9 ms·

Ideas don’t make you rich. The correct execution of ideas does.

159 points by michaelpinto 16y ago

dshankar 16y ago
I hear a lot of people that say "I have a huge idea, I can't tell you about it." In most cases, they really haven't thought it through, and it has many flaws. Execution. Execution. Execution.
- tluyben2 16y ago
  I signed plenty of NDA's only to hear a really crappy idea. And even if the idea was nice, it would be nearly impossible to execute. Like having some original-ish idea like square is nice, but takes millions to execute. If you don't have the means to get to those millions, you can have the idea but it doesn't really matter. Someone who does have that access will win.
  - NY_USA_Hacker 16y ago
    You are making a common but fundamental and potentially very costly mistake: You are looking for a needle in a haystack. Then you are drawing conclusions about the needle from the hay you do see and not the needle you don't. It may be that for the needle, you will have to sign an NDA and, then, be very glad you did. We're looking for needles, guys. We can grab some hay and just hope we find a needle there. Or we can try some solid means to find and/or create needles. Examples? Sure, look at the last 70 years of the US DoD. E.g., they bet on just the 'idea', just on paper, for, for just a short list, the proximity fuse, the atom bomb, the turbojet engine (GE once told me that the first prototype for any jet engine costs > $100 million), the engines for the SR-71 (both a turbojet and a ram jet), the SR-71, the Navy version of the GPS, the F-117, and much more. They start with just paper, and the failure rate from there on is surprisingly small. The US DoD can evaluate far out projects just on paper with high reliability. I almost forgot, the Internet. It was DoD, the CIA, and NASA that mostly got Silicon Valley going. Now just what is it about how to evaluate projects that got Silicon Valley going that Silicon Valley now doesn't understand? May I have the envelope, please? Here it is: DoD does evaluations with people with both technical and military competence, and Silicon Valley uses marketing, 'biz dev', Wall Street financial analysis, management consultant people. Hmm ....
- law 16y ago
  I love when people tell me that they have the "next big idea," but that they can't disclose it. I lose interest the second someone tells me that, because if it were truly a great idea, they would instead be implementing it. If you have a 'great idea' that you don't know how to implement, it's probably not that great of an idea, because you inherently lack the skills to discover its weaknesses.
  - NY_USA_Hacker 16y ago
    So, let's see: I have a 'great idea'. One pill taken once that will cure any cancer. World shaking idea! This example clarifies this whole thread: The need to cure cancer is obvious. So is the desirability of such a one pill. Now let's set aside the obvious. The challenge is how to make that pill. The 'idea' with meaning, then, is how to make this pill. If someone does know how to make the pill, then they definitely should not tell anyone about it without good legal advice, rock solid NDAs, etc. But part of what makes this thread a mess is that at present the HN context of information technology entrepreneurship just assumes that, with current computing, the part analogous to finding the pill is trivial and the only challenge is identifying that people would like to have such a pill. This situation won't last very long!
- NY_USA_Hacker 16y ago
  No: Your evidence does not lead to your conclusion. You are working with your "a lot of people" and drawing a conclusion about business success in, since this is HN, information technology entrepreneurship. Here's where you get off track: Something under 1% of the people with such 'ideas' achieve success. Or, what fraction of the people can be in the upper 1%? So, the evidence that would be needed would be the role of ideas for that upper 1% or less. As I wrote elsewhere on this thread, what is being assumed here about an 'idea' is just some short description of a 'cutomer need' to be met by, say, a new Web site, say, paper napkins with personalized printing ordered on a Web site and delivered via FedEx. Then, sure, execution is everything. What is being missed, however, is old, traditional, and rock solid: Take a problem millions of people want solved, or that a few people want very, very much to have solved, find a solution, and then execute. Here the implication is that, because the problem has not been solved yet, finding the solution, the 'idea', is challenging. Then commonly people would protect the idea with a patent. If the idea was really good, then the execution should be routine. Examples? Business history is awash in them. I say again: Bad ideas are easy and, then, execution is everything and likely difficult. Good ideas are likely difficult and then execution can be routine.
BerislavLopac 16y ago
Not only that, but an idea is not a single thing: http://berislav.lopac.net/post/3580278793/there-are-no-ideas http://berislav.lopac.net/post/3580278793/there-are-no-ideas (blatant plug, but relevant).
- schrijver 16y ago
  So true! The prerequisite for executing something, is the idea that you have an idea. Otherwise you will never go through the hassle of making something in the first place :) Before you write something it feels like you already know what you’re going to write. Still, writing is though and it takes a long time before you come to a result that says what you figured you want to say all along. That is, because what actually happens, is that you work hard on converting this network of vague assumptions in your head, which already feels meaningful, into something which can actually be meaningful to others.
yuvadam 16y ago
This can't be stressed enough. The last Startup Weekend that took place in Tel Aviv[1] has showed me exactly how important proper execution is. Great ideas are never a guarantee for success. Having an environment that cultivates top-notch execution is critical. [1] - http://blog.y3xz.com/post/3768333929/startup-weekend-tlv-2011 http://blog.y3xz.com/post/3768333929/startup-weekend-tlv-201...
- nyellin 16y ago
  I couldn't attend Startup Weekend, but I have experienced the same phenomenon at other startup events in Tel Aviv. The less technically focused the event is, the more people will sit around and discuss ideas, without coding a single line. If you want to focus on execution, attend a Python or Ruby event, instead of a general startup meeting. I assume this is true everywhere.
  - yuvadam 16y ago
    I try to attend every PyWeb-IL meeting ;)
    - nyellin 16y ago
      Cool. I've wanted to attend PyWeb-IL for a long time, but I haven't been able to make it. Hopefully I'll be at the next one - look for a student with long hair.
zemanel 16y ago
isn't this somewhat obvious? i mean, you could even have a perpetual movement figured out that it wouldn't matter if it didn't work. Now, the definition of "correct execution" may vary, from "does the job" to "awesome"
zachbeane 16y ago
Reminds me of Ed Catmull's talk about Pixar management at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2h2lvhzMDc#t=21m50s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2h2lvhzMDc#t=21m50s -- "If you have a good idea and you give it to a mediocre group, they'll screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a good group, they'll fix it, or they'll throw it away and come up with something else."
