
Let’s End the Myth that Ideas Are Worthless  - nlwhittemore
http://blog.assetmap.com/2011/01/social-web/lets-end-the-ideas-are-worthless-myth/
======
A1kmm
The article is fighting strawmen. I've never heard anyone say that starting
off with a good idea isn't important.

A good idea is a necessary but not a sufficient condition.

What the author doesn't argue against is that potentially good ideas are
fairly abundant and easily obtained. These 'potentially good ideas' (that is,
ideas which sound like they would work, but for which there is not yet any
good evidence either way) are not worth much not because it isn't important to
start from one of them, but instead, because they are not a scarce resource.
Give me a 'potentially good idea' along with some quantitative data that
suggests there is a huge market, and that the likely cost to acquire customers
is far less than the likely lifetime present value of each customer, and
suddenly the former 'potentially good idea' is much more valuable - because
ideas that come with the data to back them up are much more scarce.

~~~
bad_user
Btw, evidence for good ideas can only be obtained by actually implementing the
thing and throw it in the hands of customers. No amount of market research can
substitute that (notice the hundreds of failed projects coming out of big
corporations that have the resources to do that, but still fail).

If you're having a good idea for which evidence exists means you're not the
first to try it out, and this diminishes the value of the idea since you have
to differentiate yourself with a better implementation and / or marketing
campaign.

People need to make a difference between having a (somewhat) original idea
versus copying successful recipes with a few improvements here and there.

For example ... I'm building a service similar to Yelp (simpler, with a few
twists); but I'm doing it localized for a non-English speaking country. I do
have evidence that it works; but the idea is basically worthless as there are
already both international and local competitors; and I'm only doing it
because I know I can provide a better implementation to all of the
alternatives for the people targeted (only question is the actual time to
build the thing, because I may be too late at some point).

~~~
gnosis
_"evidence for good ideas can only be obtained by actually implementing the
thing and throw it in the hands of customers."_

Only if your measure of "good" is what customers accept or want (at the moment
you present the idea to them).

This is a common measure for business people, who value profit over all other
concerns. But it's certainly not the only way of measuring value.

It's also important to note that what customers accept may have little to do
with the idea itself but rather be a matter of sales and marketing.

Take a look at Java, who many on HN loathe with a passion, and yet it's
achieved great market share, and many people accept and use it daily. Does
that mean that Java is good?

I think a lot of confusion can be avoided by talking about "market success"
(as measured by profitability, market penetration, etc). Even people who hate
Java can probably agree that Java has been a market success. But that doesn't
mean it's better by every measure.

Going back to ideas, it's clear that just because an idea may be "good" by
some measure, doesn't mean it will inevitably become a market success. To do
that requires many other factors such as implementation, sales, and marketing.

------
chrisbennet
It's the relative ubiquity of good ideas that makes them worthless. How much
would someone pay you for your "great idea"?

Developers are constantly bombarded by "idea men" who want someone else to do
all the work because they think the "idea" is somehow worth half (or more) of
the profit.

Here is a perfect example, it was posted 12/29 on Craigslist Boston (under
Gigs->Computer)

 _need Android and iphone app creator and partner for next big thing

"I am looking for someone who can create and program an Android and iphone
app, integrate the apps into a customer database and billing program and also
serve as the tech side of the venture.

My idea is gold and EASY and low tech and can spread virally fast, there will
be money for you on the back end if this works. U.S AND india welcome. my only
requirments are that you be available to communicate via email, text, IM and
phone reliably, AND that you have a burning desire to make the next big thing.
"_

------
tgflynn
I tend to be someone who would emphasize the importance of execution relative
to the importance of ideas, however I certainly don't believe that ideas don't
matter.

Ideas have value to the extent that they are coupled with excellent execution.
One without the other is worthless but combined they have value. Because of
this interaction simplistic statements such as "ideas are valuable" or "ideas
are worthless" are both incorrect.

