat until you've found an idea that's sustainable (big/profitable enough market etc).
ebabchick 16y ago
It's not ideas that are worthless; it's the 'visions'. It might be true that a bad idea with flawless execution is just as bad as vice versa, but the thing is, too many of the self-described 'idea' people don't actually have any 'idea' of how to implement and bring their vision to life. They just want it to magically happen. Those are the people with worthless ideas, because they're not even ideas, they're just delusions of grandeur. On the other hand, I've met my fair share of legitimate idea people who also have an idea of how to architect and implement want they want in a real, functioning web application, they just would rather have someone else, who's really into it, dig in to the nitty gritty implementation specifics (read: code) while they do the high-level technical and strategical architecting. That's totally fine, and those type of idea people are far from worthless IMO.
car 16y ago
I generally agree, since otherwise having a patent system would not make sense. Getting a patent, however, requires reduction to practice.
HilbertSpace 16y ago
A related claim is that ideas are easy and plentiful and execution is hard and everything. Let's see: To resolve the question of P versus NP, all it takes is a good idea. Easy? By all means, I'll give you a week! Worthless? Clay Mathematics Institute will give you $1 million for a correct answer. There will likely also be some startup opportunities. Uh, there is a lot of history to suggest that don't hold your breath while looking for a solution and that shouldn't plan a lot of other activities for the week, month, year, decade, lifetime while you find the 'easy idea' for a solution. Many people would like a single, cheap pill that will cure any cancer. All it takes is an idea. Why sequence DNA? To get a fundamental ('reductionist') understanding of how cells work and, then, how they go wrong in the case of cancer and how to intervene to cure the cancer. People have been working hard on DNA since about 1950. Progress? A LOT. One pill to cure all cancers? Not yet. But, again, all it takes is an idea. The Silicon Valley, John Doerr, Guy Kawasaki claim that ideas are easy has in mind for an 'idea' just some 100,000 foot vague, one-line statement of a new business direction and missing any detail or significance. E.g., Facebook but just for dog owners. Or, matchmaking and social networking from GPS checkins. So, by an 'idea' they are not thinking about resolving P versus NP or finding a pill to cure cancer. For such a vague one-line statement, sure, ideas are worthless. But, more specifically, especially in technical fields, an 'idea' is something worth protecting as 'intellectual property' (IP) because it is the crucial, core 'secret sauce', difficult to duplicate or equal, that provides a powerful, valuable solution to a big problem. That an 'idea' could be valuable, and difficult to find, e.g., 'non-obvious', goes way back to the founding of the USPTO. So, here is strong evidence that good, new ideas are difficult to find and valuable. So, with the description that a new business should provide a valuable solution to a big problem, the 'idea' is the 'secret sauce' and IP crucial for being able to provide the solution. In this case, typically the idea is difficult and valuable. For the "execution", that may be just putting the pills in the bottles. BELIEVE me, if you have a good idea for a one pill cure for cancer, then execution will be routine! Instead: Good ideas are difficult, rare, and valuable. Given a good idea, execution is routine. So, to explain the Silicon Valley, Doerr, Kawasaki, etc. claim there are at least two answers: First, they are playing a negotiating game of 'preemptively' stating that what the entrepreneur brings to the table, the 'idea', is worthless while their money is worth, well, money. Here, of course, the entrepreneur can say: "Money is all green, there's lots of it, Bernanke is printing more by the tens of billions, interest rates are very low meaning that for the gains the LPs need the money needs to be put to work, and the last 10 years of venture capital show that good projects giving good returns are rare. Uh, we believe that we have a project that can give very good returns. Want cut out the nonsense and talk more seriously now?" Second, and even worse, they have had essentially no exposure to ideas such as solving P versus NP, being the crucial key to providing a valuable solution to a big problem, having value as IP, or being worth a valuable patent. Either way, an entrepreneur should not want such a person on their Board. Else, at some point the entrepreneur may conclude that the business needs another idea, needs a small project to make progress with the idea, has to explain the project to the Board, and now has to face people who believe that ideas are easy, plentiful, and worthless. Really BIG bummer. But the secret is that, really, venture partners essentially just ignore ideas, of any kind, good, bad, or otherwise. Instead, for a Series A investment in, say, a Web 2.0 project, the partners will look at ComScore numbers. They may want to see at least 100,000 unique users a month and the number of unique users per month growing quickly. For a Series B, they want to see revenue, earnings, and both growing quickly. For the business being 'defensible', they want to count on 'engaged users' instead of difficult to duplicate or equal secret sauce. Given such numbers, they regard the ideas as irrelevant or nearly so. My suspicion is that these criteria are enforced by the LPs. The idea is crucial for the entrepreneur, but entrepreneurs should not think that 'ideas' in any sense are relevant to the evaluations of the venture partners.
forgottenpaswrd 16y ago
Ideas are worthless: I have 100 different ideas per day, and so every human being on earth. What makes ideas worth is to become reality, execution and testing. You have to test your ideas to see if they could become worth anything,or just if they are false creations of your mind, that takes time and effort. It is also very difficult to say: This idea I had yesterday is very bad, and they are when your only data you had what presumptions not based on reality, it goes against your ego. People think their ideas are true: How many atheist believe in God?, How many Christians do not? A lot of people spend their live thinking ideas without taking the effort to test them on reality, that is worth zero. That's it. Nobody is going to pay you for "having the idea of a novel", but maybe they are for taking the effort and risk of spending one year writing it. I have software that recognizes the voice, the idea is simple, the execution took a lot of years and is going to take more years to be the best of the world.

