It appears that we are not considering the same issues, i.e., we are not communicating, E.g., right up front in my post I said, as a summary, and overview, and

It appears that we are not considering the same issues, i.e., we are not communicating, E.g., right up front in my post I said, as a summary, and overview, and a statement of my purpose in my post: > I want to propose that it can be possible to have an idea, test it, essentially just on paper, and, if it passes the test, be quite sure the resulting product will be good and fairly sure the resulting company will be successful. To me, this statement of mine about the idea is very different from what Altman said and very different for the plan and the resulting execution and business. Here I will avoid taking enough words to quote enough from Altman's lecture to show these differences; I assume we agree that, on the idea Altman and I are saying very different things. For your > in all of the examples you give, the execution was vastly more difficult than the idea. Sure, but if you are concerned about this then you are not really responding to what I wrote. All the examples (A)-(O) do illustrate what I said about the idea. For execution I said that with a good idea, execution should be routine and low risk. Projects (A)-(O) also illustrate this point -- routine and low risk -- about execution. So, with a sufficiently good idea, execution can be routine and low risk. Here, too, what I am saying is different from what Altman said. You are also concerned about the amount of effort in the execution. Right. And, right, mostly the projects (A)-(O) do not illustrate low effort. Okay. But we can't use those projects to conclude that there are no projects, start ups, that follow what I said about ideas and that have have low execution effort. So, for effort in execution, can we also have projects that have low execution effort and, thus, are suitable for start ups? Well, except maybe for the project (L) RSA I listed, the projects in (A)-(O) do not illustrate low effort. But I do believe that, as we select projects, we can also have some that follow what I described and also have low execution effort. How? Broadly, just do what is the focus of Hacker News -- Information technology that exploits Moore's law and current infrastructure software. E.g., in The Happy Demise of the 10X Engineer By Sam Gerstenzang at http://a16z.com/2014/07/30/the-happy-demise-of-the-10x-engineer/ http://a16z.com/2014/07/30/the-happy-demise-of-the-10x-engin... is a discussion of the question: "How long before we have a billion-dollar acquisition offer for a one-engineer startup?" So, this is from A16Z: They are guessing that the issue you raised about "effort", we should be able to have a "billion-dollar ... one-engineer startup". So, A16Z and I agree that now, in information technology start ups, low effort in execution is reasonable to expect. The A16Z arguments add to mine and do not conflict. I would suggest that my arguments help show the way to the A16Z information technology "billion-dollar ... one-engineer startup" with low risk and low effort. Why don't we have a lot of examples of projects that followed my arguments, and were "billion-dollar start ups" with low effort? Sure: What I am saying is. so far in practice, mostly new for information technology start ups -- instead of what I described people have followed what Altman described in his lecture. I'm saying that there is a better way, heavily in the planning. That what I am saying seems new for information technology start up can seem good news unless find the thinking wrong. Nutshell View: I'm claiming that we can do good planning and with a good plan execution can be routine and the intended success low risk. A key to a reliable path from plan to success is some math for the core of the product. Another key is a problem where the first good or a much better solution is a "must have". My project examples (A)-(O) illustrated that such planning, the role of math, routine execution with low risk, and "must have" solutions are possible. Yes, nearly all the project examples (A)-(O) had high effort. For effort, there's evidence, e.g., from A16Z, that now, due to Moore's law, etc., that for some information technology start ups we might get all of these project attributes along with low effort. Here what I'm saying is very different from what Altman said and maybe good news.