The same situation even applies to something more concrete than a simple idea
- code. I may have developed a high-quality code base with extensive
functionality. However that code has little if any value in and of itself,
unless I can apply it to solving a problem that people actually have and are
willing to pay for.

~~~
livejake
I would say the value of an idea is inversely related to the difficulty to
execute the idea. The idea for the million dollar homepage was extremely
valuable because the execution of the idea wasn't too technically difficult.
There are plenty of freelancers who could implement that idea. Same with the
idea for ChatRoulette and Groupon. If an idea is really difficult to
implement, such as a better Google, then the idea is much less valuable than
execution.

~~~
steadicat
It seems to me that the ideas that you call valuable (ChatRoulette, Million
Dollar Homepage), are recipes for shooting stars: they become popular
overnight but have little staying power. By contrast, dumb me-too ideas
(Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Zappos), when executed well, can create
lasting businesses. Does anyone have counterexamples?

~~~
livejake
The Million Dollar Homepage may be a shooting star, but it is certainly
valuable idea. You can make a decent living if you come up with an idea like
it every year.

I would argue that Chatroulette has staying power. It's not as popular as it
was during the media hoopla, but they still get 250k users day. That's not
Facebook or Twitter or Tumblr, but that's enough to get by.

I would also look at Groupon, Woot, and HARO. Simple ideas that have created
sustainable businesses.

------
kragen
Here are some ideas that are worth something.

Matter is made of atoms of about 100 different kinds that are constantly
jiggling around, which jiggling we experience as heat.

Boiling water kills germs that cause disease. Washing hands with soap before
eating removes and kills germs that cause disease. It is particularly
important to keep germs out of open wounds. Pure phenol and 400ppm chlorine
are effective and fairly safe ways to kill germs on skin and equipment. An
active enteric glucose-sodium cotransport mechanism dramatically increases
enteric sodium uptake and can usually prevent diarrhea from causing death by
dehydration if you mix glucose 1:1 with sodium ions in water. Breathing smoke
dramatically increases your chances of getting a lung infection; make charcoal
outdoors for your indoor cooking fire to avoid this. Mosquitoes carry dengue,
yellow fever, and malaria; mosquito screens and nets can prevent mosquito
bites and thus these illnesses. Micronutrient deficiencies cause many horrible
illnesses.

Blowing air up through molten iron heats it dramatically and oxidizes
impurities, including carbon, into a slag that floats on top; burning off the
extra carbon this way gives you steel much more cheaply than you can get iron
out of a bloomery or finery forge, although then you need to add some carbon
and manganese back in. You can fix nitrogen from the air into ammonia by
reacting it with hydrogen on a magnetite catalyst at 200 atmospheres and 400
degrees celsius. Heating rubber with sulfur makes it hard and tough. Adding
carbon black to it makes it much tougher and also resistant to sunlight.
Aluminum oxide dissolved in molten cryolite can be electrolyzed into aluminum
metal with graphite electrodes.

Information in the form of a sequence of symbols can be losslessly encoded
into a sequence of symbols from any other alphabet, with only a constant
factor expansion or contraction. This encoding can include error-correction
symbols that permit the automatic detection and correction of transmission or
encoding errors if they are not too bad, and indeed for any given probability
of a transmission error you can construct a code that reduces the probability
of an uncorrectable error to an arbitrarily low level for any transmission
rate less than a certain rate. Continuous signals such as sounds can be
"sampled" many times per second and thus converted into a sequence of numbers,
which can be encoded in this way; band-limited signals can be reproduced
perfectly by this mechanism if they are sampled at twice their bandwidth.
Nearly any physical phenomenon can be used to encode information by this
means. It's often easiest to use an alphabet of just two "symbols".

~~~
regularfry
Except that these ideas aren't worth anything on their own. The sequence of
words "Matter is made of atoms of about 100 different kinds" is not something
I can sell, any more than I can sell the words "Matter is the physical
incarnation of the spirits of my ancestors."