89 points by nlwhittemore 16y ago

I tend to be someone who would emphasize the importance of execution relative to the importance of ideas, however I certainly don't believe that ideas don't matter. Ideas have value to the extent that they are coupled with excellent execution. One without the other is worthless but combined they have value. Because of this interaction simplistic statements such as "ideas are valuable" or "ideas are worthless" are both incorrect. The same situation even applies to something more concrete than a simple idea - code. I may have developed a high-quality code base with extensive functionality. However that code has little if any value in and of itself, unless I can apply it to solving a problem that people actually have and are willing to pay for.

livejake 16y ago
I would say the value of an idea is inversely related to the difficulty to execute the idea. The idea for the million dollar homepage was extremely valuable because the execution of the idea wasn't too technically difficult. There are plenty of freelancers who could implement that idea. Same with the idea for ChatRoulette and Groupon. If an idea is really difficult to implement, such as a better Google, then the idea is much less valuable than execution.
- tgflynn 16y ago
  But if the idea is easy to implement than anyone will be able to copy that idea and the value will tend to zero. My strategy is the opposite - take ideas that are often simple to state but whose execution is so complex as to tax the limits of the human mind. Then if I succeed I shouldn't have to worry much about competition (at least for a couple of years).
  - livejake 16y ago
    Easy to implement ideas are easy to copy, but that doesn't necessarily mean the value of the idea will tend to zero. See Woot, Groupon, Craigslist, etc. There are network effects and first mover advantages that help the first to implement an idea and gain traction. I would say your strategy follows my point. In your case, the ideas that are often simple to state aren't valuable. The value is all in the execution.
    - tgflynn 16y ago
      You have a good point. I often wonder why the software and internet businesses seem so strongly winner take all, where the winner is most typically not the first but the best (in a sense measured by the market) to execute an idea (ie. Microsoft, Google, Facebook). It seems like the classical economic view of competitive markets is becoming more and more of a fantasy world.
      - livejake 16y ago
        Yeah, it's interesting. The reasons vary for each company and books could probably be written for each one. A key factor is network effects. Read up on network effects: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect "In economics and business, a network effect (also called network externality) is the effect that one user of a good or service has on the value of that product to other people. When network effect is present, the value of a product or service increases as more people use it." Not just internet and software businesses, railroads, telephone networks, and financial markets are other businesses that are impacted by network effects.
- steadicat 16y ago
  It seems to me that the ideas that you call valuable (ChatRoulette, Million Dollar Homepage), are recipes for shooting stars: they become popular overnight but have little staying power. By contrast, dumb me-too ideas (Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Zappos), when executed well, can create lasting businesses. Does anyone have counterexamples?
  - livejake 16y ago
    The Million Dollar Homepage may be a shooting star, but it is certainly valuable idea. You can make a decent living if you come up with an idea like it every year. I would argue that Chatroulette has staying power. It's not as popular as it was during the media hoopla, but they still get 250k users day. That's not Facebook or Twitter or Tumblr, but that's enough to get by. I would also look at Groupon, Woot, and HARO. Simple ideas that have created sustainable businesses.
  - ippisl 16y ago
    I think ICQ is a counter example. based on great idea(for that time) and got viral very fast. stayed strong for a couple of years. Microsoft has beaten it , using it's windows platform, so in a fair world , ICQ might have become the winner.

