

Ask HN: Ideas are cheap link? - malbiniak

Hey HN,<p>I'm trying to help some business students and am looking for a specific article I saw surface a few times. I'm in a time pinch, and searchyc and Google are failing me.<p>The article in question is around ideas are cheap, or ideas are commodities. There was a long list of existing ideas that single person came up with, and the point being the value is in the execution. It's not the Inc article not PG's /ideas.html article, but a list of ideas.<p>If you vaguely know what I'm talking about, I'd be happy to help clarify it. If you can share that link, I'd be very grateful.<p>Thanks, and sorry for the uninteresting post.<p>Edit 1: Thank you! I thought this would go past /newest and die with the spam. I appreciate the links, but the post/article I'm looking for was essentially "see how invaluable an idea is? I'll give you a list of x number of things that I think would be an interesting business." The article then goes on to provide a list of ideas.
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capstone
I believe this is the one that had started it all:

[http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2005/08/ideas_are_just...](http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2005/08/ideas_are_just_a_multiplier_of.html)

And here are some others (more links on the same subject within each article):

<http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100604/0954389689.shtml>

[http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/01/cultivate-teams-
not...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/01/cultivate-teams-not-
ideas.html)

------
Mankhool
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1404298> This one? I'll post other
relevant finds. You might want to search YC again using keyword "ideas" and
sort by points.

------
mapster
reminds me of a Mark Cuban interview I saw recently

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NY_USA_Hacker
There are some good sources for the 'attitude' that ideas are cheap, easy, and
plentiful and execution is difficult, hard, and everything.

Google search:

"Ideas are easy execution is hard"

gives about 4,700 hits.

Google search:

"Ideas are easy" Kawasaki

yields as its first result:

[http://www.forbes.com/2004/11/04/cx_gk_1104artofthestart.htm...](http://www.forbes.com/2004/11/04/cx_gk_1104artofthestart.html)

with

Art Of The Start

Ideas Are Easy, Implementation Is Hard

Guy Kawasaki, 11.04.04, 9:55 AM ET

So this attitude goes back at least to 2004.

At

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBvuirDPHKA&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBvuirDPHKA&feature=player_embedded#at=67)

is an interview by John Heilemann (New York Magazine) of columnist-
correspondent venture partners John Doerr (KPCB) and Fred Wilson (Union
Square) at the OreillyMedia, Web 2.0 Summit 2010: "Point of Control: Finance",
November 15-17, San Francisco, CA.

There one of Doerr's remarks was:

"Ideas are easy. Execution is everything."

The YouTUBE video is from a link at Fred Wilson's blog AVC.com at

[http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/11/web2-interview-with-john-
and...](http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/11/web2-interview-with-john-and-
john.html)

which is Fred's thread on the interview.

On that thread at

[http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/11/web2-interview-with-john-
and...](http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/11/web2-interview-with-john-and-
john.html#comment-98615968)

is a rebuttal to Doerr's claim. The core of the rebuttal is:

Bad ideas are easy, and plentiful, and then, sure, execution is difficult and
everything. Good ideas are difficult and rare, and then execution can be
routine, and the US is awash in the ability to do routine execution well.

There is a fundamental problem with any empirical, summary observation such
as:

"Ideas are easy. Execution is everything."

In many areas, for a variety of reasons, some quite solid, 'averages' are
important. So, in venture capital, we should note two points:

First, just looking at what entrepreneurs send Doerr, likely the empirical
average would be

"Ideas are easy".

Second, since likely such a large fraction of what entrepreneurs try is from
"easy" ideas, even if their expected return on investment (ROI) is much less
than for good ideas, if look at successful startups, then maybe, still, will
see that most of them started with easy ideas and then were successful mostly
just from execution.

So, the fundamental problem is that in venture capital, such empirical
averages are next to irrelevant: Doerr, etc. are looking for successes, and
only a tiny fraction of what they see in their e-mail or even in successes in
market are good guides to planning for success.

More generally, empirical data can be terrific stuff. Maybe fundamentally it
could be enough for all of 'information', but from just a little consideration
that would take some unreasonably large amount of data.

So, instead of just empirical data, we have other methods. E.g., from some
fundamentals, we can engineer solutions that are new and quite solid.

In the history of applied science and engineering, there are many projects
where initial ideas were presented just on paper, were carefully reviewed and
seen to be quite solid, and then execution was both routine and successful.

Parts of our civilization are quite good at such reviewing. Maybe biomedical
technology venture capital does such reviews, but it does appear that
information technology venture capital essentially never does. So, a really
good idea will get evaluated essentially only in the head of an entrepreneur,
and everyone else will see at most just the execution.