They only start to have value attached to them once they've been proven - or,
to put it another way, once they've been executed on. Even then I'm still not
done, because just knowing that these specific statements happen to be true is
_probably_ not something I can sell, and _certainly_ not something I can sell
more than once in the absence of a patent. I need to wrap up that knowledge
into something which has scarcity in my favour, via further execution.

~~~
kragen
Most valuable things can't be sold, regularfry.

Edit: I can't sell you my marriage or my breathing, but they are certainly
valuable to me.

The above single-sentence description of the Haber-Bosch process would have
made it possible to manufacture ammonia artificially from air, starting a
century earlier than it actually was possible --- if someone with the money to
build and debug the equipment believed it, of course. That would have
revolutionized both agriculture and warfare in much the same way that the
Haber-Bosch process eventually did. That would have been very valuable.

"Scarcity in your favour" is just a way of controlling who the net use-value
flows to. It doesn't contribute to creating the value in the first place.
Often, in fact, it decreases it.

It's true that valuable ideas stop being valuable if nobody believes them,
just as valuable machinery stops being valuable if nobody uses it, and
disciplined execution stops being valuable if it's executing a stupid idea.
That doesn't mean any of those things are _valueless_. It just means their
value is contingent.

~~~
regularfry
> I can't sell you my marriage or my breathing, but they are certainly
> valuable to me.

There's nothing intrinsic here which prevents a sale from happening. It's just
vanishingly improbable that I could offer terms you'd accept.

> The above single-sentence description of the Haber-Bosch process would have
> made it possible to manufacture ammonia artificially from air, starting a
> century earlier than it actually was possible

... _if it were known to be true_. In this case, the idea's not valuable. If
there's value anywhere here, it's determined by how much _the problem you end
up solving_ matters, not the process itself, much less the description of the
process. The problem that matters isn't "how do I make ammonia?" It's "how do
I make artificial fertilisers cheaply?" or "what do I do when I can't make
enough gunpowder?"

> "Scarcity in your favour" is just a way of controlling who the net use-value
> flows to. It doesn't contribute to creating the value in the first place.
> Often, in fact, it decreases it.

No, setting up a situation where there is "scarcity in my favour" is arranging
for there to be demand for something which I can supply such that the market
value makes it worth my while to do so. "Value" itself doesn't _exist_ without
demand, which is why scarcity is important.

~~~
kragen
> There's nothing intrinsic here which prevents a sale [of kragen's marriage
> or breathing] from happening. It's just vanishingly improbable that I could
> offer terms you'd accept.

I think you just failed the Turing Test. No actual human could seriously think
that a marriage or breathing could be transferred intact from one person to
another. Still, you're clearly an impressive feat of engineering!

~~~
regularfry
If I pay for you to no longer have something, that's still a sale in that
you've sold it. What I've bought is your no longer having it, I don't
necessarily have to take possession.

You said that these things were _valuable_. By definition that means that they
have a _value_ , which is _something_ which you'd agree to exchange them for.
That's what the word means.

Possibly you actually meant "invaluable?"

------
stretchwithme
Any idea that is simple enough to pop into your head and is simple enough for
people to understand in a sound bite is simple enough to have occurred to
thousands of people.

Most truly world-changing ideas are a bit more difficult to arrive at,
communicate and/or implement. These are not so worthless. Of course, these
usually are combinations of many ideas and take real work to figure out.

~~~
j_baker
> Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent.
> It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the
> opposite direction.

-Einstein

If there's one thing working in software development has taught me, it's that
simple != easy. Simple ideas are usually the best because you can build so
many other ideas on top of them.

~~~
Mz
Words fail me in trying to explain how painfully difficult it is to try to
explain "simple" concepts to folks who think some specific problem is hard
and, therefore, has to be really complex/involve huge hurdles/etc. Not that
it's really as simple as it seems to me, because that elegant solution
...well, never mind. (Prepares to regret even bothering to try to comment on
it.)

Anyway, thanks for noting this.

~~~
shkb
You shouldn't regret demonstrating your point. For some reason it is difficult
to communicate 'simple' concepts. Only guess I can manage is the simple
solution makes sense either after truly understanding the entire problem, or
if it's the first thing you're told after the problem.

~~~
Mz
Well, in this case, I am specifically thinking of the example of getting
myself well when doctors told me it could not be done. I think doctors (and
the rest of the world) focus on the really complicated and convoluted tertiary
(and whatever "fourth" would be called) effects of not addressing the real
problem for years and years and years. I found that addressing the real
problem at it's root is, conceptually, not terribly complicated. But then
trying to understand/explain/execute...yadda yadda....gets pretty complicated
at times. But it's really a very simple idea: I have a genetic disorder. We
know what malfunctions in my body at the cellular level. Address THAT
appropriately and aggressively, and a lot of the really complicated secondary,
tertiary (etc) problems just magically disappear.

