

Ask HN: The value of ideas - sendos

I'm new to this whole startup thing, and the one thing that keeps getting hammered at on all the websites and blog posts and expert advice I've been reading is that, basically, ideas are useless. You need a great team and great execution.<p>I agree that great execution is essential, but I think that the value of ideas is being unfairly put down. You need both a great idea and great execution to fully succeed. They are both necessary links in the chain of success. If one of them is weak, the chain breaks. I don't think saying one or the other is more important is correct.<p>For example, if you do a web search for "Ideas are a dime a dozen. The money is in the execution" you'll see tons of examples. My take: <i>Ideas</i> may be a dime a dozen, but <i>great ideas</i> are rare.<p>Look at Google. It was based on their idea for PageRank. Of course it required great execution, but without that idea, it would have been just another search engine, instead of the phenomenon it is now.<p>It is like if carpenters said that furniture design is nothing, the key is the craftsmanship. Yes, craftsmanship is necessary to make a good piece of furniture, but if no one designs a good piece, they will just make crap, and make it very well.<p>Another area is movie-making. Today, studios have gotten excellent at making good-looking movies. From set design, to costumes, to special effects, they can construct any scene you can imagine. But, without a good script the movie is crap.<p>The same thing holds for startups.<p>Execution in want of a great idea is sterile. It is useless. (Of course so is a great idea in want of a great execution)<p>Is the "ideas are useless" meme being put out there just because so many newbies to the startup culture are too enamored with their ideas and think that the idea is all that matters, and so they have to be hit hard with the "ideas are useless" to snap them out of that thinking and start valuing execution?
======
mixmax
If you take a look at successful companies you'll find that the ideas behind
them are in no way unique, and more often than not they're not based on an
idea but on a market. Here are the ten most profitable companies in the Forbes
1000 list and what they do:

ExxonMobil - Oil & Gas Operations

Gazprom Russia - Oil & Gas Operations

Royal Dutch Shell - Oil & Gas Operations

Chevron - Oil & Gas Operations

BP - Oil & Gas Operations

PetroChina - Oil & Gas Operations

General Electric - Conglomerates

Microsoft - Software & Services

Toyota Motor - Consumer Durables

Nestlé - Food, Drink & Tobacco

Only General Electric and Microsoft seem to be based on an idea, the others
adress a market and create a product to fit that market. And it can be argued
whether these are successes because of the idea - Edison tried thousands of
different configurations before he actually invented the lightbulb, and
Microsoft bought their first hit-product DOS from Tim Paterson and became
successful by selling it, not inventing it. Execution apperas to have been
paramount in their success.

These examples aren't unique. Even Google, often touted as the canonical
"idea" company couldn't sell their technology, even though they tried. They
only created Google after futile attempts at selling the idea to among others
Yahoo.

~~~
sendos
"Even Google, often touted as the canonical "idea" company couldn't sell their
technology, even though they tried. They only created Google after futile
attempts at selling the idea to among others Yahoo."

Yes, idea+execution is what matters. But, without the great idea, the
execution doesn't amount to much, at least in the high-tech area (in the
industrial/manufacturing/oil business, there is not much room for new ideas,
so of course execution is the primary determinant of success)

Before Google came out with their search algorithm, there were lots of
companies trying to do search. I believe Altavista was considered the best at
the time.

What did Google have that all these other search engines didn't? Was it
execution? I doubt it. A lot of very capable people were and are working on
many other search engines, and yet none has the market penetration that Google
has. What Google had was a much better algorithm, i.e. a much better idea on
how to rank search results.

------
Travis
Let's play a thought experiment:

I'm Paul Graham, and I've got a fantastic, knock-your-socks-off idea for a
business. How much will you pay me for it?

OR

I'm Travis. I've got a mediocre idea, but have spent a lot of time learning
about my customers and market. I've built a kickass piece of software that
solves the pain. But, again, my idea isn't that great (think Craigslist: the
idea of online classifieds isn't exactly a great one, or a novel/clever
one...) Will you pay me more for this?

~~~
sendos
Regarding "I'm Paul Graham, and I've got a fantastic, knock-your-socks-off
idea for a business. How much will you pay me for it?":

First off, if you patented it, and I can see a lot of value from licensing the
idea, then yes, I will pay a lot for it.

Second, I don't get why people are so focused on valuing an idea in-and-of-
itself. Just because when some Joe says "I have a great idea" we don't attach
any monetary value to that, doesn't mean that "ideas are useless".

It's like if some Joe says "I'm great at executing". Nobody will pay him for
that. That has no monetary value. But that doesn't mean that "execution is
useless".