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
fabiandesimone 16y ago
I've been creating stuff for the last 5 years and if I had to tell you just one lesson from all of it, is this. I have seen in the last year how all my ideas from 3 or 4 years ago are becoming the big successes of the current web scene. I'm not talking about an idea I had that resembled a current service. No, I'm talking about the same exact actual products and services. I'm in a perpetual WTF? state at how identical my ideas are. Difference? Execution. This also has made adopt a posture about the complexity of the idea itself. IMHO strip you idea of unnecessary complexity (advanced functionalities, etc, etc) in order to be able to execute it as good as you can as fast as you can. Simplicity allows better execution. This seems obvious but is damn hard to accomplish.
- hrabago 16y ago
  > IMHO strip you idea of unnecessary complexity (advanced functionalities, etc, etc) in order to be able to execute it as good as you can as fast as you can. Simplicity allows better execution. I think this is one of the important facets that determine how successful your execution will be. Put in too little functionality and it could fail. Put in too much and it could fail as well. All other things equal (design, marketing, etc) it's almost as if you need just enough to introduce the core functionality while still being useful, then iterating on that to bring in additional functionality once your customers grok the initial set.
- 6ren 16y ago
  I wonder if it would help to think about what job the user wants done (instead of how good the app is). Christensen suggests the user is hiring your app, as an employee, to get something done for them (it might be a work task, or it might be fun, to pass time, start conversation, break ice etc). So: what's the minimum the app has to do, to achieve that, for some user?
6ren 16y ago
The neverending rebuttal of "a great idea is enough". It seems to me that having a great idea would help... but I wonder if even that is necessary... I've been reading Christensen, on "disruption", and there's the concepts of: - targeting non-consumption (or non-consuming contexts - e.g. users of phones, but not while mobile) - asymmetric motivation, where low income or low margins or small markets etc. look great to (poor) you, but a rounding-error to (rich) incumbents. So they don't fight you. - independent value networks, where you don't tap into any part of the way the incumbents do business. You don't use their suppliers; you don't use their sales channels, you don't target their customers. To use a value network, you have to fit in with it, you have to integrate with; you have to work with it - these means that you must constrain your business in some way. This has two effects: 1. if it's their network, your business will be more similar to theirs, and therefore easier for them to adapt to it, to attack you on your home ground, and co-opt the new market you created; 2. being constrained by some pre-existing way of doing business makes you less adaptable to whatever this new market needs, what the customers need, what the business idea needs. You are hampered from serving it. - asymmetric skills, which is just the experience you get in making your particular business work. It's the accumulation of engineering problems you solve each day and gradually adapting your approach to suit them and having insights about how to reorganize to deal with them best; it's the accumulation of knowledge about your customers, what they want, how to reach them, what matters to them, what doesn't, along with repeatedly getting that to work. And so on - it's every part of making the business work. The more adapted you are to your customers and needs (and assuming this is different from what your competitors do - see the previous point), the greater a barrier to entry it is. That is, you become the incumbent in this new market, and you have the strengths that come along with that. So, you might have an idea of a new market, that meets the above characteristics, and it seems that that idea would be valuable: a great idea. However... I'm starting to think that instead of all that careful reasoning, perhaps you could just say "here's my idea" (meaning an original idea, not a copy), and start doing what a business needs to do: find customers, serve them, improve your product, etc. Wouldn't all the above points follow automatically, provided you just "did it your way"? And isn't that how so many of today's great companies started? If this is true (is it? I don't know), then the idea doesn't matter at all, so long as it's yours (original and motivating). Any thoughts on this, esp if you've read Christensen?
selectnull 16y ago
One of the best thoughts on this subject is Derek Sivers' "Ideas are just a multiplier of execution" post. http://sivers.org/multiply http://sivers.org/multiply
davidw 16y ago
From: "Do more faster" ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0046H9BBM/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=dedasys-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0046H9BBM http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0046H9BBM/ref=as_li_ss_tl?... ) > We often talk about the Number One startup killer at TechStars—making a product for which there is no interesting market. TechStars accepts just 10 of more than 600 startups that apply and presumably they are among the best. But still, we find that at least one-third of those startups are attempting to build a product that they want, or that no one wants, instead of what the market wants. So, no, the idea alone doesn't make you rich, but having a good idea is worth something, given how many bad ones there are.
- NY_USA_Hacker 16y ago
  Here's the solution: Borrow from Edison and the electric light. Look at lighting before the good electric lights -- it sucked. There were open flames that were dangerous. The light quality was awful. Etc. Yes, it was expensive and dangerous, but you have to remember, the light quality sucked. So, there was no doubt about the customer 'pain' or the 'market' or the 'market potential'. So, why was there work to do? Because no one knew how the heck to "Do that". So, the challenge was in how to do that. Eventually Edison pulled it all together, and the earnings have been a lot of what has kept GE going to the present. It would have been still better if there had been some patents. It can be still better if the solution is in software, essentially impossible to 'reverse engineer' and very difficult to duplicate or equal, and quite secure in code on servers. So, TechStars needs to start with customer 'pain' that is huge and clear and not solved. Then TechStars needs to find a solution to this pain. The solution, the 'secret sauce', should give much better results than anything else and be difficult to reverse engineer, duplicate, or equal. For a Web site to order custom printed paper napkins delivered by FedEx (put the print shop in Memphis and let orders in by 10 PM Memphis time be delivered by 10:30 AM local time), that's essentially impossible to protect. So, f'get about it.
richardw 16y ago
Unless you're Intellectual Ventures. Then you just extract money from anyone who properly executes the idea you bought.
- blader 16y ago
  Executing on this idea as successfully as they have is far from easy.
  - richardw 16y ago