This idea goes over so well that I get called a liar, charlatan and snakesoil
salesman to my face. And moderators side with the folks who attack me.

Welp, time to work on a webcomic or some such and let folks who think the
problem is just too freakin hard to resolve keep raising big bucks for the CF
foundation. It seems to be okay to monetize an entertainment site. :-D

Later.

------
nikz
It's very interesting to note the backgrounds of the various people involved
in this debate.

<http://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanielwhittemore> would lead me to believe
Nathaniel is not a "code"/execution person (I could be wrong, obviously).

Whereas the people on the other side of the debate seem to be largely
execution guys - coders or self-styled "product" guys (YCombinator, Eric
Ries).

It's almost a tautology - the execution guys say the execution is most
important, the idea guys think it's all about the idea.

Like most things, the "best" answer probably lies somewhere between the two
extremes.

~~~
tzs
> It's almost a tautology - the execution guys say the execution is most
> important, the idea guys think it's all about the idea.

Isn't that opposite of what you'd expect? I'd expect in general for people to
think their part is the easy part, and the other part is the hard part. After
all, presumably that's why the execution guys can't come up with the ideas,
and the idea guys can't come up with the execution. If the other part were
easy they'd do it themselves.

~~~
nikz
I think there's a more succinct explanation of this somewhere, but I think
people usually overvalue their own contribution whilst simulataneously
undervaluing that of others (see:
[http://books.google.com/books?id=YywIHNBn_YEC&lpg=PA147&...](http://books.google.com/books?id=YywIHNBn_YEC&lpg=PA147&ots=rilJLyZ99c&pg=PA147#v=onepage&q&f=false)).

So perhaps it's the cynic in me, but I would expect people to be justifying
their own importance. I do agree with you though - it should be the reverse!

------
kls
I really do love the idea guy, they rail and rail "hey I am worth something"
but the fact remains they are worth very little. Lets say for example I
decided to start a company, I have a good group of guys that can do anything
and we have capital. We don't need an idea to form a company, we could start a
fabrication shop or a coin laundry and potentially profit just as much as
venturing off and building a new and novel widget. It's the execution, there
is nothing sexy about fabrication but the world needs it and companies start
every day that provide fabrication services. The guy that says hey lets start
a fabrication shop is worth very little to that equation even if he has an
idea about how to revolutionize how fabrication is done. Somehow when it comes
to software this fact get's muddled, people think because software is complex
that somehow the ideas for software are worth more when in reality the idea
guy is not bringing much more to the table than "hey lets start a fab shop".
Every so often we have a series of post challenging this conventional wisdom,
but I have yet to see an effective argument for the idea guy being worth much
to the total equation.

~~~
phlux
I think the answer is in the middle - however, I ask you;

Are you a coder? Where is your billion dollar application then? If one is so
capable of building something, why haven't you built XYZ and sold it for many
millions already?

If developers are so much more valuable than ideas - why isnt every single
developer building something amazing?

Why is there so much crappy software, so many crappy businesses? -- I bet
you'd say "well, it was a bad idea!" -- but if there is some amazingly
successful company - you would say "Well, clearly that is amazing execution"

The fact is, rather, that idea folk need devs - and devs need idea folk.

I am a technical person, I design large systems and networks - but am not a
developer. I am an idea guy to my developer friends - and we are always
bouncing ideas back and forth.

To further your example - you are saying the architect who makes the drawings
are worthless and its the contractor who pounds the nail that is the real
builder.

~~~
jeromec
_If one is so capable of building something, why haven't you built XYZ and
sold it for many millions already?_

Because simply building something doesn't equal success. Other factors are
involved, such as potential need for capital, marketing etc.

I would not say ideas are worth zero -- at least not without
qualifying/explaining that statement. [1] I believe it's more accurate to say
ideas are worth very little -- usually much less than the idea's creator
thinks it is -- relative to everything else needed for project success. And
many ideas do get built out into existence, and flop, where we see that
generally 90% of startups fail.

