
Winklevoss syndrome - davidst
http://startupblog.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/winklevoss-syndrome/
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mindcrime
I'm getting tired of this constant back and forth about "ideas vs. execution."
It seems plain as day to me that you need both a good idea and good execution
to have the best chance of success. And a healthy dose of good luck probably
doesn't hurt either.

Sure, the world's best idea, with no execution, is worthless. And sure lots of
people have "great ideas" that are just pie in the sky fairytales that aren't
implementable. But look at the flip-side... how many hackers are there in the
world, who - in 2003/2004 or so - were talented enough to build, say,
Facebook? I'd venture the number is on the order of "a metric shit-ton." Now
how many had the idea of building something like Facebook? And then the flip-
side to the flip-side is to ask "how many had the idea and the talent, but not
the initiative?" And we could keep going back and forth... the point being,
you need both the idea and the execution.

And executing a bad idea well isn't necessarily going to lead you to any
success. What if I invented the world's most amazingly advanced and mondo
righteous new model of buggy-whip, tomorrow? I could setup a factory, produce
them, source the components at a great price, use six sigma and all sorts of
fancy statistical process control and empower my employees and use the kaizen
approach and churn out a constant supply of really high-quality (but
inexpensive!), super advanced mondo righteous buggy-whips... which would all
promptly collect dust until my factory went out of business, I went bankrupt,
and I had to burn them as firewood.

~~~
keeptrying
The point is that if you had created the best buggy whip, you could corner the
market for S&M products. You'd be making millions.

Idea and execution are 2 parts of the same thing. Start with idea, then you
execute, you get stuck after which you tweak the idea and then your back to
execution.

You can also start with execution: do consulting for a bunch of companies in
the same space. Figure out a common problem to all(ie idea) and then you
execute a solution.

Idea Is Execution.

------
danshapiro
I believe the Winklevoss claim was that Mark committed to build facebook for
and with them. Then, he cut them out of the deal, without terminating their
agreement. "Who had the idea" is less important than "we were business
partners, but you cut us out without terminating the agreement first."

~~~
danssig
It's even worse than that, he kept them on hold believing he was working on
it. If he had made it clear from the beginning that they weren't a priority
they could have hired someone else and had a chance. I would consider what he
did sabotage.

~~~
gvnonor
That's true. I can imagine how bad it would hurt to be in Winklevoss' place.
But wasting their entire lives suing fb isn't the best course of action. They
should forget what happenened and focus on other things and try and make a
mark of their own in whatever they're interested.

~~~
danssig
They seem to be making good money doing what they're doing. 65 million so far.
Next round, who knows?

~~~
gvnonor
From a monetary perspective, it seems very profitable and whatever makes them
happy.

But if I were in their place i'd rather go out and build something and get
known for it than be remembered as someone who kept suing a person just
because that guy stole an idea of mine , especially when the guy's already
paid me 65 mil.

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InclinedPlane
Ideas aren't entirely worthless, but execution is so significant that it can
kill a good idea or rescue a bad idea.

Consider what would be necessary to fully detail an idea so completely as to
make it difficult to screw up the execution. You would need to provide a lot
of material to fill in all the details, thousands of words perhaps.

Consider an example of this: the adaptation of books to movies. Books are
ideas that are enormously thoroughly detailed, far more detailed than the vast
majority of ideas in business. And yet, what is the success rate of the
translation of good ideas (in book form) to good movies? It's pretty spotty,
and utterly dependent on good execution. How many excellent books have been
executed as mediocre or horrible movies?

Good ideas can help (some of the best movies ever have come from books, for
example), but they can just as easily be a length of rope from which to hang
oneself.

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dhimes
Oh, Christ. Not again.

This idea circulates every now and then, often as a result of a VC post
somewhere. Look: VCs sit on the other side of the table from the founders. It
is _their job_ to convince the founders that their ideas have little value and
that the value lies in what they bring to the table. Your are a fool if you
believe them. One rather notable startup invester has gone so far as to state
that if you tell him your idea it is perfectly acceptable for him to give your
idea to another group of founders to execute. It's not stealing, because the
idea is of no value.

See how that works?

He has apparently executed on this threat, too.

But if you start negotiating for serious money (valuations of tens of millions
or more), you need a strong barrier to entry for the competition. Often, very
often, that is a patentable (or patented) idea or technology.

On the flip side, maybe you can think of products whose initial execution
wasn't so great but whose idea was _so compelling_ that the product was a
success anyway. I won't list what comes to my mind because I don't want to
start a fanboi flamewar here, but you may be able to think of a few.

Believe the "execution is everything" myth at your own risk. Ideas are _very
important._ Ideas are what change the direction of how we think about
ourselves and how we live in the world. In fact, I would say that some ideas
compel their execution. So, in my view, the moral is: if you have a good idea
you better be able to execute it, because if you can't somebody else will.

~~~
danssig
>One rather notable startup invester has gone so far as to state that if you
tell him your idea it is perfectly acceptable for him to give your idea to
another group of founders to execute.

Please cite a name so we can be sure not to go to such a clown.

~~~
dhimes
I don't want to do that here, but it may come up again. Keep your eyes peeled.

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andrew_k
Lebedev has good article on the topic: Idea worth minus a million.
<http://www.artlebedev.com/mandership/161/>

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drdo
I can say this is not true for myself, the problem really is coming up with
something that people will buy, i have no idea what sort of things people
would pay for, i see a lot of things that i think are useless that a lot of
people pay/use.

------
fxj
IP = Imaginary Property

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drstrangevibes
Winklevoss syndrome a.k.a. IP copyright?

~~~
marknutter
I'm pretty sure they didn't own a copyright on the concept of social
networking.

