

Ask HN: how do you know if you have a secret, just wrong?  (from Thiel lectures) - pitt1980

there was a previous HN discussion on the secrets lecture http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3962129&#60;p&#62;from the next lecture Reid Hoffman says - 
A side note on invention and innovation: when you have an idea for a startup„ consult your network. Ask people what they think. Don’t look for flattery. If most people get it right away and call you a genius, you’re probably screwed; it likely means your idea is obvious and won’t work. What you’re looking for is a genuinely thoughtful response. Fully two thirds of people in my network thought LinkedIn was stupid idea. These are very smart people. They understood that there is zero value in a social network until you have a million users on it. But they didn’t know the secret plans that led us to believe we could pull it off. And getting to the first million users took us about 460 days. Now we grow at over 2 users per second.&#60;p&#62;so if the nature of having a secret is that people disagree with you, how do you know if they disagree with you because its a good secret, or if they disagree with you because you have a shitty idea?
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intellegacy
_How do you know if they disagree with you because its a good secret, or if
they disagree with you because you have a shitty idea?_

This is a great question. So simple yet so difficult to answer.

If we were to go about this systematically, the best way would be to write out
the reasons behind your belief in this secret, and then compare your reasoning
to smart people's. Human brains don't always get it right; sometimes
(oftentimes) we possess incorrect or incomplete models of reality and are
simply unable to or too slow to adapt. Listing out your reasoning is a way to
expose these flaws whether in your logic or in theirs.

Either the people who disagree or you yourself are missing some key
information or insight. Maybe they are jaded or scared or risk-averse or never
really took the time to fully think about the idea.

That is probably the only systematic way. But, we must account for the
importance of courage as well. It's impossible to be 100% sure of any society-
changing secret, so also important is the guts to stick with your secret.
Everyone could see through the emperor's new clothes but only one person dared
to trust himself and risk saying something. Same as in life, many people have
known secrets but they didn't risk following through with it.

Again, it's impossible to be 100% sure of anything and we must account for
luck. So say some people disagree with your secret and they peg the chance of
success at 5%. Well, if you have some insight that they lack, maybe that
quintuples your chance of success to 25%. It's not 100% but now your secret
could be worth pursuing, even if you fail in the end!

~~~
pitt1980
thanks, yeah I guess that's what I figured, try and give people's objections
as much consideration as you can, and if you still believe it, I guess you got
something

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jimminy
I think the biggest thing here is, "What you’re looking for is a genuinely
thoughtful response." If you are holding back a secret on how you'll solve the
problem, and do get such responses; you'll hopefully know which it is.

If you are given that genuinely thoughtful response, it will come with the
problems with your idea and the reasons that they think there are problems.
You can then compare this information to your secret information. If the
problems they present match up, and you have plans to solve them, that's
great; if they come up with something you had missed, either a different
reason or a widely different problem, you may need to rethink the idea.

Of course, this process isn't going to be 100%, and you're still going to have
to some faith in that what you believe is correct, but it's a decent process
to go through.

I also don't believe you always have to take the non-obvious route, it is just
likely to have less direct competition and a higher risk/reward vs an obvious
problem.

~~~
intellegacy
Yep, its the classic road less traveled idea. Greater risk that you'll get
eaten or find nothing at all, but also greater chance you'll strike it big.

Its interesting how many different kinds of startup strategies there are. Some
take the unexplored route and flail about trying to find a business model or
concept that sticks. Others just copy what others are doing and attempt to
out-execute / outcompete. The correct strategy probably has a lot to do with
the strengths of your founding team. If you are all execution monsters then
choosing a well-traveled space and out-executing everyone is a play that could
work well. If you have a founder with unique vision, then following him into
the Blue Ocean could prove extremely lucrative.

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debacle
Lets wait until LinkedIn is actually reasonably profitable before taking
advice from LinkedIn founders.