The confusion as I see it with this debate is "idea people" having the
misconception that a great idea equals success, and only needs the product to
be built. That's usually not the case. And the problem here is that there is
zero risk in having an idea, but elevated risk in every other part of growing
a potential business.

As to the importance of execution, well, you can have an average or sub-par
project executed extremely well be very valuable and profitable, but an idea
without any execution will always be worth zero no matter how great its
potential.

I do believe ideas can have value. Highly valuable ideas are ones that are
novel and provide great advantage upon execution in the marketplace. These are
generally rare. I can only think of a couple in the tech space over the past
decade: the page ranking model of Google, and the video sharing model of
YouTube.

[1] An idea is worth zero in the dollar value sense because if the idea never
leaves the brain of the creator to be introduced into the world it never
introduces any value into the world, and remains only an idea.

~~~
phlux
I agree, my whole point is that the Idea cannot be separated from execution,
and execution cannot be separated from idea. They both can be objectively
measured - but they are linked.

~~~
jeromec
Well, yes, I agree that _every_ business started as an idea. Everyone needs a
starting point to act on, and that's what ideas are, starting points. However,
I could have an idea to open a donut shop, and turn that into a profitable
business even though there is nothing revolutionary or novel about such an
idea. So, yes, you need both, but the thing to realize is that ideas will vary
greatly in how much value they can provide to a venture. And unfortunately the
only way to find out how much is to do the hard work of executing on the idea.

 _If developers are so much more valuable than ideas - why isnt every single
developer building something amazing?_

I find this a horribly unfair comparison. One can easily sit and dream up 100
ideas in a day, but one can't develop 100 projects in a day. If one could do
such effectively I'm sure that you would find many more developers reaping
rewards from their actions. Success is often about a hit / miss ratio.

On the other hand developers _can_ generate value fairly easily. Let's say a
developer decides to go out and build websites for local businesses. Again,
nothing revolutionary here, yet there is certainly value that can be created
by executing and with near limitless potential. Execution is what pays
dividends. And as one would expect, it's what is hardest.

~~~
phlux
> _One can easily sit and dream up 100 ideas in a day, but one can't develop
> 100 projects in a day._

Exactly, so then - if that one idea - which the dev could put together using
his skills were the billion dollar one - then the _IDEA_ was what was so
valuable. Not the fact that he had development skills.

I just cant believe that _ideas_ are worthless at all. They are worth what you
can make of them - but they are never worthless.

You can develop 100 projects, but you also cant develop 1 project without an
idea behind it. And then, its the value of the idea, the resultant product or
service that has value.

~~~
jeromec
Billion dollar ideas which are novel and highly advantageous to execute on are
very rare, and even then they require more than just having the idea. The
founders of Google or YouTube, which could both be considered billion dollar
idea/ventures, I'm sure will tell you making their businesses into successes
was NOT a cakewalk. Things could have went (and did go) wrong along the way.

 _I just cant believe that ideas are worthless at all._

I've already said above I don't believe ideas are always totally worthless.

 _...but they are never worthless._

I disagree. I can generate a list of many totally worthless startup ideas
fairly quickly.

You still seem to be placing a lot of value in ideas, as if they are the main
thing that determines the success of a project. I fundamentally disagree with
that, and as evidence of that most successful projects end up looking
different than they did when they first started out. I also feel almost like
you are suggesting developers are helpless until an "idea person" comes along.
Again, I disagree with that. Anyone can have an idea, even great idea,
including developers.

------
grav1tas
Can we end the myth that using superlatives somehow adds credence to a
contrarian standpoint? I can't speak for anybody else, but if I see an article
titled "Ideas are Worthless", I just won't read it. That said:

Use discretion, crunch the numbers, make educated decisions, and let the
competition rely on silly absolutist platitudes.

------
jacobian
Let's not. Ideas really _are_ worth nothing when compared to execution.

Don't take my word for it: look at successful companies. What're the ideas
behind the top 10 Fortune 500 companies?