It's the combination of idea+execution that has monetary value.

~~~
Travis
Ok, I agree that specific ideas have value. However, I think they're not very
valuable regardless of quality, because there is little to differentiate a
high quality idea from a low quality idea until they are executed. Then your
differentiation takes place after-the-fact, making it useless at early stages.

If specific ideas are to have specific value, there must be a common method of
differentiation. How do you tell the difference between a high quality idea
and a terrible one?

Finally, if ideas have so much value, how come the market has basically been
against the "idea guy", and almost entirely values execution (success =
traction, revenue)?

------
coryl
Ideas matter, but not that much. We'd all rather have good ideas than bad
ideas, which proves theres some value in the idea itself.

But _GREAT ideas_ usually come from some form of execution and iteration.
Great ideas just don't come from sitting and brainstorming what to build your
startup into. Using your comparison of Google's pagerank, PageRank wasn't
drummed up and perfected as an idea before it was executed. Sergey and Larry
probably had a concept (born from their research and creativity) and executed
it. What evolved is what we now and call PageRank. So great ideas are really
only recognized after the fact.

~~~
sendos
I agree with your statement "GREAT ideas usually come from some form of
execution and iteration". Yes, sitting down and trying to implement something
inevitably shows its weaknesses and, if you're smart, helps you improve it.

Regarding "Ideas matter, but not that much" : If they don't matter that much,
why don't VCs and YC omit that part and just ask you who you are and what your
track record is? If execution is the most important thing, they should not
even ask what the idea behind the startup is, since if you have a great team
with great execution track record, then surely you will find something to
implement and execute on, right? The fact is, the ideas behind startups are
asked about, because just having some brilliant executioners sitting around
trying to find something to execute brilliantly doesn't make sense. Ideas do
matter.

~~~
coryl
PG said something like "good ideas are evidence of how smart you are". VCs
want smart people, and great ideas combined with great founders make for a
great combination - _on paper_. VCs are in it to make money, so they have to
play their percentages. Seeing good ideas helps validate the founders.

Ideas also change over time. Sometimes overnight. If one day you think you've
got a great idea, and a few months later you've evolved into something else,
then really, how great was the original idea?

~~~
sendos
Did the idea behind Twitter, Facebook, Google, Wikipedia, etc change
overnight?

Yes, startups do often change their idea overnight, and that shows that the
original idea wasn't great, but that doesn't mean that there are no great
ideas.

By the way, the "good ideas are evidence of how smart you are" is a bit BS. If
all the VCs and/or YC cared about was that someone was smart, and since there
are _tons_ of other indicators (where they went to school, how many other
successful startups they had, other smart people say how smart these people
are, etc.), then if the VCs and/or YC knew by some other indicators that a
group was comprised of very smart people then they wouldn't need to know what
the idea behind the startup is.

The fact that VCs and YC always ask what the idea is behind the startup before
funding it, even when they know the team is full of very smart people (e.g.
from multiple successful previous startups), it means that they don't just use
your ideas to gauge how smart you are. They really do care what the idea is.

------
mikecane
Let me try another tack. You're out with a friend and your friend remarks on a
great service.product he/she just bought that's brand new. Yet you had the
idea for that product too. You tell your friend this. Do you really expect
your friend's honest reaction to be anything other than, "So what?" See, your
idea never got anywhere -- while it was in your hands. The idea became great
when someone brought it to market.

~~~
sendos
But that doesn't at all prove that ideas are useless.

It just proves that ideas+execution is what matters. After all, the person who
ultimately made the product your friend bought, needed the idea for the
product before getting off his butt and executing it.

Just because some people have "great ideas" and never get off their butt to
execute them doesn't diminish the value of great ideas to people who do
execute.

~~~
apsurd
You're missing all the actual _work_ involved in actually executing on that
idea. It is only when this process begins do you develop the idea, iterate on
it, and uncover new sub-ideas that actually matter or are more integral to
money making or bringing it to market etc than the initial "great idea" in the
first place. Looking over these comments it seems you are just unwilling to
accept that execution is the process of developing an idea into something that
has value. All ideas initially are worthless.

------
mikecane
Ideas are useless in the sense that at any one time, _many_ people could have
the exact same idea. Ideas do "get in the air." So in that respect, ideas can
be seen as commodities. It's getting the idea out there as something people
can buy/use that _matters_. All writers understand this. It's not the story
that was never written or never published that matters -- it's the story
people can read or buy.

~~~
sendos
Let's take "The Da Vinci Code" as an example. How many people had the idea
behind that book? Not that many. Yes, Dan Brown had to sit down and write it,
but it's the storyline (the "idea" behind the book) that got millions of
people hooked worldwide.

From what I have read, it seems Dan Brown isn't that good of an author anyway.
Thousands of other writers could have written the story better than he did, if
he had commissioned them to do so.

There are tons of excellent writers out there that would write "the Great
American novel" if only they could figure out what to write about. So, it's
not the execution but the great idea that is a more rare resource.

~~~
mikecane
>>>Let's take "The Da Vinci Code" as an example. How many people had the idea
behind that book? Not that many.

