4 ms·

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

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.
  - NY_USA_Hacker 16y ago
    "Research is a different beast than creating a marketable product." Well there are people in research looking for fundamental knowledge, e.g., string theory in physics or the finest details of biochemistry and genetic material in biology. And there are people doing make-work, junk-think, prof-scam, busy work. And in neither case is there much connection with a product or market. But your claim is not true in all cases! I'm creating a "marketable product". That the product is desirable and "marketable" is mostly obvious. The challenge is how to create the thing. I found a way. That way was some original research in applied math. Since I have Ph.D. for such math, I'm able to make a competent attempt at such research and to judge any results for correctness as math and significance for the real problem. There's essentially no doubt that my idea is "new" and that no one else is working on it. Reasons: First, my work has some advanced prerequisites nearly unknown anywhere among full profs in computer science. They didn't take enough of the right grad math courses, and, actually, neither did more than a tiny fraction of math profs. Some of the courses are rarely taught; the combination of courses is especially rare. Second, the crucial part of the work is clearly original; there's no chance it's in the books or journals, and there's essentially no chance that anyone else with the prerequisites would be trying to get the same results. To me, that research I did was the crucial 'idea' for my business. At this point, the rest is routine, a simple Web site, some simple usage of relational database, some fairly simple initial data gathering, and some routine publicity. You are insisting on saying that the research is not business and not the idea and that the idea is the market for a solution for the customer pain. That definition of an 'idea' is new and strange and a big break with centuries of history in technology for business, medicine, and the military and with the whole history of the USPTO. Yes, your new definition of an 'idea' has become very common in Web 2.0 information technology entrepreneurship. The people who invented the formula for Tylenol would agree that that invention of the chemical formula, and possibly how to do the manufacturing, was the crucial 'idea'. Just a better pill to alleviate pain was not the idea. For the market I'm addressing, sure, lots of other people have tried. It's just that for the customer pain I'm addressing, the results from the other guys just suck and the results from my idea, as is quite clear from some of the math, should be much better. Eventually it will dawn on some people in computer science that I must have made good progress in having computer software work effectively with how humans view 'meaning', where they will be correct, and start to say my work is close to earth shaking. But I don't want their characterizations, praise, prizes, approval, admiration, gratitude, tenure, invitations to give lectures, etc.; I want a yacht. Then I want to compose music, starting roughly with the techniques of Richard Strauss, and then pursue mathematical physics, often on my yacht. Yes, other people have tried to solve the same customer pain, but I do not conclude from this fact that they have been working on the same "idea" I am. One pill taken once to cure any cancer is not a significant 'idea' or 'market'. The good idea would be how to make such a pill, and then the 'market' would be quite new. I count aspirin, Tylenol, Advil, Benzocaine, etc. as great ideas for alleviating pain. I don't count the market for alleviating pain as a meaningful 'idea', but you seem to be. Your new definition for an 'idea' actually can have some value in Web 2.0: It is not very clear just what people want from Web 2.0, the 'social graph', etc. so that a guess at what they want and how to provide it, even if all the necessary technology is trivial, might be a valuable 'idea'. There seems to be some progress here at http://www.slideshare.net/padday/the-real-life-social-network-v2 http://www.slideshare.net/padday/the-real-life-social-networ... Still, this definition of an 'idea' is strange, new, very narrow, and in strong conflict with centuries of important history and nearly everything else in 'ideas' today from 'creative' in ads to the USPTO, DoD, NSF, and NIH funded projects, pharmaceutical research, and much more. I have one more idea: Send Jane Fonda and Al Guru to Japan!

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.
- NY_USA_Hacker 16y ago
  "Research is a different beast than creating a marketable product." Well there are people in research looking for fundamental knowledge, e.g., string theory in physics or the finest details of biochemistry and genetic material in biology. And there are people doing make-work, junk-think, prof-scam, busy work. And in neither case is there much connection with a product or market. But your claim is not true in all cases! I'm creating a "marketable product". That the product is desirable and "marketable" is mostly obvious. The challenge is how to create the thing. I found a way. That way was some original research in applied math. Since I have Ph.D. for such math, I'm able to make a competent attempt at such research and to judge any results for correctness as math and significance for the real problem. There's essentially no doubt that my idea is "new" and that no one else is working on it. Reasons: First, my work has some advanced prerequisites nearly unknown anywhere among full profs in computer science. They didn't take enough of the right grad math courses, and, actually, neither did more than a tiny fraction of math profs. Some of the courses are rarely taught; the combination of courses is especially rare. Second, the crucial part of the work is clearly original; there's no chance it's in the books or journals, and there's essentially no chance that anyone else with the prerequisites would be trying to get the same results. To me, that research I did was the crucial 'idea' for my business. At this point, the rest is routine, a simple Web site, some simple usage of relational database, some fairly simple initial data gathering, and some routine publicity. You are insisting on saying that the research is not business and not the idea and that the idea is the market for a solution for the customer pain. That definition of an 'idea' is new and strange and a big break with centuries of history in technology for business, medicine, and the military and with the whole history of the USPTO. Yes, your new definition of an 'idea' has become very common in Web 2.0 information technology entrepreneurship. The people who invented the formula for Tylenol would agree that that invention of the chemical formula, and possibly how to do the manufacturing, was the crucial 'idea'. Just a better pill to alleviate pain was not the idea. For the market I'm addressing, sure, lots of other people have tried. It's just that for the customer pain I'm addressing, the results from the other guys just suck and the results from my idea, as is quite clear from some of the math, should be much better. Eventually it will dawn on some people in computer science that I must have made good progress in having computer software work effectively with how humans view 'meaning', where they will be correct, and start to say my work is close to earth shaking. But I don't want their characterizations, praise, prizes, approval, admiration, gratitude, tenure, invitations to give lectures, etc.; I want a yacht. Then I want to compose music, starting roughly with the techniques of Richard Strauss, and then pursue mathematical physics, often on my yacht. Yes, other people have tried to solve the same customer pain, but I do not conclude from this fact that they have been working on the same "idea" I am. One pill taken once to cure any cancer is not a significant 'idea' or 'market'. The good idea would be how to make such a pill, and then the 'market' would be quite new. I count aspirin, Tylenol, Advil, Benzocaine, etc. as great ideas for alleviating pain. I don't count the market for alleviating pain as a meaningful 'idea', but you seem to be. Your new definition for an 'idea' actually can have some value in Web 2.0: It is not very clear just what people want from Web 2.0, the 'social graph', etc. so that a guess at what they want and how to provide it, even if all the necessary technology is trivial, might be a valuable 'idea'. There seems to be some progress here at http://www.slideshare.net/padday/the-real-life-social-network-v2 http://www.slideshare.net/padday/the-real-life-social-networ... Still, this definition of an 'idea' is strange, new, very narrow, and in strong conflict with centuries of important history and nearly everything else in 'ideas' today from 'creative' in ads to the USPTO, DoD, NSF, and NIH funded projects, pharmaceutical research, and much more. I have one more idea: Send Jane Fonda and Al Guru to Japan!