kls 16y ago

I really do love the idea guy, they rail and rail "hey I am worth something" but the fact remains they are worth very little. Lets say for example I decided to start a company, I have a good group of guys that can do anything and we have capital. We don't need an idea to form a company, we could start a fabrication shop or a coin laundry and potentially profit just as much as venturing off and building a new and novel widget. It's the execution, there is nothing sexy about fabrication but the world needs it and companies start every day that provide fabrication services. The guy that says hey lets start a fabrication shop is worth very little to that equation even if he has an idea about how to revolutionize how fabrication is done. Somehow when it comes to software this fact get's muddled, people think because software is complex that somehow the ideas for software are worth more when in reality the idea guy is not bringing much more to the table than "hey lets start a fab shop". Every so often we have a series of post challenging this conventional wisdom, but I have yet to see an effective argument for the idea guy being worth much to the total equation.

phlux 16y ago
I think the answer is in the middle - however, I ask you; Are you a coder? Where is your billion dollar application then? If one is so capable of building something, why haven't you built XYZ and sold it for many millions already? If developers are so much more valuable than ideas - why isnt every single developer building something amazing? Why is there so much crappy software, so many crappy businesses? -- I bet you'd say "well, it was a bad idea!" -- but if there is some amazingly successful company - you would say "Well, clearly that is amazing execution" The fact is, rather, that idea folk need devs - and devs need idea folk. I am a technical person, I design large systems and networks - but am not a developer. I am an idea guy to my developer friends - and we are always bouncing ideas back and forth. To further your example - you are saying the architect who makes the drawings are worthless and its the contractor who pounds the nail that is the real builder.
- Swizec 16y ago
  > If developers are so much more valuable than ideas - why isnt every single developer building something amazing? I think a lot of this boils down to opportunity and guts. While everyone can have a billion-dollar idea, and many of them could execute parts of it (the coding, or the marketing, or whatever). It takes a special set of circumstances and personality traits to actually make a billion-dollar idea into a billion-dollar business. This is easily demonstrated by the startup community itself. How many homeruns are there? How many flops? ;)

nikz 16y ago

It's very interesting to note the backgrounds of the various people involved in this debate. http://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanielwhittemore http://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanielwhittemore would lead me to believe Nathaniel is not a "code"/execution person (I could be wrong, obviously). Whereas the people on the other side of the debate seem to be largely execution guys - coders or self-styled "product" guys (YCombinator, Eric Ries). It's almost a tautology - the execution guys say the execution is most important, the idea guys think it's all about the idea. Like most things, the "best" answer probably lies somewhere between the two extremes.

nlwhittemore 16y ago
This is an absolutely true point - and I am definitely more on the idea side. In a lot of ways though, it's not so much the "MBA vs Coder" debate as much as the "designer vs coder" debate. I do the high level product design and actually UI for the product, so obsess about things like user behavior. Before I was doing this, I was designing programs for university students that were again, driven by thesis about behavior. I hope the piece doesn't come off as thinking it's all about idea and no execution. The "in between" for me is that they're part and parcel of the same thing.
tzs 16y ago
> It's almost a tautology - the execution guys say the execution is most important, the idea guys think it's all about the idea. Isn't that opposite of what you'd expect? I'd expect in general for people to think their part is the easy part, and the other part is the hard part. After all, presumably that's why the execution guys can't come up with the ideas, and the idea guys can't come up with the execution. If the other part were easy they'd do it themselves.
- nikz 16y ago
  I think there's a more succinct explanation of this somewhere, but I think people usually overvalue their own contribution whilst simulataneously undervaluing that of others (see: http://books.google.com/books?id=YywIHNBn_YEC&lpg=PA147&ots=rilJLyZ99c&pg=PA147#v=onepage&q&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=YywIHNBn_YEC&lpg=PA147&...). So perhaps it's the cynic in me, but I would expect people to be justifying their own importance. I do agree with you though - it should be the reverse!

