
Reversing the Decline in Big Ideas - michael_fine
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/07/reversing_the_decline_in_big_i.html
======
kevinconroy
Although the HBR article bemoans the lack of "big ideas" I think it makes the
fatal mistake of focusing on Valley-centric ideas. Certainly there are still
some big, Google-level ideas out there to be had, but there are other
industries out there in which big idea can, should, and must form for us to
advance as a civilization.

Map the human genome or build the next Farmville?

Find a way to grow food 300% more efficiently to meet the growing demands of
the world population or make an iPhone app?

Why must everything be internet-based and somehow have to best Google?

Additionally, I think the author is having trouble filtering out the so called
"noise" from the signal. I, for one, think it's terrific that a whole new
class of small or "mom and pop" businesses can now exist on the Internet. Does
that give us huge advancements as a species? Usually not, but hopefully it's
paying their rent, which is great for them.

Yes, we need big ideas to move forward, but don't begrudge the next generation
of Internet-based small businesses. The people starting these business are
probably NOT the same people who would come up with the earth-changing idea
that the author so desperately wants. And if you are one of those select few,
then please, stay hungry and stay foolish.

~~~
slurgfest
The human genome mapping problem actually has no shortage of companies working
on it. It's a big sector which has moved very fast, and its press is probably
why it comes to mind.

As for feeding the world, this is something which valley internet-model
startups just don't have much power over. It isn't even just a problem of
production. You would need all kinds of control of poor post-colonial
countries in order to do anything very significant about it. Even if you
succeeded wildly, without development there will be a lot more people, they
will all need other things like medical care which are now even more scarce,
and in the end you will need even more food.

Once upon a time there WERE startups in charge of such things - for example,
the Dutch East India Company... the development of civilization was one of the
fundamental justifications for colonialism.

If you can make money on some kind of incubator for farmers near places with
hunger problems and somehow make sure that the food gets to the poor who have
no money to pay for it, then there are many government and NGO aid agencies
which would like to talk to you. But it's not exactly a traditional startup
thing so it is probably not going to appear on the HN radar.

~~~
Qworg
Also, ideas like "feeding the world" don't fire the "make lots of money before
the fund term ends" neurons for VCs. =/ Execution is long and painful on a
real world problem like that.

------
jmitcheson
Is there really a decline in big ideas, or only an increase in small ones? The
argument doesn't really seem to be based on any actual data.

To be honest, I really don't get this issue that journalists and other non-
business people have with consumer web startups. It's as if they think that
the business gods issued us all with a magic 'business voucher', and we chose
to redeem it with a consumer web startup as opposed to say, nuclear fission or
curing world hunger. The _economy_ gave us this 'business voucher', and
consumer web startups are the only thing the voucher is good for.

------
kanamekun
This was hilarious, yet with a grain of truth: "Now, if you throw two
engineers and a designer together and tell them to come up with a new startup
idea, you've got better than 50% odds they will come up with another mobile
local social photo sharing app."

Reminded me of PG's comment about why people overlooked the Stripe
opportunity: "For over a decade, every hacker who'd ever had to process
payments online knew how painful the experience was. Thousands of people must
have known about this problem. And yet when they started startups, they
decided to build recipe sites, or aggregators for local events."

<http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html>

------
sreyaNotfilc
I've seen, in the past few years, a lot of startups websites that are just
basically simple apps that does a simple task. That's fine and all. Even
encouraged. Google started out as a "simple" search app.

Like the article said, this is where the focus seems to be; in the tail. What
separated Google from a lot of other startups were that it expanded on its
idea of what search can be. Google eventually expanded to different
markets.They weren't looking to make a big buck. They were looking to change
the world.

The big problem is, a lot of people would rather make the big buck and just
live life. Its easier that way. You make your tech and then don't have to
worry about longevity.

It is interesting, in the article the author mentions that we need to join
forces with experts in other industries. That could work, but the expert has
to know what he is talking about. The developer also has to know a little
about what the expert is talking about. These visions have come together in a
way that they can feed off of each other.