    To my untrained eye, it seems like "raise lots of money, buy many, many patents, build nothing so the target can't bargain with their patent portfolio, and then start negotiating". Once you have that machine working you can iron out the details. It's like domainers - get there first, buy everything that looks vaguely useful and extract rents. What's the hard part?
    - blader 16y ago
      It's no harder than "build a faddy social network thing that's slightly better than MySpace", or "build a slightly better search engine than AltaVista" to other untrained eyes, I guess.
flyosity 16y ago
I need to send this to every person who tells me about their amazing iPhone app idea. Angry Birds was a different take/execution on an idea from an old Flash game. Doodle Jump was nearly the SAME app as Super Papi Jump but with new graphics and execution. How many unit conversion apps are there? The guys who made Convert were the last app to do it but they went to #1 thanks to brilliant execution. Fart apps? I'm friends with the guy who made the #2 fart app, and I can bust his chops all I want, but he's now a millionaire. In the App Store it's actually rare for a mega hit app or game to truly be original: they're all mostly riffs on existing apps or games.
earlyresort 16y ago
'The Narrow Road', the Felix Dennis book that's quoted from, is a condensation of his earlier 'How To Get Rich' (not 'How To Make Money', that's identical to 'The Narrow Road'.) I found the longer version equally valuable and vastly more entertaining. While Felix is worth reading - a 'get rich' book from some who actually built a business and got rich! - he comes from the publishing world and his advice is very different from the practice of most technology startups. For example, he advises never giving away any equity in your company, ever, and includes the story of how, early on in his publishing career, he fired all of his senior staff because they asked him for a small cut of the equity pie.
Tyrant505 16y ago
I just thought it relevant to point out Job's old resume(currently frontpaged) says that little "vision thing" as skills. Thats what I think "idea" is. And it's constantly reevaluated and adjusted.
antirez 16y ago
in the iPhone you need correct execution and the App Store Mafia to emerge, otherwise no matter how good your execution is, you'll get nowhere.
sayemm 16y ago
Nice, I just ordered "The Narrow Road" on Amazon. Felix Dennis's "How to Get Rich" is one of the best business books I've ever read, I highly recommend it. Sometimes the startup world devises its own theories on what makes businesses successful, and it's good to balance that out with the views of an old school no-nonsense, and massively successful, old media founder like Felix Dennis. He lays it out straight for you and he's all entrepreneur. Tons of wisdom in his books. Great review by Derek Sivers on his first book: http://sivers.org/book/HowToGetRich http://sivers.org/book/HowToGetRich
yannickmahe 16y ago
This is becoming a thoroughly overused cliché. Generally true, but so overused, there must be cases in which it is wrong.
- vyrotek 16y ago
  While I feel that I agree, I'm having a hard time thinking of any counter examples this morning. Perhaps there are there specific industries where the focus isn't executing or creating but instead just being the first? Pharmaceuticals?
  - yannickmahe 16y ago
    Pharmaceuticals seems to be a good example: it's one of the few industries where getting the consumer to know of your product is not the issue (Steve Gary Blank wrote that, if a company found a cure for cancer, marketing would be a non issue). At the same time, being the first with the product guarantees patents and there for lots of money.
- crikli 16y ago
  That may be, but it's the rare equity negotiation I enter into where the party with "the idea" understands that they're not going to get majority ownership.
vannevar 16y ago
Is there really any debate whether you have to execute an idea to make it successful? Are there really people who think you can have an idea, keep it in your head, and become rich just by thinking it? Of course you have to execute the idea, everyone knows that. Ah, but the sage advice is to execute it 'correctly.' That will be a big help to all those poor souls who thought it was better to execute their ideas incorrectly. If they'd only known... The catch is that there is no way to predict whether your execution is 'correct' a priori. It's like saying the way to win the lottery is to pick the correct ticket. Technically true, but not particularly helpful in practice.
- NY_USA_Hacker 16y ago
  "Is there really any debate whether you have to execute an idea to make it successful?" Mostly no. There are some cases where next to no 'execution' is needed for the big bucks. One example was the Sears employee who proposed a button on the socket wrench that would eject the socket. His 'execution' was a lot of legal wrestling with Sears after they implemented the idea but didn't pay him. Eventually he got paid. "Are there really people who think you can have an idea, keep it in your head, and become rich just by thinking it?" No. "Ah, but the sage advice is to execute it 'correctly.'" I believe that more "sage" advice is to have a good idea where execution is routine! Here HN is trying really hard to get into a swamp and ignore the standard, old "sage" advice: (1) Identify some target customer 'pain'. Want a bad pain so that a solution is a "must have" instead of just a "nice to have" (I know, Facebook and Twitter are so far mostly only nice to have). (2) Find a solution to the pain. Hopefully this solution is new, much better than anything else, and can be protected. (3) Use the Sequoia statement: "A huge market with customers yearning for a product developed by great engineers requires very little firepower." I don't fully believe this, but it's not all wrong. It's a version of "Build a better mouse trap and the world will beat a path to your door.", which is only partly true, also. Still, I didn't see a lot of Super Bowl ads for Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Here a crucial part, that I would call the valuable 'idea', is in (2), for the solution.
jhpriestley 16y ago
The correct execution of ideas doesn't make you rich. Receiving money makes you rich. You can execute correctly on a $100 million deal, but if you don't cash the check, you're still poor. To be rich, cash large checks.
guptaneil 16y ago
Bet on the jockey, not the horse. My professor used to drill this saying into us in my Intro to Entrepreneurship class 2 years ago. I still use that quote most when giving advice to other students who have an idea but are hesitant to share it. My freshmen year in college, I met two students who had just received VC funding, and they told me one tip that had helped them most: they shared their idea with anybody who would listen, because they never knew how somebody might be able to help them along. If you truly have a good idea, somebody else is working on it too. You might as well talk about it and get all the help you can.
- NY_USA_Hacker 16y ago
  "If you truly have a good idea, somebody else is working on it too." Standard HN cliche number 298,498,229 and nonsense. I've had several ideas that I can essentially 100% guarantee that no one else was working on. My Ph.D. dissertation was officially judged "new, correct, and significant" -- note the "new". Similarly for each paper of original research I've published. Similarly for the crucial, core idea for the company I'm starting. Just what is it about original research that HN just cannot understand?
