Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Let’s End the Myth that Ideas Are Worthless

blog.assetmap.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 82 posts

Re: Let’s End the Myth that Ideas Are Worthless

#11

Post by tgflynn »

phlux wrote: post #5
kls wrote: post #3

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 nove…

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 yo…

I apologize if this seems harsh but I am highly skeptical that someone who is "not a developer", and by this I understand you to mean that you have never done software development in your career, is qualified to design large systems and networks.

I don't think that such a person could have a deep enough understanding of the technology to do a good job performing the tasks he purports to.

As for likening developers to "contractors who pounds the nail" that tells me that you have very little understanding of the nature of software development.

Re: Let’s End the Myth that Ideas Are Worthless

#12

Post by Swizec »

j_baker wrote: post #9
Swizec wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If developers are so much more valuable than ideas - why isnt every single developer building something amazing? I think a lot of this boils down to opportunity and guts. While everyone can have a billion-dollar idea, and many of them could execute parts of it (the coding, or the marketing, or whatever). It takes a special set of circumstances and personality traits to actually make a billion-dollar idea into a bil…

> While everyone can have a billion-dollar idea You know, this is one of those cliches that lives on simply because everyone keeps repeating it. Everyone can have an idea they believe is worth billions of dollars, true. And a billion dollar idea is worthless without billion dollar execution. But don't let this fool you into believing that great ideas are any less rare. And besides that, my experience is that great id…

Everyone can have a billion-dollar idea. Doesn't mean that they do in fact have it, or ever in their lifetime will.

Small yet vital nuance in meaning.

Also there is a statistical bias here in that one can only know their idea was a billion-dollar idea when it becomes a billion-dollar execution. If everything doesn't line up, you might still have had a billion-dollar idea, you just couldn't prove it.

Re: Let’s End the Myth that Ideas Are Worthless

#13

Post by nlwhittemore »

nikz wrote: post #4

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 e…

This is an absolutely true point - and I am definitely more on the idea side. In a lot of ways though, it's not so much the "MBA vs Coder" debate as much as the "designer vs coder" debate. I do the high level product design and actually UI for the product, so obsess about things like user behavior. Before I was doing this, I was designing programs for university students that were again, driven by thesis about behavior.

I hope the piece doesn't come off as thinking it's all about idea and no execution. The "in between" for me is that they're part and parcel of the same thing.

Re: Let’s End the Myth that Ideas Are Worthless

#14

Post by nlwhittemore »

kls wrote: post #3

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 nove…

My problem with this argument is that it positions an "idea" person as static and fixed in time rather than dynamic and evolving. Over the life time of a startup, the idea becomes less about the initial spark and more about the way things evolve. Data can drive lots of that, for sure, which is why things like lean startup are so valuable. But what about the big decisions about where to go next? What's your next product? What's the behavior that's not working? What have you fundamentally misunderstood about your users? A ton of that comes back to judgement and prioritization of ideas. Lots of great developers have that, but it is a fundamentally different skill.

Re: Let’s End the Myth that Ideas Are Worthless

#15

Post by j_baker »

Swizec wrote: post #12
j_baker wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While everyone can have a billion-dollar idea You know, this is one of those cliches that lives on simply because everyone keeps repeating it. Everyone can have an idea they believe is worth billions of dollars, true. And a billion dollar idea is worthless without billion dollar execution. But don't let this fool you into believing that great ideas are any less rare. And besides that, my experience is that great id…

Everyone can have a billion-dollar idea. Doesn't mean that they do in fact have it, or ever in their lifetime will. Small yet vital nuance in meaning. Also there is a statistical bias here in that one can only know their idea was a billion-dollar idea when it becomes a billion-dollar execution. If everything doesn't line up, you might still have had a billion-dollar idea, you just couldn't prove it.

So then what is your argument? Before you seemed to imply that billion-dollar ideas are a dime a dozen. Anyone can have them. But good execution is difficult to come by.

Now you seem to be agreeing with (or at least aren't arguing) the ultimate conclusion that I come to in my last comment which is that good ideas are rare. Whether anyone can have them or not is kind of a moot point if very few people actually do have them don't you think?

If good execution is hard to come by and good ideas are hard to come by, then wouldn't that mean that both are important things to worry about?

Re: Let’s End the Myth that Ideas Are Worthless

#16

Post by nlwhittemore »

davidw wrote: post #7

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

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...

Re: Let’s End the Myth that Ideas Are Worthless

#17

Post by geoffw8 »

phlux wrote: post #5
kls wrote: post #3

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 nove…

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 yo…

I would like to see a real response to this, point-by-point. What this doesn't need is politician style answers, but true responses.

Re: Let’s End the Myth that Ideas Are Worthless

#18

Post by 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.

Re: Let’s End the Myth that Ideas Are Worthless

#19

Post by Swizec »

j_baker wrote: post #15
Swizec wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone can have a billion-dollar idea. Doesn't mean that they do in fact have it, or ever in their lifetime will. Small yet vital nuance in meaning. Also there is a statistical bias here in that one can only know their idea was a billion-dollar idea when it becomes a billion-dollar execution. If everything doesn't line up, you might still have had a billion-dollar idea, you just couldn't prove it.

So then what is your argument? Before you seemed to imply that billion-dollar ideas are a dime a dozen. Anyone can have them. But good execution is difficult to come by. Now you seem to be agreeing with (or at least aren't arguing) the ultimate conclusion that I come to in my last comment which is that good ideas are rare. Whether anyone can have them or not is kind of a moot point if very few people actually do have…

No, I'm not saying they are rare. I'm saying this:

1. Everyone is capable of having a billion-dollar idea

2. Not everyone will actually have such an idea

3. Such ideas are still a dime a dozen because even if only 10% of the world population has such an idea, that's still 700 million such ideas. That's a lot.

4. It's difficult to prove that an idea was a billion-dollar idea and the only way of proving is likely to either execute very well, or someone else executing on the same/similar-enough idea

Let's try to do some off-the-cuff statistics.

Let's assume the average person has 1 useful idea per week. And the average worldwide life expectancy is about 50 years. That makes 2608 useful ideas in their lifetime. Let's say a hundreth of a percent of those ideas are billion dollars ideas. That gives us roughly 3 billion-dollar ideas for every human in their lifetime.

So that's not very much on an individual basis, but using the same stats for the world population gives us roughly 7 million billion-dollar ideas every week.

Re: Let’s End the Myth that Ideas Are Worthless

#20

Post by j_baker »

tgflynn wrote: post #11
phlux wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 yo…

I apologize if this seems harsh but I am highly skeptical that someone who is "not a developer", and by this I understand you to mean that you have never done software development in your career, is qualified to design large systems and networks. I don't think that such a person could have a deep enough understanding of the technology to do a good job performing the tasks he purports to. As for likening developers to…

> I apologize if this seems harsh but I am highly skeptical that someone who is "not a developer", and by this I understand you to mean that you have never done software development in your career, is qualified to design large systems and networks.

Don't sysadmins and network admins design large systems and networks? Sorry, but programmers don't have a monopoly on technical complexity.

> As for likening developers to "contractors who pounds the nail" that tells me that you have very little understanding of the nature of software development.

Is that not the point of the argument he is arguing against though? It seems to be saying that "Developers pound the nail, and pounding the nail is the most important part".

Post reply on HN