Look at Apple. Jobs and Woz both had backgrounds building things. Woz was the
expert, while Jobs was the visionary. They created a great company with
innovative products, because they fed off of each other(well at least the
initial projects). We all know what happened when Jobs was fired from Apple.
The CEO was a "guy who sold sugar water". He had no idea, really, what
technology was or could do. Instead, the products were lackluster,
uninspiring, generic.

As for me, this article seems inspiring to me. I'm not "genius" but I can code
very well. I'm also chasing after an industry that I know pretty well and want
to disrupt for the better (art and art education). I want to change the world.
So, I believe I'm on the right path. If only I can code the damn thing faster.
But that's another subject entirely.

~~~
neya
Exactly, my thoughts. I can show you from my friends list how many young
college kids setup an Android app or Wordpress blog with high hopes of
becoming TechCrunch or Mashable someday and update their current working
positions to 'CEO at <insert blog /app name here>'. CEO because they run a
Wordpress blog/ Android app? Wow, that is now ridiculous!

This mentality has to change. Entrepreneurship is surely more than just about
creating stuff like this, in my opinion.

~~~
slurgfest
There are so many people building some little thing. Similarly, for millennia
businesspeople have just done something like running an inn. (CEO, Ye Olde
Fysh Shoppe.) But somehow now even the little things are culturally also
supposed to pretend to be big and to try to get big as possible.

I wish it were more supported and respected for people to build and sustain
themselves on such businesses without trying to become world-dominating, VC-
backed or publicly-traded, always-growing behemoths.

I guess not that many people can resist a lottery.

------
chrisrxth
The comparison of thinking small to mom and pop shops is dead on accurate. And
there are probably more small-visioned entrepreneurs relative to big-visioned
entrepreneurs than there have been in the past.

However, there are are a lot of people with enormous visions right now that
are simply in such early stages that they appear to be small. You have to
start somewhere.

There are also two reasons that many big industries are not appearing to be
disrupted right now. The first reason is that many of the huge industries are
backed by so much money, poltics, and legality and so ingrained into society
that they are virtually impossible to disrupt. That said, there is still a
slow but steady disruption attempting to take place in education... Open
Courseware, Khan Academy, etc.

The second reason is that much of the "low hanging fruit" of the economy has
already been picked. This one is controversial. 50 years ago, we were doing
really hard things, but things that did not necessarily require as deep of an
understanding of an industry or science as we do today.

There are people trying to pick the "higher up" fruit today, but their
pickings are not as obvious or exiting as they may have been 50 years ago. We
are not seeing startups for flying cars or capital-intensive projects,
however, small, simple software startups can sometimes solve incredible
inefficiencies in the economy. Example: craigslist has revolutionized the
rental market simply by making information easy to transmit and access.

------
mmayberry
Best thing I've ever read on HN. Bravo.

The problem I see with startups is that they have become the "cool kid table"
and only hire "their kind". I can't believe that I'm seeing job listings with
the phrase "top tier / ivy school only please". If startups keep pulling from
the same diluted pool of talent they aren't going to get new ideas or any type
of domain expertise.

Ths isn't about rewarding your 5 best friends from MIT anymore. Building a
business and changing the world is about hiring the best people with the
broadest backgrounds who want to accomplish a common goal. Your education
should be a bonus not a prerequisite.

Find people who want to change the world and you just might do it.

~~~
m_ke
But they have free candy and the latest video games

------
EternalFury
People tend to think in very small boxes nowadays. Partly because they are
more interested in getting rich quick than in changing the world, partly
because they have their nose too close to tiny details to see the big
pictures.

Want to make a mark?

Focus on energy production and storage!

Want to make a mark?

Think about generation ships!

Want to make a mark?

Design a way to reform government!

Mankind does not need another social Web site.

~~~
dasil003
There is a word for people who only focus on big ideas: crackpots.