  - guptaneil 16y ago
    Research is a different beast than creating a marketable product. If you're creating a product that nobody is working on or hasn't tried to make before, you have to stop and wonder, why has nobody done this before? Before Tylenol existed, many people had attempted to tackle the problem of pain management. Tylenol just happened to make a more efficient chemical formula with their research, but the idea of using drugs to control pain was not new. When you talk about your idea, you don't need to reveal how you do something differently, just like Tylenol can talk about their idea without revealing their formula and Google can talk about their idea without revealing their algorithm. I was in St Louis last week for a business pitch competition, and I watched a med school PhD candidate read his dissertation paper and present his research for the elevator pitch competition. He had absolutely no business knowledge or any idea on how to market his research into a profitable product. But because he was able to talk about his idea and research without revealing anything that would allow somebody else in the room to just copy it, he was able to build contacts with several other business-oriented people in the room who liked the idea and were interested in helping him take it to market.
petegrif 16y ago
Too one sided. "A rising tide raises all ships." The best execution in the world won't save you if you are focused on the wrong thing. In fact great execution in the wrong direction is a menace.
Major_Grooves 16y ago
I met Felix Dennis the other day. He knew about my start-up and grilled me about it. Quite good practice for pitching: http://wannabevc.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/doing-battle-with-felix-dennis/ http://wannabevc.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/doing-battle-with-...
thematt 16y ago
I don't understand why people continually compare the two as if they're mutually exclusive. Why can't we just settle on the fact that they're both equally critical to a successful company? Is it because some outlying success stories seem to be deficient in one and it causes people question whether that was necessary in the first place?
NY_USA_Hacker 16y ago
So, yet again we have someone saying that ideas are plentiful, easy, worthless, and don't "count": Or, "It is the manner in which ideas are executed that counts." "Ideas don’t make you rich. The correct execution of ideas does." Somehow I remember seeing this nonsense before: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2287728 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2287728 So, since ideas don't "count", we should shut down the USPTO and tell the US DoD to quit classifying ideas for, say, stealth, laser gyroscopes for inertial navigation, drag-free satellites for better GPS, a lot in sonar, radar, and spread spectrum, etc. And we should tell the lawyers that when someone steals a trade secret idea they have stolen nothing that "counts". Moreover, we should shut down the funding for NSF and NIH for more ideas. And we should shut down the peer-reviewed journals of original research since they publish just ideas with usually nothing on "execution". In particular, we should do away with the Ph.D. dissertation since its usual role now is to present an idea that is "an original contribution to knowledge worthy of publication" and where the usual criteria for publication are "new, correct, and significant" which must all be empty since ideas don't "count". We should shutdown the Nobel prizes since they are given just for ideas that don't "count". For Newton's second law F = ma, we should quit teaching that because it is just an idea which doesn't "count". Similarly for Einstein's equivalence of mass and energy in E = mc^2 -- doesn't "count". For the Craig Venter idea of chopping up DNA, sequencing the pieces, and reassembling the pieces in a computer, an idea that got the sequencing of DNA done years faster, we should have ignored that. For the idea of Reed-Solomon error correcting codes crucial to letting CDs work, it doesn't "count" either. For public key cryptosystems, their role in Kerberos and authentication and in electronic finance, we should forget about that, too, since they are just ideas which don't "count". People should quit looking for an idea to settle the question P versus NP since the idea, even if found, would not "count". And the idea of using tungsten in a glass with high vacuum as an incandescent electric light would not "count". The tungsten idea came from the English chemist Swan, and the needed much better vacuum pump came from Germany(?). Then Edison could give up on baking hair to make carbon filaments and get on with electric lighting. But, more is claimed: Apparently all ideas are equivalent, that is. don't "count:, and only execution counts. So, might as well start with a bad idea. If start with a bad idea, then, yes, execution is about all that will "count". Just what is it about bad ideas the author likes so much? This article is just another attempt of many to run down ideas by apparently someone with less than a weak little hollow hint of a tiny clue about what an 'idea' really is and what a good idea is how valuable it can be. In fact, with a good idea, execution is routine and the idea was likely difficult to find and is about all that does "count". There can be reasons for running down good ideas: (1) They can be new and disrupt things. (2) They tend to be difficult to find. (3) In school in, say, math and physics, being able to find the good ideas needed to work the problems can be difficult and hurt the feelings of people who fail to find such ideas. (4) In venture capital, it might be a good initial negotiating position to claim that "Ideas are easy. Execution is everything." and "Ideas are plentiful." in order to tell an entrepreneur with a good idea that what he has is easy and plentiful and nothing. E.g., one of the most important steps forward in civilization, technology, and economic productivity was Euclid's 'Elements' on plane geometry, especially the Pythagorean theorem, e.g., crucial for trigonometry, Fourier theory, Nyquist sampling, JPGs, MPEGs, and music CDs! But, for anything so important we'd want a solid proof. All that takes is a good idea. So maybe the author would like to find such a proof, alone, without books, Google, or input from others.
madhkrish 16y ago
I couldn't agree more... good ideas are a dime-a-dozen. What's rare are people who put in the effort to execute ideas, and execute them well. People tend not to act upon their ideas because of the lack of time, money, or the right skills. I'm trying to help solve the third problem on my site www.iinspireus.com -- helping people find real collaborators/partners with skills complementary to theirs, so that they can realize their ideas.
daniel-cussen 16y ago
While this is not news for the people on this forum, it is surprising to hear it through Forbes. And, my one-line rebuttal: ideas don't matter, unless, of course, they are actually novel algorithms. PageRank was very important to Google's success.
warmfuzzykitten 16y ago
Exactly what does the publisher of Maxim have to teach us about great ideas and/or the execution thereof? "It's all about the breasts"? http://www.maxim.com/amg/girls/girls-of-maxim/94039/lindsay-lohan.html http://www.maxim.com/amg/girls/girls-of-maxim/94039/lindsay-...
azal 16y ago
...unless you are a Patent Troll :)

