So somebody else built a successful business on that idea you had three years ago. What does that mean? That if you would just have pursued that idea, you would now automatically be enjoying their spoils? Sorry to burst your bubble, but I really don’t think so.
Ideas on their own are just not that important. It’s incredibly rare that someone comes up with an idea so unique, so protectable that the success story writes itself. Most ideas are nothing without execution.
Just because you thought of a site to share photos with friends wouldn’t have made you Flickr.
But I can see how fooling yourself into thinking otherwise is attractive. When someone else is having success with an idea similar to yours, it’s almost like you’re having that success, if only you would have pulled the trigger on it. It inflates the sense that your brilliant idea really was brilliant and that success was just a binary switch away (pursue/don’t).
On the other hand, it means that you don’t need divine inspiration to start a successful business. Doing well is not restricted only to those who can have paradigm-shifting ideas. You just need to do it better, or actually merely even good enough, to please enough paying customers that income can exceed expense and you’re off to a great start.
You’re probably too young to wear nostalgia gracefully, anyway.
caleb
on 05 Jul 08Nice reality check, thanks. I wouldn’t have thought of things this way, but looking back and speaking from experience, I tend to agree.
Thanks!
jn
on 05 Jul 08This should be added to Getting Real rev 2
MikeInAZ
on 05 Jul 08@jn, I second that.
Should be called Getting Realer :)
CD
on 05 Jul 08You’re just trying to discredit me… you know I thought of Basecamp first! You even ripped off my name of “Project Tent”!
I would’ve been a bazillionaire! Everyone would be like “Put it in Project Tent, bitches!”
:(
Alexander Muse
on 05 Jul 08I do believe ideas alone, i.e. simply in your head, are worthless. Every time I think I have a truly unique idea I am surprised by the number of people who have the same idea. To monetize your idea you must be able to execute on your idea. Execution involves the ability to adequately fund your idea, which may include raising money from friends, family or venture capitalists. I will let you in on an important secret: VCs often offer more than just money.
For example, if I needed $250,000 to build the next great Web 2.0 property (and for the record I am not) I could very easily write the check myself, but if I could I would raise the money from Fred Wilson. Why? Start with a few key connections, throw in much needed validation and don’t forget stellar Web 2.0 experience. If I was starting a wireless spectrum licensing company and needed money I would Call John Boyd. Do you get it? Yes, it is true that over half of startup founders are fired within 12 months and a result you should seriously consider why you are raising money and from whom. VCs aren’t the problem, they are simply a group of people who may or may not be able to help you.
Uway
on 05 Jul 08so all you said is “proof is in the putting”. I understand your views because i do truly feel like my ideas are ripped off daily. but since im not in 20 different places at one time, do not have the certain connections to present ideas to get some sort of demo of the product not to mention no budget and last would of have to of chosen a different profession all together just to see if my ideas would work. if it was easy then hey everybody would be rich. Its designed that way so get use to it. but when your focused there is no stopping somebody from accomplishing anything they want but they have to chose it wisely because you might have only one shot at it.
Nathaniel
on 05 Jul 08This is similar to believing that the first to market will win: it values the idea over the execution, which is nonsense.
yohami
on 05 Jul 08On the other hand, If you had a some ideas that other people developed into successful business, you better start doing something with your remaining ideas
Eric
on 05 Jul 08Thanks David,
We hear this pretty often and it can get tiresome : ) I always have to ask, then why didn’t you do anything about it?
Cheers, Eric
Alex
on 05 Jul 08@MikeinAz: What about “Getting Real II: Keeping It Real”?
Derick
on 05 Jul 08This is certainly true in the world of board games: http://www.bgdf.com/tiki-index.php?page=Copyright
“A design in the very early stages (e.g., “I want to make a game about taxi cabs in New York City”) is not actually that valuable. It’s very easy to come up with an idea for a game, and many designers have several such new ideas every day. Much more valuable is a game that has gone through most of the steps in the design process, including heavy playtesting.”
Richard Harrison
on 05 Jul 08A lot is also about timing.
If you tried to set up a user-generated video sharing site in 2000, with expensive bandwidth and low broadband penetration, then it probably would have failed.
Happy White Man
on 05 Jul 08Such good insights. I had an idea for an online version of American Idol the year before American Idol came to America from England.
I guestimated it would take about $150,000 to get it up and running in the beginning.
I would have lost $300,000.
coglethorpe
on 05 Jul 08I’ve tried getting a startup going over the past year, and one BIG thing I’ve learned is how worthless ideas are. What matters is building something Hopefully you’re building something that has some value in some way to someone, preferably lots of value to millions of people. :-)
Nas
on 05 Jul 08Nothing new under the sun. / It’s not what you do, it’s how it’s done.