The truth that every entrepreneur has to face is that it takes big resources
to pursue big ideas, and very few people have big resources at their disposal.
Even Elon Musk had to blow up PayPal before he could pursue truly big ideas.

The vast majority of giant corporations come from executing well on a series
of progressively larger operational goals. The trick is figuring out how much
you can actually bite off successfully at each stage, and then doing it
several times in a row and scaling accordingly. The big ideas can come when
you have the money and the influence to execute on them.

~~~
EternalFury
Edison, Ford and the Wright brothers were crackpots, I guess.

There is a difference between something that may lead from here to there and
something that is definitely never going to lead anywhere.

An example of the former: You write some software that re-orients an array of
solar panels to make the most of weather conditions in real time. It's not
going to crack the "energy production and storage" enigma, but it's a step in
the right direction. Next, you may want to study how panel geometry influences
energy collection.

An example of the latter: You set up a Web site that allows teenagers to
compare their gadgets.

~~~
dasil003
It's a question of resources and expertise.

------
jonmrodriguez
partial list of actually meaningful opportunities:

\- camera drones to provide a "real-time Google Earth"

\- camera satellites for same purpose (see DARPA SEE-ME challenge)

\- cheap laser scanners for self-driving cars and robots

\- synthetic meat

\- genetically engineered supercrops for the developing world that provide
protein, fiber, and every vitamin

\- AR / VR glasses (shameless plug: <http://vergencelabs.com>)

\- subvocalization microphone

\- myostatin inhibitor gene therapy as an OTC cosmetic procedure -- would
solve obesity

\- cheaper rockets

\- VR telepresence to eliminate the massive petroleum waste of the workday
commute

\- self-driving car (great open hardware + source project)

\- "brain backup" using high-res MRI + in-depth biographical interview + DNA
sample

\- seasteading

\- "bio lab on a chip" using microfluidics, flourescence-assisted cell
sorting, nanopore sequencing, and phage-assisted directed evolution

If you read this list and say you lack the necessary skills -- bullshit. In
the age of Wikipedia and Google Scholar you can learn anything you try to. The
only limit is your courage.

~~~
jonmrodriguez
Downvoter -- I don't normally let stuff like this get to me, but you better
explain yourself.

It took me 4 years of manic polymathic learning (at the expense of my actual
schoolwork) to come up with this list. I've worked in a genetic engineering
lab (Drew Endy), AI, robotics, and now AR, so I speak firsthand that these
ideas are all possible now.

Not only possible, but REALLY IMPORTANT.

~~~
randomdata
> It took me 4 years of manic polymathic learning (at the expense of my actual
> schoolwork) to come up with this list.

I'm impressed that you independently came up with those ideas, but it seems
like an average news day on HN. Those problems are regularly being discussed.

I think that highlights that, even in our inter-connected social media world,
our biggest problem is still one of communication. You are quite right that
anyone can easily gain the skills necessary to work on those projects. Maybe
you can even find the capital necessary.

However, you are going to really struggle to catch up with what people already
know. If you want to build a driverless car, for example, you are going to
spend years reimplementing what Google has already figured out because there
is no good way for the average person to build atop their existing technology.
By the time you finally get to new problems, someone will have already figured
them out too.