159 points by michaelpinto 16y ago

I hear a lot of people that say "I have a huge idea, I can't tell you about it." In most cases, they really haven't thought it through, and it has many flaws. Execution. Execution. Execution.

tluyben2 16y ago
I signed plenty of NDA's only to hear a really crappy idea. And even if the idea was nice, it would be nearly impossible to execute. Like having some original-ish idea like square is nice, but takes millions to execute. If you don't have the means to get to those millions, you can have the idea but it doesn't really matter. Someone who does have that access will win.
- NY_USA_Hacker 16y ago
  You are making a common but fundamental and potentially very costly mistake: You are looking for a needle in a haystack. Then you are drawing conclusions about the needle from the hay you do see and not the needle you don't. It may be that for the needle, you will have to sign an NDA and, then, be very glad you did. We're looking for needles, guys. We can grab some hay and just hope we find a needle there. Or we can try some solid means to find and/or create needles. Examples? Sure, look at the last 70 years of the US DoD. E.g., they bet on just the 'idea', just on paper, for, for just a short list, the proximity fuse, the atom bomb, the turbojet engine (GE once told me that the first prototype for any jet engine costs > $100 million), the engines for the SR-71 (both a turbojet and a ram jet), the SR-71, the Navy version of the GPS, the F-117, and much more. They start with just paper, and the failure rate from there on is surprisingly small. The US DoD can evaluate far out projects just on paper with high reliability. I almost forgot, the Internet. It was DoD, the CIA, and NASA that mostly got Silicon Valley going. Now just what is it about how to evaluate projects that got Silicon Valley going that Silicon Valley now doesn't understand? May I have the envelope, please? Here it is: DoD does evaluations with people with both technical and military competence, and Silicon Valley uses marketing, 'biz dev', Wall Street financial analysis, management consultant people. Hmm ....
law 16y ago
I love when people tell me that they have the "next big idea," but that they can't disclose it. I lose interest the second someone tells me that, because if it were truly a great idea, they would instead be implementing it. If you have a 'great idea' that you don't know how to implement, it's probably not that great of an idea, because you inherently lack the skills to discover its weaknesses.
- NY_USA_Hacker 16y ago
  So, let's see: I have a 'great idea'. One pill taken once that will cure any cancer. World shaking idea! This example clarifies this whole thread: The need to cure cancer is obvious. So is the desirability of such a one pill. Now let's set aside the obvious. The challenge is how to make that pill. The 'idea' with meaning, then, is how to make this pill. If someone does know how to make the pill, then they definitely should not tell anyone about it without good legal advice, rock solid NDAs, etc. But part of what makes this thread a mess is that at present the HN context of information technology entrepreneurship just assumes that, with current computing, the part analogous to finding the pill is trivial and the only challenge is identifying that people would like to have such a pill. This situation won't last very long!
NY_USA_Hacker 16y ago
No: Your evidence does not lead to your conclusion. You are working with your "a lot of people" and drawing a conclusion about business success in, since this is HN, information technology entrepreneurship. Here's where you get off track: Something under 1% of the people with such 'ideas' achieve success. Or, what fraction of the people can be in the upper 1%? So, the evidence that would be needed would be the role of ideas for that upper 1% or less. As I wrote elsewhere on this thread, what is being assumed here about an 'idea' is just some short description of a 'cutomer need' to be met by, say, a new Web site, say, paper napkins with personalized printing ordered on a Web site and delivered via FedEx. Then, sure, execution is everything. What is being missed, however, is old, traditional, and rock solid: Take a problem millions of people want solved, or that a few people want very, very much to have solved, find a solution, and then execute. Here the implication is that, because the problem has not been solved yet, finding the solution, the 'idea', is challenging. Then commonly people would protect the idea with a patent. If the idea was really good, then the execution should be routine. Examples? Business history is awash in them. I say again: Bad ideas are easy and, then, execution is everything and likely difficult. Good ideas are likely difficult and then execution can be routine.

BerislavLopac 16y ago

Not only that, but an idea is not a single thing: http://berislav.lopac.net/post/3580278793/there-are-no-ideas http://berislav.lopac.net/post/3580278793/there-are-no-ideas (blatant plug, but relevant).

schrijver 16y ago
So true! The prerequisite for executing something, is the idea that you have an idea. Otherwise you will never go through the hassle of making something in the first place :) Before you write something it feels like you already know what you’re going to write. Still, writing is though and it takes a long time before you come to a result that says what you figured you want to say all along. That is, because what actually happens, is that you work hard on converting this network of vague assumptions in your head, which already feels meaningful, into something which can actually be meaningful to others.

yuvadam 16y ago

This can't be stressed enough. The last Startup Weekend that took place in Tel Aviv[1] has showed me exactly how important proper execution is. Great ideas are never a guarantee for success. Having an environment that cultivates top-notch execution is critical. [1] - http://blog.y3xz.com/post/3768333929/startup-weekend-tlv-2011 http://blog.y3xz.com/post/3768333929/startup-weekend-tlv-201...

nyellin 16y ago
I couldn't attend Startup Weekend, but I have experienced the same phenomenon at other startup events in Tel Aviv. The less technically focused the event is, the more people will sit around and discuss ideas, without coding a single line. If you want to focus on execution, attend a Python or Ruby event, instead of a general startup meeting. I assume this is true everywhere.
- yuvadam 16y ago
  I try to attend every PyWeb-IL meeting ;)
  - nyellin 16y ago
    Cool. I've wanted to attend PyWeb-IL for a long time, but I haven't been able to make it. Hopefully I'll be at the next one - look for a student with long hair.

zemanel 16y ago

isn't this somewhat obvious? i mean, you could even have a perpetual movement figured out that it wouldn't matter if it didn't work. Now, the definition of "correct execution" may vary, from "does the job" to "awesome"

zachbeane 16y ago

Reminds me of Ed Catmull's talk about Pixar management at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2h2lvhzMDc#t=21m50s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2h2lvhzMDc#t=21m50s -- "If you have a good idea and you give it to a mediocre group, they'll screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a good group, they'll fix it, or they'll throw it away and come up with something else."