    
    
      1. WalMart - a bigger and cheaper convenience store
      2. Exxon - gasoline
      3. Chevron - gasoline
      4. GE - conglomerate: appliances, aviation, electronics, energy, weapons, etc.
      5. Bank of America - banking, investment banking
      6. ConocoPhillips - gasoline
      7. AT&T - telecommunications
      8. Ford - cars
      9. Chase - banking, investment banking
      10. HP - computers, consulting services
    

(Source: <http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2010/>)

The very repetitiveness of that list kinda shows you that novelty isn't really
that exciting, eh?

Want another data point? How about... oh I dunno... companies acquired by
Google in the last few months:

    
    
      * Widevine - DRM for television
      * Phonetic Arts - speech recognition
      * BlindType - touch interface typing technology
      * Plannr - scheduling/calendaring
      * Quiksee - video
      * SocialDeck - gaming
    

(Source: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Google>)

Lots of good ideas there? Perhaps... but to my eyes each of these companies
falls into the "$IDEA done right" style of startup. As do most, really --
nearly every startup pitch I've heard falls into the "X done right" rubric.

And that's by no means a slight: taking something that generally sucks and
doing it right is _really_ hard. But that's the point, isn't it? Nearly every
idea's been done before... it's about delivering better than the competition.

So let's not start giving raw ideas much merit. This focus on results is good,
and it's healthy, and it's what makes technology startups interesting. After
all, technology is usually evolutionary, and rarely revolutionary.

[Edit: sources, formatting.]

~~~
j_baker
So then I take it that you feel watchpaintdry.com would be a hit if it were
executed very well? Make no mistake about it, ideas are important. After all,
look at some of the biggest names: Twitter, Facebook, AirBNB, Groupon...

Do you honestly mean to tell me that the idea behind these sites had
absolutely _zero_ influence on their success?

~~~
sp4rki
That's really not the point. It's not that execution will guarantee success.
It's that execution is the differentiating factor (apart from luck) regarding
various companies attempting the same idea. Neither Facebook, Twitter, or
Groupon (can't really tell about AirBNB) where innovators on the ideas per se.
Social networks for college students, message streams, and online
deals/discounts, where by no means new innovative ideas. Their execution set
them apart and with a bit a of luck and good timing they made it big.

It's not that ideas don't matter. It's that 'new' ideas are almost always not
new and have been done to death. What the idea is has never been a point being
refuted by most people, what's being refuted is that the idea is what makes
the difference. Lot's of people had the idea of online restaurant
reservations, but that doesn't mean that everyone that brings that idea to
fruition we'll be successful. It's a matter of execution that will increase
any possibility of actually making it.

------
lwhi
I think this article involves quite a lot of extraneous words .. in my opinion
only the last three paragraphs say something interesting.

\--

Who is truly saying that ideas are worthless? It's blatantly obvious that
_ideas_ and _execution_ are two sides of the same coin.

An 'ideas' person coming to the table with an 'idea' (rather than resources or
talent) is generally berated is because talk is cheap. Execution is generally
what's lacking - so it stands to reason that people are primed to focus on
getting things done.

------
erikpukinskis
I think even good ideas are worthless. The thing is, bad ideas are worse than
worthless.

PageRank was a good idea, but it wasn't worth anything until they built
Google. It was a good idea because it offered a solid foundation on which to
build value.

Your bad idea might cause you to waste years of your life. Not only can you
not sell it for anything, but you could pour resources into it only to see
them burn up like an incinerator.

Aim for worthless. "Worthless" and "Won't screw you" is a good place to start.

------
forgottenpaswrd
Ideas are worthless: I have 100 different ideas per day, and so every human
being on earth.

What makes ideas worth is to become reality, execution and testing. You have
to test your ideas to see if they could become worth anything,or just if they
are false creations of your mind, that takes time and effort.

It is also very difficult to say: This idea I had yesterday is very bad, and
they are when your only data you had what presumptions not based on reality,
it goes against your ego. People think their ideas are true: How many atheist
believe in God?, How many Christians do not?

A lot of people spend their live thinking ideas without taking the effort to
test them on reality, that is worth zero. That's it.

Nobody is going to pay you for "having the idea of a novel", but maybe they
are for taking the effort and risk of spending one year writing it.

I have software that recognizes the voice, the idea is simple, the execution
took a lot of years and is going to take more years to be the best of the
world.