The first startup who figures out how to solve that communication gap will
provide the most transformative technology to date.

~~~
jonmrodriguez
Haha "come up with the list" meaning agregating the list; I'm not taking
credit for first thinking of them all! The problem domains where I've thought
of / sometimes written about original solutions are just these ones:

\- camera drones to provide a "real-time Google Earth"

\- genetically engineered supercrops for the developing world that provide
protein, fiber, and every vitamin

\- AR / VR glasses (shameless plug: <http://vergencelabs.com>)

\- myostatin inhibitor gene therapy as an OTC cosmetic procedure -- would
solve obesity

\- VR telepresence to eliminate the massive petroleum waste of the workday
commute

\- "brain backup" using high-res MRI + in-depth biographical interview + DNA
sample

\- "bio lab on a chip" using microfluidics, flourescence-assisted cell
sorting, nanopore sequencing, and phage-assisted directed evolution

------
stcredzero
tl;dr -- _We started with the dynamic duo of the businessman and the engineer.
Recently we added the designer. Now if want to continue to create products
that scale into billion dollar companies, create thousands of jobs and
transform society, we need to add domain experts to the founding DNA of
Technology Companies._

A bunch of us were talking about this over the table at the Chez JJ Hacker
Hostel. Apparently, there are a lot of _horrible_ medical apps. This is
because domain experts can't communicate well with doctors. So some doctor
with minimal programming experience writes some software. By chance, it takes
off and gets huge, growing into spaghetti code in the process, adding to the
reasons why the best hackers dont' work on medical software.

You can apply this to any number of disciplines.

 _> These founders don't want to change to world. They just want to make
enough money to provide for their family, buy a car, or earn their freedom.
These people are the information economy's mom and pop business owners, just
more technologically leveraged and profitable than their brick & mortar
predecessors._

Does that mean that such people will be as vulnerable to economic and social
change as mom & pop businesses of the past?

 _> I believe the decrease in big ideas for software companies is the result
of homogeneous founding teams in the Valley._

It does seem to me that people are looking for a few specific scenester types,
and rather quickly throw you into the "not applicable here" bin based on
rather shallow signaling.

------
ChrisNorstrom
Pardon my 6am-still-haven't-slept-rant but this feels like a cycle:

\- Invest in bullshit.

\- Find diamond rings in one or two piles of bullshit after a heavy rain.

\- Expect all bullshit to have diamond rings in it.

\- Get angry when you find out 92% of bullshit has no return.

\- Demand bullshit of a better quality from cattle farms.

I get why internet based businesses are so attractive, they can scale up very
well. But easy come, easy go.

Also, the internet's great and all and VCs are what make Silicon Valley happen
and thrive, but there's an entire world outside of it. Real needs, real
solutions, real products, real customers. As an indie inventor of real
products I'm pissed off. Many of these "Lets help American Small Businesses"
seed funds, incubators, grants, and tech-hubs ONLY invest in web based
startups. I'm disqualified from many of them. No offense, but I want
customers, not users.

Look at the diverse companies coming out of St. Louis Arch Grants which has no
limit to what kind of startups can apply
([http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/arch-grants-
announces-15...](http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/arch-grants-
announces-15-recipients-50k-startup-grants)) and the startups coming out of
"web based startups only" Capital Innovators
(<http://capitalinnovators.com/companies/>). Please look all the way through
both lists, I'm not exaggerating. It's sad.

After seeing how Silicon Valley companies are run. I don't want to work my ass
off for half a decade using someone else's money, be their bitch, watch my
equity get pocketed by someone else, sell out or IPO, lose all my top talent
after they bank their shares, and finally quit or burn out. I want to be
happy, I want to work at my own pace, I don't want to be someone's financial
slave, and I want to actually own my company. I'd rather create a company like
Valve, not Facebook.

So I'm left out of the funds and stuck with KickStarter. And Kickstarters
mostly like Apple/hipster/artsy projects, not products that could be sold in
normal stores.

 _===== What TechCrunch, VC Blogs, Reddit, & HN taught me about Venture
Capital =====_

1) A VC's idea of "Big Ideas" like Facebook, Twitter, & Zynga is a normal
person's idea of a "Ponzi Scheme". _(really think about this one.)_

2) Ignore real companies that sell real products because they're "boring" and
not "hot shit" while investing in companies like Color.

3) Start incubators, tech hubs, and funds that focus on internet related
startups and ONLY give funding to internet related startups. Then complain
when the only companies that come out are more: mobile ad platforms, social
media analytics, team based project managers, reward program sites, online
store builders, or subscription services. Especially team based project
managers, everyone and their grandmother has one.

Plus, how many internet-related life-changing companies do they want? We can't
built one every month just so investors can cash in. The bigger the idea the
less likely an entrepreneur is to start it due to it's massive upfront costs
in R&D. Investors want us to work our asses off for 2-3 years by ourselves,
build something that works, so they can fuel our gravy train with their money,
scale like a lunatic for 10 years, and have them get their bonuses and us get
our diluted equity.

No thank you. I want to be like Gabe Newell, NOT Mark Zuckerberg.

I have no problem with anyone following the silicon valley startup dream,
supporting that ecosystem, or working their ass off on another social media
analytics company or reward program. Follow your passion. But that's not my
place. And a lot of entrepreneurs are finding out it's not what they want
either.

 _(By the way I'm selling off 20 domain names starting
tonight:[http://www.chrisnorstrom.com/2012/06/domain-clearance-
auctio...](http://www.chrisnorstrom.com/2012/06/domain-clearance-auction-
on-20-of-my-domains-july-5th-2012/) I need more R&D money for my 6 foot x 5
foot fabric poster product) HN members get first dibs before I throw them up
on eBay_

