> but "the ability to build and sell the product" are not part of the idea. I agree. I didn't say what I meant to say. What I meant to say is that the idea in

> but "the ability to build and sell the product" are not part of the idea. I agree. I didn't say what I meant to say. What I meant to say is that the idea includes an estimate of how likely it is that you'll successfully build and sell the product. An idea where you could reasonably assume a high likelihood of being able to successfully build and sell your product is good (or rather it has a few components of being good). An idea that meets some of the requirements of being good, but that doesn't have a reasonable chance at being able to be built and sold isn't a good idea. I think that these estimates may have a rather large confidence interval in some cases, and that in these cases the team is extra important. But I also think that there do exist ideas that have a high likelihood of success with a narrow confidence interval, and that in these cases the team is less important (but still important, for the reasons that are well accepted). And so, I think it makes sense to look at it as a case-by-case, rather than saying more broadly that "ideas don't matter".