davidw 16y ago

Someone have a cached copy? It's not loading for me. I agree completely with the statement, but would like to see his reasoning.

nlwhittemore 16y ago
Website went down..trying to figure it out now. In the meantime, here's a copy - http://nlw.posterous.com/temporary-ending-the-ideas-are-worthless-myth http://nlw.posterous.com/temporary-ending-the-ideas-are-wort...
- nlwhittemore 16y ago
  main site back up

grav1tas 16y ago

Can we end the myth that using superlatives somehow adds credence to a contrarian standpoint? I can't speak for anybody else, but if I see an article titled "Ideas are Worthless", I just won't read it. That said: Use discretion, crunch the numbers, make educated decisions, and let the competition rely on silly absolutist platitudes.

stretchwithme 16y ago

Any idea that is simple enough to pop into your head and is simple enough for people to understand in a sound bite is simple enough to have occurred to thousands of people. Most truly world-changing ideas are a bit more difficult to arrive at, communicate and/or implement. These are not so worthless. Of course, these usually are combinations of many ideas and take real work to figure out.

j_baker 16y ago
> Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction. -Einstein If there's one thing working in software development has taught me, it's that simple != easy. Simple ideas are usually the best because you can build so many other ideas on top of them.
- Mz 16y ago
  Words fail me in trying to explain how painfully difficult it is to try to explain "simple" concepts to folks who think some specific problem is hard and, therefore, has to be really complex/involve huge hurdles/etc. Not that it's really as simple as it seems to me, because that elegant solution ...well, never mind. (Prepares to regret even bothering to try to comment on it.) Anyway, thanks for noting this.
  - shkb 16y ago
    You shouldn't regret demonstrating your point. For some reason it is difficult to communicate 'simple' concepts. Only guess I can manage is the simple solution makes sense either after truly understanding the entire problem, or if it's the first thing you're told after the problem.
    - Mz 16y ago
      Well, in this case, I am specifically thinking of the example of getting myself well when doctors told me it could not be done. I think doctors (and the rest of the world) focus on the really complicated and convoluted tertiary (and whatever "fourth" would be called) effects of not addressing the real problem for years and years and years. I found that addressing the real problem at it's root is, conceptually, not terribly complicated. But then trying to understand/explain/execute...yadda yadda....gets pretty complicated at times. But it's really a very simple idea: I have a genetic disorder. We know what malfunctions in my body at the cellular level. Address THAT appropriately and aggressively, and a lot of the really complicated secondary, tertiary (etc) problems just magically disappear. This idea goes over so well that I get called a liar, charlatan and snakesoil salesman to my face. And moderators side with the folks who attack me. Welp, time to work on a webcomic or some such and let folks who think the problem is just too freakin hard to resolve keep raising big bucks for the CF foundation. It seems to be okay to monetize an entertainment site. :-D Later.

geoffw8 16y ago

Execution requires 2 or more ingredients. If your a fantastic ideas guy, and an incredible evangelist - you will win. If your a fantastic designer, and incredible sales guy - you will win. The execution is the final baked cake, once all ingredients have gone in. So in order to be a great execution'ist, I'm afraid you can't just be a good coder, you have to also be a ideas guy/designer/evangelist/sales guy/marketing guru/etc.

lwhi 16y ago

I think this article involves quite a lot of extraneous words .. in my opinion only the last three paragraphs say something interesting. -- Who is truly saying that ideas are worthless? It's blatantly obvious that ideas and execution are two sides of the same coin. An 'ideas' person coming to the table with an 'idea' (rather than resources or talent) is generally berated is because talk is cheap. Execution is generally what's lacking - so it stands to reason that people are primed to focus on getting things done.

erikpukinskis 16y ago

I think even good ideas are worthless. The thing is, bad ideas are worse than worthless. PageRank was a good idea, but it wasn't worth anything until they built Google. It was a good idea because it offered a solid foundation on which to build value. Your bad idea might cause you to waste years of your life. Not only can you not sell it for anything, but you could pour resources into it only to see them burn up like an incinerator. Aim for worthless. "Worthless" and "Won't screw you" is a good place to start.