~~~
quellhorst
Instead of selling RentATrashCan.com you should just let that one expire. I
found many of the domains I owned were not even worth the annual registration
fee.

------
Tycho
Seems like a slight false dichotomy. Founders can work on on frivolous
businesses initially, but later on, once they've acquired the acumen and
resilience to be a proper CEO, they may turn their hands to grander projects.
Incubators like YCombinator are training legions of entrepreneurs to be
_better_ entrepreneurs (as a side effect of finding successful exits
occasionally).

Two other thoughts: shouldn't we be looking at big, wealthy companies to do
the major, game-changing R&D anyway?

And secondly, maybe the world has changed in such a way as to allow big
breakthroughs to be dominated by mega corporations.

------
patdennis
_There are so many industries ripe for technology startups to disrupt:
Education, Health Care, Business, Art and Government just to name a few. But
where are the domain experts ready to be paired with a team of rockstar
engineers and superstar designers? Most of them appear to be wandering around
attempting to spread their ideas through books, speaking engagements,
university lectures and consulting gigs, unaware of the possibility now
available to them to integrate their ideas into software applications._

I'm more of a domain expert. Someone should build a startup that makes it
easier for us to meet engineers.

~~~
slurgfest
> a startup that makes it easier for us to meet engineers.

What, like a recruiting firm?