------
ebabchick
It's not ideas that are worthless; it's the 'visions'.

It might be true that a bad idea with flawless execution is just as bad as
vice versa, but the thing is, too many of the self-described 'idea' people
don't actually have any 'idea' of how to implement and bring their vision to
life. They just want it to magically happen. Those are the people with
worthless ideas, because they're not even ideas, they're just delusions of
grandeur.

On the other hand, I've met my fair share of legitimate idea people who also
have an idea of how to architect and implement want they want in a real,
functioning web application, they just would rather have someone else, who's
really into it, dig in to the nitty gritty implementation specifics (read:
code) while they do the high-level technical and strategical architecting.
That's totally fine, and those type of idea people are far from worthless IMO.

------
zacharyz
I don't get it. I read the entire post looking for an actual debunking of the
"myth."

He mentions change.org - which shortly after it launched had several
competitors. It wasn't until the company changed the way it was executing that
it succeeded. If any of the other companies had executed better with the same
idea then change.org would not have been a success. So it all came down to
superior execution.

Everyone has ideas, not everyone can execute on them. Look at facebook/myspace
- can you honestly say that facebook isn't a better executed social network?

------
geoffw8
Execution requires 2 or more ingredients.

If your a fantastic ideas guy, and an incredible evangelist - you will win.

If your a fantastic designer, and incredible sales guy - you will win.

The execution is the final baked cake, once all ingredients have gone in.

So in order to be a great execution'ist, I'm afraid you can't just be a good
coder, you have to also be a ideas guy/designer/evangelist/sales guy/marketing
guru/etc.

------
pmorici
I think a helpful analogy might be to look at the "execution" side of the
argument as "blind squirrels" and the "ideas" side of the argument as
"paralyzed from the neck down squirrels".

Both are less than perfect but at least a blind squirrel has a chance at
stumbling on a nut in the forrest. The paralyzed squirrel can see the nuts but
will never get them on their own.

------
jimrandomh
Some ideas are valuable. Most ideas are worthless. It is common to run into
overenthusiastic "idea guys" with obviously worthless ideas, and it is easier
to tell them that all ideas are worthless than to tell them that their idea,
in particular, is worthleess; so we lie, and say that all ideas are worthless,
even though we know that there are some exceptions.

------
davidw
Someone have a cached copy? It's not loading for me. I agree completely with
the statement, but would like to see his reasoning.

~~~
nlwhittemore
Website went down..trying to figure it out now. In the meantime, here's a copy
- [http://nlw.posterous.com/temporary-ending-the-ideas-are-
wort...](http://nlw.posterous.com/temporary-ending-the-ideas-are-worthless-
myth)

~~~
nlwhittemore
main site back up

------
anthonycerra
I bet Google and Apple employees that were fired for leaking information could
put a price on ideas.

------
Tycho
That whole schtick seems tautological to me. It's like saying

"What's the use of having an idea if you have no _idea_ how to implement it?"

------
car
I generally agree, since otherwise having a patent system would not make
sense. Getting a patent, however, requires reduction to practice.

------
Confusion

      What is an “idea” for a startup? A startup idea is an
      assertion about two things; a problem that people have 
      and a way to solve it.
    