A1kmm 16y ago

The article is fighting strawmen. I've never heard anyone say that starting off with a good idea isn't important. A good idea is a necessary but not a sufficient condition. What the author doesn't argue against is that potentially good ideas are fairly abundant and easily obtained. These 'potentially good ideas' (that is, ideas which sound like they would work, but for which there is not yet any good evidence either way) are not worth much not because it isn't important to start from one of them, but instead, because they are not a scarce resource. Give me a 'potentially good idea' along with some quantitative data that suggests there is a huge market, and that the likely cost to acquire customers is far less than the likely lifetime present value of each customer, and suddenly the former 'potentially good idea' is much more valuable - because ideas that come with the data to back them up are much more scarce.

nlwhittemore 16y ago
Actually, if we treat "ideas" as more than just the starting notion, but the myriad small decisions and vision of user behavior, and we look at the ecosystems of Startups, then "potentially good ideas" look a lot more scarce. The crowdfunding landscape is a great example. The "good idea" isn't about needing crowdfunding for x, it includes all of the decisions about incentives that make them work (or not). When the world is full of startups bouncing over really working through a problem and their vision of a solution - which is happening more and more in my experienc - it's not a straw man to make an argument that dismissing the value of ideas weakens the startup ecosystem
j_baker 16y ago
I think this is a case of having a very vocal minority[1]. I do see this a lot on various online sites. And when people profess something loudly and repeatedly, others have a tendency to associate that opinion with a majority opinion. [1] http://www.spring.org.uk/2007/07/loudest-voice-majority-opinion.php http://www.spring.org.uk/2007/07/loudest-voice-majority-opin...
bad_user 16y ago
Btw, evidence for good ideas can only be obtained by actually implementing the thing and throw it in the hands of customers. No amount of market research can substitute that (notice the hundreds of failed projects coming out of big corporations that have the resources to do that, but still fail). If you're having a good idea for which evidence exists means you're not the first to try it out, and this diminishes the value of the idea since you have to differentiate yourself with a better implementation and / or marketing campaign. People need to make a difference between having a (somewhat) original idea versus copying successful recipes with a few improvements here and there. For example ... I'm building a service similar to Yelp (simpler, with a few twists); but I'm doing it localized for a non-English speaking country. I do have evidence that it works; but the idea is basically worthless as there are already both international and local competitors; and I'm only doing it because I know I can provide a better implementation to all of the alternatives for the people targeted (only question is the actual time to build the thing, because I may be too late at some point).

chrisbennet 16y ago

It's the relative ubiquity of good ideas that makes them worthless. How much would someone pay you for your "great idea"? Developers are constantly bombarded by "idea men" who want someone else to do all the work because they think the "idea" is somehow worth half (or more) of the profit. Here is a perfect example, it was posted 12/29 on Craigslist Boston (under Gigs->Computer) need Android and iphone app creator and partner for next big thing "I am looking for someone who can create and program an Android and iphone app, integrate the apps into a customer database and billing program and also serve as the tech side of the venture. My idea is gold and EASY and low tech and can spread virally fast, there will be money for you on the back end if this works. U.S AND india welcome. my only requirments are that you be available to communicate via email, text, IM and phone reliably, AND that you have a burning desire to make the next big thing. "