Richard
on 05 Jul 08I’m generally not a nit-picker but the post a while back on job applicants not paying attention to detail caught my eye, and ear.
“Just because you thought of a site to share photos with friends wouldn’t have made you Flickr.”
“flickr” is written with a lower case “f.”
Peace.
PS: this is a great post, even with that typo.
J
on 05 Jul 08So glad you made this post. I just split with a startup where the “idea man” wanted an overwhelming majority of both control and profit. I couldn’t, unfortunately, help him see that ideas are a dime-a-dozen. Delivering: that’s what matters, and that’s what’s hard.
marc duchesne
on 05 Jul 08Absolutely true. 1, better see your idea come real thru another guy than never see it live. And 2, it proves that you’re smart enough to get successful ideas.
Drew
on 05 Jul 08This reminds me of an episode of the UK show Peep Show. A kid who looks up to two do-nothing musicians gives them a sample of his work to gain their feedback. The two listen to it, realizes how good it is and this conversation ensues:
Jez – Listening to this, it did make me think: lately I’ve been having some ideas and this is exactly the sort of thing I was thinking of doing.
Super Hans – Nicked your idea?
Jez – Well, that’s what I’m wondering; nicked my idea and then done it back to me… cause sometimes It’s really hard to actually do your own ideas.
Peter Cooper
on 05 Jul 08Good post, but I’m not sure it needed to be said. 37signals is the greatest proof of the whole message of this post. Project management was nothing new, chat apps were nothing new (indeed, even passé by the time Campfire was released), to do list apps were nothing new.. but 37signals’ implementation of them made them a success again.
Richard Wilson
on 05 Jul 08Great post! I totally agree.
@Richard: I think it’s all about timing too. McDonalds tried salads in its restaurants in the late ‘80s and nobody wanted them – the idea was a dead duck. When they reintroduced them ten years ago, it was a very different story.
Daniel Gibbons
on 06 Jul 08Marc Andreessen has some great stuff on pmarca about the importance of the market in determining whether start-ups succeed or fail. While it might seem like his points contradict yours, he’s really saying a very similar thing, just in a different manner.
For him the market is what separates the wheat from the chafe, but that doesn’t mean that ideas alone succeed. In fact success means actually producing a product people want when they want it. As he notes:
So in a way it’s about redefining a great idea from “something really cool” to “something people really want”. The key thing to remember is that people very, very rarely want things that are completely new, so good ideas become seeing ways to enter an existing market in a new way. That’s what gets completely lost in the world of web 2.0, in which it’s becoming a death spiral of brand spanking new answers to questions no one is asking.
rynmrtn
on 06 Jul 08I have found myself thinking the thought – “I had that idea a long time ago.. and look at how I could have been successful!” But David and many of the comments that accompany this post are right. Coming up with ideas to scratch the many itches of life are easy. The timing, design, and implementation of an idea is where the real brilliance shines through.
@Richard: The capitalization of flickr could be interpreted as ambiguous. The logo on the front page is lowercase while the html title and bottom links use an uppercase Flickr. I don’t believe David is applying for a job or making a first impression, either.
“Let’s add value. Thank you.” – 37s
Jake Walker
on 06 Jul 08This reminds me of an excellent column Derek Sivers of CD Baby wrote a bunch of years ago:
ideas are just a multiplier of execution
ceejayoz
on 06 Jul 08@Richard – you may want to look at the Flickr home page’s <title> tag… or the heading on their about page...
Thierry
on 06 Jul 08For more on that, take a look at “A Good Hard Kick in the Ass”, a book by Rob Adams. It’s not the idea that counts, but its execution.
Christopher
on 06 Jul 08I think what’s also important is while ideas are a dime a dozen and there are VERY few ideas which are truly new or novel along with actually you know starting, how an idea is executed is what most is important.
Taking Highrise as an example, the idea of a lightweight CRM system was not novel in anyway when it was being developed, everyone was talking about contacts 2.0 BUT the way the idea was executed, the actual end manifestation of the idea which became Highrise is why I think it would have been successful even if it did not have the shoulders of other products and the 37signals rep to rest on.
For another example look at the casual puzzle arena of pop 3 games… Some of the most successful were “late” to the market but they understood what the market was looking for; they executed and prospered.
Josh
on 06 Jul 08So, maybe the question most often is not “What can I make?” it’s “What can I make better?”