~~~
patdennis
No. A place to sit down and discuss what's possible.

~~~
slurgfest
Like a coffee shop?

------
mark_l_watson
Good point about the importance of domain experts who can be complementary to
lots of test users for a MVP.

------
ten_fingers
The article started with:

"Many venture capitalists are up in the arms because their returns are down,
their funds are drying up, and there appear to be a declining number of
entrepreneurs pursuing big ideas."

I will try to give explain how to reverse "the decline in big ideas":

First, I should state some context:

(A) The goal of a VC investment is to make money within a few years for the
VCs and their limited partners which are usually pension funds, university
endowments, and a few others. Here I stay with this goal and set aside other
goals such as 'improve society', 'save the planet, environment, rain forest,
farmland top soil, coral reefs, whales, genetic diversity of flora and fauna,
and poor people'. I am willing to leave these goals to Bill and Melinda Gates.

(B) As VC Mark Suster has reported on his blog, in the past 10 years VC
returns have been poor, that is, commonly negative and on average low compared
with other 'asset classes' or with history in finance. Maybe as few as 20 VC
firms in the US now have a good 10 year track record for their limited
partners. Returns have been so bad that

"Many venture capitalists are up in the arms"

is easy to believe.

(C) US venture capital concentrates in just two broad areas (a) 'information
technology' and (b) biomedical technology. Here I concentrate on (a),
'information technology'.

With the VCs concentrating on 'information technology', I agree that they
should do that. That is, broadly, computer hardware, infrastructure software,
the Internet, and, now, mobile devices are enormously powerful and not yet
nearly fully exploited, and, net, the big opportunity to make money.

With this context stated, I move on with two points.

First, What the VCs Are Doing

I believe that what VCs are currently doing is close to just silly and fully
explains their poor financial performance. So, here is what they are doing:

Yes, a current joke is that VCs (and their entrepreneurs) are concentrating on
mobile, local, social, friending, liking, linking, sharing of text, still
images, and video clips.

More generally, and not just a joke, it has become clear that VCs expect that
there is a 'business idea', to parody, 'Facebook but only for single cat
lovers' or a 'matchmaking site for employers and job hunters'. Such a
'business idea' is to be expressed in just a few words, and everything
important about the idea is supposed to be just obvious.

It is such ideas that have led to the contemptuous remark "Ideas are easy and
plentiful. Execution is everything.". Well, with only such simplistic ideas,
of course, execution is all that's left and has to be "everything". Bummer. I
will argue that with a 'good idea', at least with good planning before
execution, execution should be routine. The need for routine execution and the
ability to do it are common on Main Street all across the US.

Then for the 'barrier to entry', in the words of Fred Wilson, that is supposed
to be from a "network of engaged users".

All the rest of the work is supposed to be routine user interface design,
software, publicity, and, in the case of major success, server farm
engineering.

Then VCs evaluate such a project based essentially on just 'traction' that
they want to be significant and growing rapidly. I.e., they want another
Facebook.

But here what the VCs are doing is just silly: The VCs are asking far too much
from the 'business idea' and its short description and from just 'traction'
and are ignoring any more solid evidence of a good project and good
investment. Moreover, in the sense of the HBS article of this thread, what the
VCs are doing gives no real promise of identifying with any significant
accuracy the coveted "big ideas."

In blunt terms, the VCs are lacking any more solid means of project
evaluation.

Maybe with such processes some entrepreneur can find another Facebook, but I
believe that the good opportunities are elsewhere.

Second, Much Better

Here is my suggestion for something much better that I believe is so far
neglected by VCs (and their entrepreneurs). I suggest the following broad
steps:

(1) Market. Pick something big. Identify a market where can get a lot of money
from each of a few customers or a little money from each of hundreds of
millions of customers. Something of high interest to, say, 80% of all the
Internet users in the world should do nicely!

(2) Problem. In this market, find a problem where a much better, or the first
good, solution clearly promises to achieve the goals of money in (1) -- a lot
from each of a few or a little from each of a lot. Here "clearly" has to be
quite solid and not just some intuitive guess and not just early traction.

So, e.g., what's wrong with another mobile, social, liking, linking,
friending, sharing Web site is that it is just not clear that such a site will
get tens of millions of users. It just isn't clear. Instead, it's a long shot,
a shot in the dark.

Note: If in the market selected in (1) can't find a suitable problem, then
return to (1) and pick another market. However, if the market is a significant
fraction of all the Internet users in the world, then there MUST be a suitable
problem somewhere in there, so keep looking!

(3) Research. Do some research to enable, in the sense of 'secret sauce', the
desired solution as in (2).

There are some business advantages here: First, the research can enable a much