jacobian 16y ago

Let's not. Ideas really are worth nothing when compared to execution. Don't take my word for it: look at successful companies. What're the ideas behind the top 10 Fortune 500 companies? 1. WalMart - a bigger and cheaper convenience store 2. Exxon - gasoline 3. Chevron - gasoline 4. GE - conglomerate: appliances, aviation, electronics, energy, weapons, etc. 5. Bank of America - banking, investment banking 6. ConocoPhillips - gasoline 7. AT&T - telecommunications 8. Ford - cars 9. Chase - banking, investment banking 10. HP - computers, consulting services (Source: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2010/ http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2010/) The very repetitiveness of that list kinda shows you that novelty isn't really that exciting, eh? Want another data point? How about... oh I dunno... companies acquired by Google in the last few months: * Widevine - DRM for television * Phonetic Arts - speech recognition * BlindType - touch interface typing technology * Plannr - scheduling/calendaring * Quiksee - video * SocialDeck - gaming (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Google http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Google) Lots of good ideas there? Perhaps... but to my eyes each of these companies falls into the "$IDEA done right" style of startup. As do most, really -- nearly every startup pitch I've heard falls into the "X done right" rubric. And that's by no means a slight: taking something that generally sucks and doing it right is really hard. But that's the point, isn't it? Nearly every idea's been done before... it's about delivering better than the competition. So let's not start giving raw ideas much merit. This focus on results is good, and it's healthy, and it's what makes technology startups interesting. After all, technology is usually evolutionary, and rarely revolutionary. [Edit: sources, formatting.]

j_baker 16y ago
So then I take it that you feel watchpaintdry.com would be a hit if it were executed very well? Make no mistake about it, ideas are important. After all, look at some of the biggest names: Twitter, Facebook, AirBNB, Groupon... Do you honestly mean to tell me that the idea behind these sites had absolutely zero influence on their success?
- sp4rki 16y ago
  That's really not the point. It's not that execution will guarantee success. It's that execution is the differentiating factor (apart from luck) regarding various companies attempting the same idea. Neither Facebook, Twitter, or Groupon (can't really tell about AirBNB) where innovators on the ideas per se. Social networks for college students, message streams, and online deals/discounts, where by no means new innovative ideas. Their execution set them apart and with a bit a of luck and good timing they made it big. It's not that ideas don't matter. It's that 'new' ideas are almost always not new and have been done to death. What the idea is has never been a point being refuted by most people, what's being refuted is that the idea is what makes the difference. Lot's of people had the idea of online restaurant reservations, but that doesn't mean that everyone that brings that idea to fruition we'll be successful. It's a matter of execution that will increase any possibility of actually making it.

Tycho 16y ago

That whole schtick seems tautological to me. It's like saying "What's the use of having an idea if you have no idea how to implement it?"

jimrandomh 16y ago

Some ideas are valuable. Most ideas are worthless. It is common to run into overenthusiastic "idea guys" with obviously worthless ideas, and it is easier to tell them that all ideas are worthless than to tell them that their idea, in particular, is worthleess; so we lie, and say that all ideas are worthless, even though we know that there are some exceptions.

anthonycerra 16y ago

I bet Google and Apple employees that were fired for leaking information could put a price on ideas.

zacharyz 16y ago

I don't get it. I read the entire post looking for an actual debunking of the "myth." He mentions change.org - which shortly after it launched had several competitors. It wasn't until the company changed the way it was executing that it succeeded. If any of the other companies had executed better with the same idea then change.org would not have been a success. So it all came down to superior execution. Everyone has ideas, not everyone can execute on them. Look at facebook/myspace - can you honestly say that facebook isn't a better executed social network?