There was a big plagiarism suit in England about this, so it's not the best
example. Besides which, you will learn on your own that ideas are less
important than _realizing_ them. It's a hard lesson to learn and it took me
many, many years to see it, You will too.

~~~
sendos
So what if it was plagiarized? The idea is what made the book successful.
Whether that idea was Dan Brown's or he stole it from someone else says
nothing about the value of the idea behind making "The Da Vinci Code" a huge
hit.

------
apsurd
The problem is ideas do not exist. It is only when they morph into a tangible
reality that they can be tested, verified, iterated on, and developed.

Put another way, an idea can be as great and fantastic and beautiful and
groundbreaking as you dream it up to be - but none of that matters if it
exists in your head only. _Only_ when the idea enters a tangible reality can
you really verify these claims. Does it work? how the hell do you know if it
does not exist?

PageRank was _verified_ to be a good idea only after they built a tangible
search engine to test it with. And I'd argue their initial idea was iterated
upon so much through the course of these real-life tests, that you can no
longer give overwhelming credit to some spark of genius that bolted into
sergey's head one fine day. It's about testing and iteration _in real life_
not about mystical ideas seemingly sent down from the stars - that to me is
why ideas are worthless.

------
jorkos
If you have the ability to execute on your idea to test it's validity, then
it's worth a lot! Think Chatroulette...hotmail....youtube...etc. Conversely,
if you can't execute on the idea then it's worth far less and you should share
it widely, get feedback, and work towards building a team around the idea that
can execute upon it....

I think the meme has gotten popular because it's mostly oriented to people
that can't execute on their ideas....and thus it holds some truth.

------
DanielBMarkham
A lot of this is about definitions.

 _An_ idea is useless.

 _A_ piece of execution is useless.

 _Execution_ means taking an idea, any idea, trying it out _and then coming up
with new ideas at the same or lower level and trying them out_.

A good high-level idea by itself? Totally worthless. A team that can take a
bad high-level idea, morph it into a mediocre one, then, through trial and
error pound out the thousands of little ideas that make a business hum?
Awesome.

~~~
sendos
As I mention below, I don't get why people are so focused on valuing an idea
in-and-of-itself. Just because when some Joe says "I have a great idea" we
don't attach any monetary value to that, doesn't mean that "ideas are
useless". It's the combination of idea+execution that has monetary value.

Also, regarding your definition "Execution means taking an idea, any idea,
trying it out and then coming up with new ideas at the same or lower level and
trying them out", is this the accepted definition of "execution"?

I thought execution was (1) Using tools to build the idea, (2) Using tools
like SEO optimization, web analytics, conversion tracking, Google AdWords, etc
to make your site visible to the masses and make it "sticky" to users, (3)
Using marketing, blogging, social networking, contacting tech media, etc, to
get the word out, and (4) Adapting to user feedback to modify your main idea
to make sure it is closer to what people want.

Only (4) is related to your definition, and is not the main thing I think of
when I think of "execution" regarding a tech startup.

And people keep bringing up the act of morphing the initial idea into
something that works. As I mentioned below:

(a) If the original idea gets scrapped, then, yes, it wasn't that great to
begin with. That doesn't mean there are no great ideas,

and

(b) Did Google, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, change the original idea behind
these sites? Yes, the details may have changed, but I think the fundamental
idea behind each of these has not changed. Most of the great hits out there
are still doing what they started out to do.

~~~
coryl
Look up the story behind Facebook. Its not like Mark Zuckerberg had an idea,
wrote it up, and approached investors.

He _executed_ , plain and simple.

------
Mz
_Is the "ideas are useless" meme being put out there just because so many
newbies to the startup culture are too enamored with their ideas and think
that the idea is all that matters, and so they have to be hit hard with the
"ideas are useless" to snap them out of that thinking and start valuing
execution?_

I wouldn't exactly phrase it that way, but I think that does sum it up fairly
well. I have spent a lot of time around the "gifted" community and I think an
awful lot of extremely intelligent people are fundamentally lazy because,
compared to most folks, they tend to skate through life and don't really have
to work that hard.

When I was in 11th grade and a member of a college level math honor society, I
tutored a mentally retarded 10th grade girl who had gotten herself into
algebra. No one else in the honor society doing tutoring wanted to tutor her
because it was too hard to teach her. So I always ended up working with her.
She worked harder for her C's and D's than I ever did for my A's and B's. She
never got in a snit over not understanding something. I learned to explain
math concepts at least 3 ways without breaking a sweat and up to 12 ways if
that was what it took. It was one of the most valuable experiences I ever had.

After something is built and makes a billion dollars or so, the world calls
the founders/originators "geniuses". People who have the subjective experience
of routinely being smarter than everyone else in the room often have trouble
with certain realities and are often overconfident in their abilities in some
ways -- for example, they tend to think if you disagree with them or have some
criticism, you simply are too dumb to understand and can't possibly have a
real point. They tend to think this because repeated experience in the real
world has taught them this is typically true. So I think a lot of very smart
people kind of identify themselves with the after-the-fact pronouncement of
"genius" and gloss over what it took to accomplish the stuff that ultimately
convinced the world this label was appropriate. And I think that is why you
see this mantra that ideas aren't worth dirt, you actually have to roll up
your sleeves and do the work to have anything of value.