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

fabiandesimone 16y ago

I've been creating stuff for the last 5 years and if I had to tell you just one lesson from all of it, is this. I have seen in the last year how all my ideas from 3 or 4 years ago are becoming the big successes of the current web scene. I'm not talking about an idea I had that resembled a current service. No, I'm talking about the same exact actual products and services. I'm in a perpetual WTF? state at how identical my ideas are. Difference? Execution. This also has made adopt a posture about the complexity of the idea itself. IMHO strip you idea of unnecessary complexity (advanced functionalities, etc, etc) in order to be able to execute it as good as you can as fast as you can. Simplicity allows better execution. This seems obvious but is damn hard to accomplish.

hrabago 16y ago
> IMHO strip you idea of unnecessary complexity (advanced functionalities, etc, etc) in order to be able to execute it as good as you can as fast as you can. Simplicity allows better execution. I think this is one of the important facets that determine how successful your execution will be. Put in too little functionality and it could fail. Put in too much and it could fail as well. All other things equal (design, marketing, etc) it's almost as if you need just enough to introduce the core functionality while still being useful, then iterating on that to bring in additional functionality once your customers grok the initial set.
6ren 16y ago
I wonder if it would help to think about what job the user wants done (instead of how good the app is). Christensen suggests the user is hiring your app, as an employee, to get something done for them (it might be a work task, or it might be fun, to pass time, start conversation, break ice etc). So: what's the minimum the app has to do, to achieve that, for some user?

6ren 16y ago

The neverending rebuttal of "a great idea is enough". It seems to me that having a great idea would help... but I wonder if even that is necessary... I've been reading Christensen, on "disruption", and there's the concepts of: - targeting non-consumption (or non-consuming contexts - e.g. users of phones, but not while mobile) - asymmetric motivation, where low income or low margins or small markets etc. look great to (poor) you, but a rounding-error to (rich) incumbents. So they don't fight you. - independent value networks, where you don't tap into any part of the way the incumbents do business. You don't use their suppliers; you don't use their sales channels, you don't target their customers. To use a value network, you have to fit in with it, you have to integrate with; you have to work with it - these means that you must constrain your business in some way. This has two effects: 1. if it's their network, your business will be more similar to theirs, and therefore easier for them to adapt to it, to attack you on your home ground, and co-opt the new market you created; 2. being constrained by some pre-existing way of doing business makes you less adaptable to whatever this new market needs, what the customers need, what the business idea needs. You are hampered from serving it. - asymmetric skills, which is just the experience you get in making your particular business work. It's the accumulation of engineering problems you solve each day and gradually adapting your approach to suit them and having insights about how to reorganize to deal with them best; it's the accumulation of knowledge about your customers, what they want, how to reach them, what matters to them, what doesn't, along with repeatedly getting that to work. And so on - it's every part of making the business work. The more adapted you are to your customers and needs (and assuming this is different from what your competitors do - see the previous point), the greater a barrier to entry it is. That is, you become the incumbent in this new market, and you have the strengths that come along with that. So, you might have an idea of a new market, that meets the above characteristics, and it seems that that idea would be valuable: a great idea. However... I'm starting to think that instead of all that careful reasoning, perhaps you could just say "here's my idea" (meaning an original idea, not a copy), and start doing what a business needs to do: find customers, serve them, improve your product, etc. Wouldn't all the above points follow automatically, provided you just "did it your way"? And isn't that how so many of today's great companies started? If this is true (is it? I don't know), then the idea doesn't matter at all, so long as it's yours (original and motivating). Any thoughts on this, esp if you've read Christensen?

selectnull 16y ago

One of the best thoughts on this subject is Derek Sivers' "Ideas are just a multiplier of execution" post. http://sivers.org/multiply http://sivers.org/multiply

davidw 16y ago

From: "Do more faster" ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0046H9BBM/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=dedasys-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0046H9BBM http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0046H9BBM/ref=as_li_ss_tl?... ) > We often talk about the Number One startup killer at TechStars—making a product for which there is no interesting market. TechStars accepts just 10 of more than 600 startups that apply and presumably they are among the best. But still, we find that at least one-third of those startups are attempting to build a product that they want, or that no one wants, instead of what the market wants. So, no, the idea alone doesn't make you rich, but having a good idea is worth something, given how many bad ones there are.

NY_USA_Hacker 16y ago
Here's the solution: Borrow from Edison and the electric light. Look at lighting before the good electric lights -- it sucked. There were open flames that were dangerous. The light quality was awful. Etc. Yes, it was expensive and dangerous, but you have to remember, the light quality sucked. So, there was no doubt about the customer 'pain' or the 'market' or the 'market potential'. So, why was there work to do? Because no one knew how the heck to "Do that". So, the challenge was in how to do that. Eventually Edison pulled it all together, and the earnings have been a lot of what has kept GE going to the present. It would have been still better if there had been some patents. It can be still better if the solution is in software, essentially impossible to 'reverse engineer' and very difficult to duplicate or equal, and quite secure in code on servers. So, TechStars needs to start with customer 'pain' that is huge and clear and not solved. Then TechStars needs to find a solution to this pain. The solution, the 'secret sauce', should give much better results than anything else and be difficult to reverse engineer, duplicate, or equal. For a Web site to order custom printed paper napkins delivered by FedEx (put the print shop in Memphis and let orders in by 10 PM Memphis time be delivered by 10:30 AM local time), that's essentially impossible to protect. So, f'get about it.

richardw 16y ago

Unless you're Intellectual Ventures. Then you just extract money from anyone who properly executes the idea you bought.

blader 16y ago
Executing on this idea as successfully as they have is far from easy.
- richardw 16y ago
  To my untrained eye, it seems like "raise lots of money, buy many, many patents, build nothing so the target can't bargain with their patent portfolio, and then start negotiating". Once you have that machine working you can iron out the details. It's like domainers - get there first, buy everything that looks vaguely useful and extract rents. What's the hard part?
  - blader 16y ago
    It's no harder than "build a faddy social network thing that's slightly better than MySpace", or "build a slightly better search engine than AltaVista" to other untrained eyes, I guess.