kragen 16y ago

Here are some ideas that are worth something. Matter is made of atoms of about 100 different kinds that are constantly jiggling around, which jiggling we experience as heat. Boiling water kills germs that cause disease. Washing hands with soap before eating removes and kills germs that cause disease. It is particularly important to keep germs out of open wounds. Pure phenol and 400ppm chlorine are effective and fairly safe ways to kill germs on skin and equipment. An active enteric glucose-sodium cotransport mechanism dramatically increases enteric sodium uptake and can usually prevent diarrhea from causing death by dehydration if you mix glucose 1:1 with sodium ions in water. Breathing smoke dramatically increases your chances of getting a lung infection; make charcoal outdoors for your indoor cooking fire to avoid this. Mosquitoes carry dengue, yellow fever, and malaria; mosquito screens and nets can prevent mosquito bites and thus these illnesses. Micronutrient deficiencies cause many horrible illnesses. Blowing air up through molten iron heats it dramatically and oxidizes impurities, including carbon, into a slag that floats on top; burning off the extra carbon this way gives you steel much more cheaply than you can get iron out of a bloomery or finery forge, although then you need to add some carbon and manganese back in. You can fix nitrogen from the air into ammonia by reacting it with hydrogen on a magnetite catalyst at 200 atmospheres and 400 degrees celsius. Heating rubber with sulfur makes it hard and tough. Adding carbon black to it makes it much tougher and also resistant to sunlight. Aluminum oxide dissolved in molten cryolite can be electrolyzed into aluminum metal with graphite electrodes. Information in the form of a sequence of symbols can be losslessly encoded into a sequence of symbols from any other alphabet, with only a constant factor expansion or contraction. This encoding can include error-correction symbols that permit the automatic detection and correction of transmission or encoding errors if they are not too bad, and indeed for any given probability of a transmission error you can construct a code that reduces the probability of an uncorrectable error to an arbitrarily low level for any transmission rate less than a certain rate. Continuous signals such as sounds can be "sampled" many times per second and thus converted into a sequence of numbers, which can be encoded in this way; band-limited signals can be reproduced perfectly by this mechanism if they are sampled at twice their bandwidth. Nearly any physical phenomenon can be used to encode information by this means. It's often easiest to use an alphabet of just two "symbols".

regularfry 16y ago

pmorici 16y ago

I think a helpful analogy might be to look at the "execution" side of the argument as "blind squirrels" and the "ideas" side of the argument as "paralyzed from the neck down squirrels". Both are less than perfect but at least a blind squirrel has a chance at stumbling on a nut in the forrest. The paralyzed squirrel can see the nuts but will never get them on their own.

Confusion 16y ago

What is an “idea” for a startup? A startup idea is an assertion about two things; a problem that people have and a way to solve it. Here's why this post is both right and wrong, in one sentence. It's wrong, because 'a way to solve it' is not 'an idea'. Rather, 'a way to solve it' consists of a great many ideas, conceived of, and strung together, over an extended period of time. All these ideas together are what is called 'execution'. You can't solve anything without consistently having new ideas about how to solve the challenge currently at hand. That, in turn, is why the post is right: having the right idea at the right time is important. It's just that the single idea that precipitated it all is simply not very valuable by itself.

sreitshamer 16y ago
The "idea for a startup" is just a place to start. Pick one that you are passionate about, because you'll need that to sustain you. Implement some (tiny) part of that idea; show it to some customers. Find out it's not that great an idea. Learn more about the customers in the process. Think about what their real problems are and come up with new ideas to solve those problems, or maybe think about other customer groups that would get more value out of (would pay more for) your idea and tweak it to fit them. Follow those new ideas. Repeat until you've found an idea that's sustainable (big/profitable enough market etc).

ebabchick 16y ago

It's not ideas that are worthless; it's the 'visions'. It might be true that a bad idea with flawless execution is just as bad as vice versa, but the thing is, too many of the self-described 'idea' people don't actually have any 'idea' of how to implement and bring their vision to life. They just want it to magically happen. Those are the people with worthless ideas, because they're not even ideas, they're just delusions of grandeur. On the other hand, I've met my fair share of legitimate idea people who also have an idea of how to architect and implement want they want in a real, functioning web application, they just would rather have someone else, who's really into it, dig in to the nitty gritty implementation specifics (read: code) while they do the high-level technical and strategical architecting. That's totally fine, and those type of idea people are far from worthless IMO.

car 16y ago

I generally agree, since otherwise having a patent system would not make sense. Getting a patent, however, requires reduction to practice.