BJ Nemeth
on 06 Jul 08@Richard: I don’t want to pile on, but a lot of us copyeditors choose to capitalize proper nouns regardless of the company’s trademark. Personally, I drop the exclamation point from Yahoo and the question mark from Guess jeans too. I also capitalize Craigslist. It’s a complicated mess nowadays, with a lot of exceptions (like iPod or nVidia). But I write it as “Flickr” too, regardless of their corporate wishes or logo choice regarding the initial letter.
As for the original post, I completely agree. An idea does not equal a successful product or a service. There’s a lot of work in between the two.
Richard Wanderman
on 06 Jul 08@ceejayoz at al: I stand (sit) corrected. My bad on flickr, Flickr, FLICKR, Flicker. Thanks.
adi
on 06 Jul 08Spot on David. How do you come up with these insights anyway you “arrogant lout” ? :D Keep up the good work. Cheers
GeeIWonder
on 07 Jul 08That’s been the opening line at most VC meets I’ve been too.
So someone else had the idea first, DHH—but you DID execute it nicely. ;)
Ryan Allen
on 07 Jul 08I agree with this sentiment, execution truly is paramount. Ze Frank has a really funny video on the whole ‘deluding oneself with great ideas’, he refers to it as brain crack:
http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/07/071106.html
Very amusing and incisive.
Kevo Thomson
on 07 Jul 08I was going to write a blog entry just like this!
Evan
on 07 Jul 08I totally thought of Twitter / Facebook Statuses circa 2004 and didn’t do it.
Thing was, I was a sophomore computer science student at the time, so I envisioned it as a Java client program, and didn’t have the foresight to leverage the web for that sort of thing. I also knew my skills weren’t up to snuff to execute and that I didn’t have access to the resources needed to deploy it.
So, I’m kind of glad I didn’t go for it; the only thing I really missed out on was the learning I might have gained.
jose nazario
on 07 Jul 08i’ve had this happen both with technology and science (a former life). i now look at it in two major ways.
first it’s validation that you’re on the right track. good. think about other ideas you had that you could improve on and possibly bring to light.
second it’s a chance to now do the NEXT thing. building that project management tool that you wanted – that 37signals eventually released – would have enabled you to do … what?
the idea is not the end, it’s a means to an end.
chad
on 07 Jul 08great point, but i had this very thought years ago!
john
on 07 Jul 08Ideas by themselves are actually incredibly powerful. That somebody else had a good idea and executed it better (or had the resources with which to do so)—that is the part that is inconsequential. So many brilliant people have their ideas copied, imitated… and receive no credit. Actually, for the most part, the real idea creators of the world are more involved with making ideas, than necessarily realizing them. This is why PhDs have teams of grad students, etc.
Sure, you can leer at them, call them iconoclast loser idealists, if you want. But the sheer brilliance of a Tesla—I’d take it 7 days of the week over the crass regurgitation of an Edison. One founded a business, the other simply introduced AC electricity, small motors, radio, x-ray, radar, and more to the world.
john
on 07 Jul 08PS—Edison used a means of trial and error. Tesla created fully functional prototypes using minimal notes. His ideas sprung fully formed from his head.
Michael Covisi
on 07 Jul 08Not only is the idea essentially worthless, is there much to be said for being the person or company who actually makes the product? As the years go by, I see the financial return in the marketing and distribution. iTunes, for example. They don’t write songs, or record them, they take proven winners and distribute them.
There are obvious exceptions to this, but the two wealthiest people I personally know made their money distributing someone else’s products. Both of them are just ordinary guys.
Me? My ego wants to be Tesla. I have to remember he died broke and unknown.
Kenny
on 07 Jul 08We know that it’s really great to come up with something and work on it in your spare time and then grow from there.
But what if you can’t code? What if you are good at every part of the puzzle except for being able to code?
I have tried learning to code but it just doesn’t interest me, nor am I any good at it. But I have ideas and all the qualities described to get something started. It’s so hard to find someone to code for you and have it work financially.
Shane
on 08 Jul 08I had one of those ideas years ago … reading the book The Lovely Bones I thought … “this needs to be a film … but only by someone capable of taking it to film in the right way … someone like Peter Jackson …. like Heavenly Creatures was done”. Still not sure how I could have executed that one ;-)
Oh well C’est la vie
Josh A.
on 08 Jul 08...and of course sometimes what you actually wanted wasn’t to necessarily make a business out of it or make it your day-to-day job, but you just thought it would be a cool idea – so it can actually be really great when you see someone else implement an idea that had briefly crossed your mind in an exemplary way.
This discussion is closed.