flyosity 16y ago

I need to send this to every person who tells me about their amazing iPhone app idea. Angry Birds was a different take/execution on an idea from an old Flash game. Doodle Jump was nearly the SAME app as Super Papi Jump but with new graphics and execution. How many unit conversion apps are there? The guys who made Convert were the last app to do it but they went to #1 thanks to brilliant execution. Fart apps? I'm friends with the guy who made the #2 fart app, and I can bust his chops all I want, but he's now a millionaire. In the App Store it's actually rare for a mega hit app or game to truly be original: they're all mostly riffs on existing apps or games.

earlyresort 16y ago

'The Narrow Road', the Felix Dennis book that's quoted from, is a condensation of his earlier 'How To Get Rich' (not 'How To Make Money', that's identical to 'The Narrow Road'.) I found the longer version equally valuable and vastly more entertaining. While Felix is worth reading - a 'get rich' book from some who actually built a business and got rich! - he comes from the publishing world and his advice is very different from the practice of most technology startups. For example, he advises never giving away any equity in your company, ever, and includes the story of how, early on in his publishing career, he fired all of his senior staff because they asked him for a small cut of the equity pie.

Tyrant505 16y ago

I just thought it relevant to point out Job's old resume(currently frontpaged) says that little "vision thing" as skills. Thats what I think "idea" is. And it's constantly reevaluated and adjusted.

antirez 16y ago

in the iPhone you need correct execution and the App Store Mafia to emerge, otherwise no matter how good your execution is, you'll get nowhere.

sayemm 16y ago

Nice, I just ordered "The Narrow Road" on Amazon. Felix Dennis's "How to Get Rich" is one of the best business books I've ever read, I highly recommend it. Sometimes the startup world devises its own theories on what makes businesses successful, and it's good to balance that out with the views of an old school no-nonsense, and massively successful, old media founder like Felix Dennis. He lays it out straight for you and he's all entrepreneur. Tons of wisdom in his books. Great review by Derek Sivers on his first book: http://sivers.org/book/HowToGetRich http://sivers.org/book/HowToGetRich

yannickmahe 16y ago

This is becoming a thoroughly overused cliché. Generally true, but so overused, there must be cases in which it is wrong.

vyrotek 16y ago
While I feel that I agree, I'm having a hard time thinking of any counter examples this morning. Perhaps there are there specific industries where the focus isn't executing or creating but instead just being the first? Pharmaceuticals?
- yannickmahe 16y ago
  Pharmaceuticals seems to be a good example: it's one of the few industries where getting the consumer to know of your product is not the issue (Steve Gary Blank wrote that, if a company found a cure for cancer, marketing would be a non issue). At the same time, being the first with the product guarantees patents and there for lots of money.
crikli 16y ago
That may be, but it's the rare equity negotiation I enter into where the party with "the idea" understands that they're not going to get majority ownership.

vannevar 16y ago

Is there really any debate whether you have to execute an idea to make it successful? Are there really people who think you can have an idea, keep it in your head, and become rich just by thinking it? Of course you have to execute the idea, everyone knows that. Ah, but the sage advice is to execute it 'correctly.' That will be a big help to all those poor souls who thought it was better to execute their ideas incorrectly. If they'd only known... The catch is that there is no way to predict whether your execution is 'correct' a priori. It's like saying the way to win the lottery is to pick the correct ticket. Technically true, but not particularly helpful in practice.

NY_USA_Hacker 16y ago
"Is there really any debate whether you have to execute an idea to make it successful?" Mostly no. There are some cases where next to no 'execution' is needed for the big bucks. One example was the Sears employee who proposed a button on the socket wrench that would eject the socket. His 'execution' was a lot of legal wrestling with Sears after they implemented the idea but didn't pay him. Eventually he got paid. "Are there really people who think you can have an idea, keep it in your head, and become rich just by thinking it?" No. "Ah, but the sage advice is to execute it 'correctly.'" I believe that more "sage" advice is to have a good idea where execution is routine! Here HN is trying really hard to get into a swamp and ignore the standard, old "sage" advice: (1) Identify some target customer 'pain'. Want a bad pain so that a solution is a "must have" instead of just a "nice to have" (I know, Facebook and Twitter are so far mostly only nice to have). (2) Find a solution to the pain. Hopefully this solution is new, much better than anything else, and can be protected. (3) Use the Sequoia statement: "A huge market with customers yearning for a product developed by great engineers requires very little firepower." I don't fully believe this, but it's not all wrong. It's a version of "Build a better mouse trap and the world will beat a path to your door.", which is only partly true, also. Still, I didn't see a lot of Super Bowl ads for Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Here a crucial part, that I would call the valuable 'idea', is in (2), for the solution.

jhpriestley 16y ago

The correct execution of ideas doesn't make you rich. Receiving money makes you rich. You can execute correctly on a $100 million deal, but if you don't cash the check, you're still poor. To be rich, cash large checks.

guptaneil 16y ago

Bet on the jockey, not the horse. My professor used to drill this saying into us in my Intro to Entrepreneurship class 2 years ago. I still use that quote most when giving advice to other students who have an idea but are hesitant to share it. My freshmen year in college, I met two students who had just received VC funding, and they told me one tip that had helped them most: they shared their idea with anybody who would listen, because they never knew how somebody might be able to help them along. If you truly have a good idea, somebody else is working on it too. You might as well talk about it and get all the help you can.