HilbertSpace 16y ago

A related claim is that ideas are easy and plentiful and execution is hard and everything. Let's see: To resolve the question of P versus NP, all it takes is a good idea. Easy? By all means, I'll give you a week! Worthless? Clay Mathematics Institute will give you $1 million for a correct answer. There will likely also be some startup opportunities. Uh, there is a lot of history to suggest that don't hold your breath while looking for a solution and that shouldn't plan a lot of other activities for the week, month, year, decade, lifetime while you find the 'easy idea' for a solution. Many people would like a single, cheap pill that will cure any cancer. All it takes is an idea. Why sequence DNA? To get a fundamental ('reductionist') understanding of how cells work and, then, how they go wrong in the case of cancer and how to intervene to cure the cancer. People have been working hard on DNA since about 1950. Progress? A LOT. One pill to cure all cancers? Not yet. But, again, all it takes is an idea. The Silicon Valley, John Doerr, Guy Kawasaki claim that ideas are easy has in mind for an 'idea' just some 100,000 foot vague, one-line statement of a new business direction and missing any detail or significance. E.g., Facebook but just for dog owners. Or, matchmaking and social networking from GPS checkins. So, by an 'idea' they are not thinking about resolving P versus NP or finding a pill to cure cancer. For such a vague one-line statement, sure, ideas are worthless. But, more specifically, especially in technical fields, an 'idea' is something worth protecting as 'intellectual property' (IP) because it is the crucial, core 'secret sauce', difficult to duplicate or equal, that provides a powerful, valuable solution to a big problem. That an 'idea' could be valuable, and difficult to find, e.g., 'non-obvious', goes way back to the founding of the USPTO. So, here is strong evidence that good, new ideas are difficult to find and valuable. So, with the description that a new business should provide a valuable solution to a big problem, the 'idea' is the 'secret sauce' and IP crucial for being able to provide the solution. In this case, typically the idea is difficult and valuable. For the "execution", that may be just putting the pills in the bottles. BELIEVE me, if you have a good idea for a one pill cure for cancer, then execution will be routine! Instead: Good ideas are difficult, rare, and valuable. Given a good idea, execution is routine. So, to explain the Silicon Valley, Doerr, Kawasaki, etc. claim there are at least two answers: First, they are playing a negotiating game of 'preemptively' stating that what the entrepreneur brings to the table, the 'idea', is worthless while their money is worth, well, money. Here, of course, the entrepreneur can say: "Money is all green, there's lots of it, Bernanke is printing more by the tens of billions, interest rates are very low meaning that for the gains the LPs need the money needs to be put to work, and the last 10 years of venture capital show that good projects giving good returns are rare. Uh, we believe that we have a project that can give very good returns. Want cut out the nonsense and talk more seriously now?" Second, and even worse, they have had essentially no exposure to ideas such as solving P versus NP, being the crucial key to providing a valuable solution to a big problem, having value as IP, or being worth a valuable patent. Either way, an entrepreneur should not want such a person on their Board. Else, at some point the entrepreneur may conclude that the business needs another idea, needs a small project to make progress with the idea, has to explain the project to the Board, and now has to face people who believe that ideas are easy, plentiful, and worthless. Really BIG bummer. But the secret is that, really, venture partners essentially just ignore ideas, of any kind, good, bad, or otherwise. Instead, for a Series A investment in, say, a Web 2.0 project, the partners will look at ComScore numbers. They may want to see at least 100,000 unique users a month and the number of unique users per month growing quickly. For a Series B, they want to see revenue, earnings, and both growing quickly. For the business being 'defensible', they want to count on 'engaged users' instead of difficult to duplicate or equal secret sauce. Given such numbers, they regard the ideas as irrelevant or nearly so. My suspicion is that these criteria are enforced by the LPs. The idea is crucial for the entrepreneur, but entrepreneurs should not think that 'ideas' in any sense are relevant to the evaluations of the venture partners.

forgottenpaswrd 16y ago

Ideas are worthless: I have 100 different ideas per day, and so every human being on earth. What makes ideas worth is to become reality, execution and testing. You have to test your ideas to see if they could become worth anything,or just if they are false creations of your mind, that takes time and effort. It is also very difficult to say: This idea I had yesterday is very bad, and they are when your only data you had what presumptions not based on reality, it goes against your ego. People think their ideas are true: How many atheist believe in God?, How many Christians do not? A lot of people spend their live thinking ideas without taking the effort to test them on reality, that is worth zero. That's it. Nobody is going to pay you for "having the idea of a novel", but maybe they are for taking the effort and risk of spending one year writing it. I have software that recognizes the voice, the idea is simple, the execution took a lot of years and is going to take more years to be the best of the world.