Here's why this post is both right and wrong, in one sentence. It's wrong,
because 'a way to solve it' is not 'an idea'. Rather, 'a way to solve it'
consists of a great many ideas, conceived of, and strung together, over an
extended period of time. All these ideas together are what is called
'execution'. You can't solve anything without consistently having new ideas
about how to solve the challenge currently at hand. That, in turn, is why the
post is right: having the right idea at the right time is important. It's just
that the single idea that precipitated it all is simply not very valuable by
itself.

~~~
sreitshamer
The "idea for a startup" is just a place to start. Pick one that you are
passionate about, because you'll need that to sustain you.

Implement some (tiny) part of that idea; show it to some customers. Find out
it's not that great an idea. Learn more about the customers in the process.
Think about what their real problems are and come up with new ideas to solve
those problems, or maybe think about other customer groups that would get more
value out of (would pay more for) your idea and tweak it to fit them. Follow
those new ideas. Repeat until you've found an idea that's sustainable
(big/profitable enough market etc).

------
HilbertSpace
A related claim is that ideas are easy and plentiful and execution is hard and
everything.

Let's see:

To resolve the question of P versus NP, all it takes is a good idea.

Easy? By all means, I'll give you a week! Worthless? Clay Mathematics
Institute will give you $1 million for a correct answer. There will likely
also be some startup opportunities. Uh, there is a lot of history to suggest
that don't hold your breath while looking for a solution and that shouldn't
plan a lot of other activities for the week, month, year, decade, lifetime
while you find the 'easy idea' for a solution.

Many people would like a single, cheap pill that will cure any cancer. All it
takes is an idea. Why sequence DNA? To get a fundamental ('reductionist')
understanding of how cells work and, then, how they go wrong in the case of
cancer and how to intervene to cure the cancer. People have been working hard
on DNA since about 1950. Progress? A LOT. One pill to cure all cancers? Not
yet. But, again, all it takes is an idea.

The Silicon Valley, John Doerr, Guy Kawasaki claim that ideas are easy has in
mind for an 'idea' just some 100,000 foot vague, one-line statement of a new
business direction and missing any detail or significance. E.g., Facebook but
just for dog owners. Or, matchmaking and social networking from GPS checkins.
So, by an 'idea' they are not thinking about resolving P versus NP or finding
a pill to cure cancer.

For such a vague one-line statement, sure, ideas are worthless.

But, more specifically, especially in technical fields, an 'idea' is something
worth protecting as 'intellectual property' (IP) because it is the crucial,
core 'secret sauce', difficult to duplicate or equal, that provides a
powerful, valuable solution to a big problem. That an 'idea' could be
valuable, and difficult to find, e.g., 'non-obvious', goes way back to the
founding of the USPTO. So, here is strong evidence that good, new ideas are
difficult to find and valuable.

So, with the description that a new business should provide a valuable
solution to a big problem, the 'idea' is the 'secret sauce' and IP crucial for
being able to provide the solution. In this case, typically the idea is
difficult and valuable. For the "execution", that may be just putting the
pills in the bottles. BELIEVE me, if you have a good idea for a one pill cure
for cancer, then execution will be routine!

Instead:

Good ideas are difficult, rare, and valuable. Given a good idea, execution is
routine.

So, to explain the Silicon Valley, Doerr, Kawasaki, etc. claim there are at
least two answers:

First, they are playing a negotiating game of 'preemptively' stating that what
the entrepreneur brings to the table, the 'idea', is worthless while their
money is worth, well, money. Here, of course, the entrepreneur can say:

"Money is all green, there's lots of it, Bernanke is printing more by the tens
of billions, interest rates are very low meaning that for the gains the LPs
need the money needs to be put to work, and the last 10 years of venture
capital show that good projects giving good returns are rare. Uh, we believe
that we have a project that can give very good returns. Want cut out the
nonsense and talk more seriously now?"

Second, and even worse, they have had essentially no exposure to ideas such as
solving P versus NP, being the crucial key to providing a valuable solution to
a big problem, having value as IP, or being worth a valuable patent.

Either way, an entrepreneur should not want such a person on their Board.
Else, at some point the entrepreneur may conclude that the business needs
another idea, needs a small project to make progress with the idea, has to
explain the project to the Board, and now has to face people who believe that
ideas are easy, plentiful, and worthless. Really BIG bummer.

But the secret is that, really, venture partners essentially just ignore
ideas, of any kind, good, bad, or otherwise. Instead, for a Series A
investment in, say, a Web 2.0 project, the partners will look at ComScore
numbers. They may want to see at least 100,000 unique users a month and the
number of unique users per month growing quickly.

For a Series B, they want to see revenue, earnings, and both growing quickly.

For the business being 'defensible', they want to count on 'engaged users'
instead of difficult to duplicate or equal secret sauce.

Given such numbers, they regard the ideas as irrelevant or nearly so.

My suspicion is that these criteria are enforced by the LPs.

The idea is crucial for the entrepreneur, but entrepreneurs should not think
that 'ideas' in any sense are relevant to the evaluations of the venture
partners.