NY_USA_Hacker 16y ago
"If you truly have a good idea, somebody else is working on it too." Standard HN cliche number 298,498,229 and nonsense. I've had several ideas that I can essentially 100% guarantee that no one else was working on. My Ph.D. dissertation was officially judged "new, correct, and significant" -- note the "new". Similarly for each paper of original research I've published. Similarly for the crucial, core idea for the company I'm starting. Just what is it about original research that HN just cannot understand?
- guptaneil 16y ago
  Research is a different beast than creating a marketable product. If you're creating a product that nobody is working on or hasn't tried to make before, you have to stop and wonder, why has nobody done this before? Before Tylenol existed, many people had attempted to tackle the problem of pain management. Tylenol just happened to make a more efficient chemical formula with their research, but the idea of using drugs to control pain was not new. When you talk about your idea, you don't need to reveal how you do something differently, just like Tylenol can talk about their idea without revealing their formula and Google can talk about their idea without revealing their algorithm. I was in St Louis last week for a business pitch competition, and I watched a med school PhD candidate read his dissertation paper and present his research for the elevator pitch competition. He had absolutely no business knowledge or any idea on how to market his research into a profitable product. But because he was able to talk about his idea and research without revealing anything that would allow somebody else in the room to just copy it, he was able to build contacts with several other business-oriented people in the room who liked the idea and were interested in helping him take it to market.

petegrif 16y ago

Too one sided. "A rising tide raises all ships." The best execution in the world won't save you if you are focused on the wrong thing. In fact great execution in the wrong direction is a menace.

Major_Grooves 16y ago

I met Felix Dennis the other day. He knew about my start-up and grilled me about it. Quite good practice for pitching: http://wannabevc.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/doing-battle-with-felix-dennis/ http://wannabevc.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/doing-battle-with-...

thematt 16y ago

I don't understand why people continually compare the two as if they're mutually exclusive. Why can't we just settle on the fact that they're both equally critical to a successful company? Is it because some outlying success stories seem to be deficient in one and it causes people question whether that was necessary in the first place?

NY_USA_Hacker 16y ago

So, yet again we have someone saying that ideas are plentiful, easy, worthless, and don't "count": Or, "It is the manner in which ideas are executed that counts." "Ideas don’t make you rich. The correct execution of ideas does." Somehow I remember seeing this nonsense before: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2287728 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2287728 So, since ideas don't "count", we should shut down the USPTO and tell the US DoD to quit classifying ideas for, say, stealth, laser gyroscopes for inertial navigation, drag-free satellites for better GPS, a lot in sonar, radar, and spread spectrum, etc. And we should tell the lawyers that when someone steals a trade secret idea they have stolen nothing that "counts". Moreover, we should shut down the funding for NSF and NIH for more ideas. And we should shut down the peer-reviewed journals of original research since they publish just ideas with usually nothing on "execution". In particular, we should do away with the Ph.D. dissertation since its usual role now is to present an idea that is "an original contribution to knowledge worthy of publication" and where the usual criteria for publication are "new, correct, and significant" which must all be empty since ideas don't "count". We should shutdown the Nobel prizes since they are given just for ideas that don't "count". For Newton's second law F = ma, we should quit teaching that because it is just an idea which doesn't "count". Similarly for Einstein's equivalence of mass and energy in E = mc^2 -- doesn't "count". For the Craig Venter idea of chopping up DNA, sequencing the pieces, and reassembling the pieces in a computer, an idea that got the sequencing of DNA done years faster, we should have ignored that. For the idea of Reed-Solomon error correcting codes crucial to letting CDs work, it doesn't "count" either. For public key cryptosystems, their role in Kerberos and authentication and in electronic finance, we should forget about that, too, since they are just ideas which don't "count". People should quit looking for an idea to settle the question P versus NP since the idea, even if found, would not "count". And the idea of using tungsten in a glass with high vacuum as an incandescent electric light would not "count". The tungsten idea came from the English chemist Swan, and the needed much better vacuum pump came from Germany(?). Then Edison could give up on baking hair to make carbon filaments and get on with electric lighting. But, more is claimed: Apparently all ideas are equivalent, that is. don't "count:, and only execution counts. So, might as well start with a bad idea. If start with a bad idea, then, yes, execution is about all that will "count". Just what is it about bad ideas the author likes so much? This article is just another attempt of many to run down ideas by apparently someone with less than a weak little hollow hint of a tiny clue about what an 'idea' really is and what a good idea is how valuable it can be. In fact, with a good idea, execution is routine and the idea was likely difficult to find and is about all that does "count". There can be reasons for running down good ideas: (1) They can be new and disrupt things. (2) They tend to be difficult to find. (3) In school in, say, math and physics, being able to find the good ideas needed to work the problems can be difficult and hurt the feelings of people who fail to find such ideas. (4) In venture capital, it might be a good initial negotiating position to claim that "Ideas are easy. Execution is everything." and "Ideas are plentiful." in order to tell an entrepreneur with a good idea that what he has is easy and plentiful and nothing. E.g., one of the most important steps forward in civilization, technology, and economic productivity was Euclid's 'Elements' on plane geometry, especially the Pythagorean theorem, e.g., crucial for trigonometry, Fourier theory, Nyquist sampling, JPGs, MPEGs, and music CDs! But, for anything so important we'd want a solid proof. All that takes is a good idea. So maybe the author would like to find such a proof, alone, without books, Google, or input from others.

madhkrish 16y ago

I couldn't agree more... good ideas are a dime-a-dozen. What's rare are people who put in the effort to execute ideas, and execute them well. People tend not to act upon their ideas because of the lack of time, money, or the right skills. I'm trying to help solve the third problem on my site www.iinspireus.com -- helping people find real collaborators/partners with skills complementary to theirs, so that they can realize their ideas.

daniel-cussen 16y ago

While this is not news for the people on this forum, it is surprising to hear it through Forbes. And, my one-line rebuttal: ideas don't matter, unless, of course, they are actually novel algorithms. PageRank was very important to Google's success.

warmfuzzykitten 16y ago

Exactly what does the publisher of Maxim have to teach us about great ideas and/or the execution thereof? "It's all about the breasts"? http://www.maxim.com/amg/girls/girls-of-maxim/94039/lindsay-lohan.html http://www.maxim.com/amg/girls/girls-of-maxim/94039/lindsay-...

azal 16y ago

...unless you are a Patent Troll :)