better solution, that is, one the customers like much more. Second, the
research can create a technological barrier to entry.

Note: If can't find suitable 'secret sauce', then return to (2) and pick
another problem.

(4) Software. Implement the solution in software on a Web server, and deliver
the solution via Web pages over the Internet.

Note: If the solution needs more than just such software and a Web server,
then return to (3) and find another solution.

(5) Execution. Go live, get publicity, users, and revenue.

Note: Here the crucial work, and the work to be carefully planned, executed,
and evaluated, is supposed to be in steps (1)-(4), and step (5), execution, is
supposed to be routine. This situation is in wild contrast with the usual VC
view that "Execution is everything".

Well yes: When the start is just a simple 'business idea' with nothing more to
recommend it, then, yes, "execution" is all that's left and "everything". But
such execution for "big ideas" is just vast goals with half-vast planning, a
long walk on a short pier, ready, fire, aim, and sloppy work that explains the
poor financial returns.

Where the VCs get off track is failing to take seriously (1)-(4).

Here's where the entrepreneurs get off the track: They don't know how to
execute step (3) Research.

What can we say about such research? Well, after the research, the rest is
just routine software and routine use of computing, software infrastructure,
the Internet, and server farm engineering. So, basically the software just
takes in some data, manipulates it, and puts out results, and the research is
for the manipulations.

Well, the manipulations are necessarily mathematically something, powerful or
not, understood or not. There are various ways to do the research:

(A) We can hope that the data manipulations to be done could in principle be
done manually; so, the software is to implement manual operations that are
well understood.

(B) We could use intuitive or heuristic methods.

(C) We could use some well known, somewhat general techniques in artificial
intelligence, semantic analysis, natural language processing, data mining,
machine learning, etc.

(D) Or we could proceed mathematically. Here we start with some assumptions
that appear to hold well in the real problem. The assumptions become
hypotheses in theorems. The conclusions of the theorems direct the data
manipulations. The software performs the manipulations. The 'research' is for
these connections and hopefully for some new theorems (that, of course, need
solid proofs).

Via (A)-(C), it's tough to know that have powerful manipulations and to know
that they are powerful early in the planning.

Where entrepreneurs get off the track is following (A)-(C) and neglecting (D).

Another place the VCs get off track is ignoring (D).

I'll make one more point: Since VCs are lacking good means of evaluating
projects, they have been using poor techniques and information instead. Net,
the VCs have been in a small 'echo chamber' quite distant from powerful
techniques and valuable information.

E.g., apparently the VCs get their understanding of what good projects should
look like mostly just from recent successful companies and what they find in
their e-mail in-box. So, they are trying to learn how to select "big ideas"
heavily from copying old examples and looking at small ideas. By analogy, they
are trying to learn how to evaluate new directions in medicine by reading
labels on bottles of snake oil. Hopeless.

In strong contrast, major parts of our economy have long been quite good at
good plans for being new, better, and/or first and, given good plans,
executing with low risk.

My suggestion to reverse "the decline in big ideas": Entrepreneurs, develop
solid plans for projects that have much higher potential. VCs, learn how to
evaluate such plans accurately.

------
ten_fingers
The article started with:

"Many venture capitalists are up in the arms because their returns are down,
their funds are drying up, and there appear to be a declining number of
entrepreneurs pursuing big ideas."

It's easy to believe all of this except the last part:

"Many venture capitalists are up in the arms because there appear to be a
declining number of entrepreneurs pursuing big ideas."

That part I don't believe.

Why don't I believe? My view of venture capitalists (VCs) is that they don't
look at ideas, or big ideas, or the anything at all detailed about a proposal
from an entrepreneur. So, if VCs don't bother even to look at ideas, then it's
tough to believe that they are

"up in the arms"

about what they don't see!

Of course, the author gave no list of his "many" VCs! I, however, have a long
list of VCs who, receiving a proposal for a "big idea", e.g., along the lines
of a company worth $200 billion, just quit reading and, maybe, start laughing.
My list is long enough that the author's "Many" becomes improbable!

Instead, I've long since concluded that VCs look at a few simple criteria and
then, for their first serious effort, in one word, look at 'traction'. Given
some significant traction, all the rest is nearly irrelevant.

In one step more detail, the VCs have no serious methodology for evaluating
anything about a proposal except just traction. I gave a longer explanation
in:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4289566>

------
alpine
_The founders starting "dipshit companies" are not the same types of founders
who would be starting the next billion dollar companies._

Didn't Google try to sell, unsuccessfully, for a few million dollars? I don't
think building a multi-billion dollar company was the original plan.

------
davmar
HDR - Harvard Drivel Review

