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Bad Startup Idea - Your next weekend project

badstartupidea.com

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Re: Bad Startup Idea - Your next weekend project

#31

Post by thoughtcriminal »

mion wrote: post #27
droidist2 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, you need both. I'm not sure how to quantify which one is more powerful or important, especially since "idea" can mean many things, from a very vague concept to a fully fleshed out and vetted business plan. I was just taking issue with the "ideas are worth nothing, execution is everything" mantra.

Let me quote Derek Sivers: "To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions." http://sivers.org/multiply

That should go without saying though. I think a better way of asking the question is "what's better: a brilliant idea executed so-so or a so-so idea executed brilliantly?"

That to me is a more interesting and logical question.

Re: Bad Startup Idea - Your next weekend project

#32

Post by koide »

droidist2 wrote: post #15
hayksaakian wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He means that execution is more powerful in general. If you can sell snow to an Eskimo, imagine what you could do with a good idea.

Absolutely, you need both. I'm not sure how to quantify which one is more powerful or important, especially since "idea" can mean many things, from a very vague concept to a fully fleshed out and vetted business plan. I was just taking issue with the "ideas are worth nothing, execution is everything" mantra.

A fully fleshed out and vetted business plan has long left the idea building...

Re: Bad Startup Idea - Your next weekend project

#33

Post by killermonkeys »

flexxaeon wrote: post #10
flexxaeon wrote: post #5

Spotify, but for business Motivational audiobooks? Hmmm....

So I refreshed and got "Github for Cooking" which sounded funny at first, until I thought about it. Which then led into a 15 minute discussion with the wife expanding on the idea. Now I wanna build it.

We've been working Sharpen (https://www.sharpenapp.com), a site for sharing your creative pursuits. You can fork a project, like in GitHub, and cooking is pretty popular with our alpha users: (https://www.sharpenapp.com/#!/tag/cooking). We haven't messed with fork in a while but we've got some idea on how to make it more useful... forking recipes makes total sense to me.

Re: Bad Startup Idea - Your next weekend project

#34

Post by rtcoms »

One day I was thinking of using github for writing novels, stories etc. Each branch will have different climax. Newbies in writing will be motivated to write small parts and get feedback.

Although it's not a startup idea but a use case of github api and will need a different interface.

What you all think of this ??

edit:grammatical error fix

Re: Bad Startup Idea - Your next weekend project

#36

Post by natejenkins »

justin_vanw wrote: post #13

All actually good startup ideas are bad ideas when they are started. Everybody thought twitter was retarded, and nobody had any idea social networking was even going to be a thing when facebook launched. If you only work on things that people agree seem like a good idea, you are probably the 5th team that is working on it, and you probably started about 3 years too late. This actually ends up giving many real success…

I have to disagree a bit with the idea that no-one thought social networking was going to be big. Were you not around for Friendster? Amongst my college friends it was huge. The problem was that it didn't scale. I logged on frequently until logging-on became too painful. It was the first site I used to reconnect with lost friends, and that was valuable to me.

Apparently Google also saw the value in Friendster, as they offered $30 million for the company, which Friendster turned down.

I'm not sure that being late to the game is as bad as many people would like to believe either. Implementation is king. I yahooed before I ever googled, had many email accounts before gmail, talked on my computer before skype, and on and on.

I agree with you though about Twitter. Total surprise.

Re: Bad Startup Idea - Your next weekend project

#38

Post by natejenkins »

droidist2 wrote: post #9
sgdesign wrote: post #6

To be fair, any of those ideas could produce a great startup with the right team behind it… That's the thing, the idea alone is pretty much meaningless one way or another.

I hear people say this often and never quite understood it. The idea is very important. Having a bad idea vs. a good idea is like the difference between trying to sell snow to an Eskimo and trying to sell a glass of water to a man dying of thirst. Given the right salesperson, both can be theoretically done and both can be screwed up, but that doesn't mean that execution is everything.

While there are clearly bad ideas, Facebook for robots is probably one, there are lots and lots of great ideas. I always tell people my 'real' startup idea is time travel, but I'm still working on the implementation.

Often these great ideas are hard. PG has an essay on this (http://paulgraham.com/ambitious.html). Better search is a clear example. Google is amazing, but it isn't perfect. Yet being better than google is really, really hard.

I think one of the tricks of being a founder is to pick the greatest idea that you are capable of implementing, with the caveat being that picking something that you are capable of implementing right now is probably too conservative.

Re: Bad Startup Idea - Your next weekend project

#39

Post by chaz »

natejenkins wrote: post #36
justin_vanw wrote: post #13

All actually good startup ideas are bad ideas when they are started. Everybody thought twitter was retarded, and nobody had any idea social networking was even going to be a thing when facebook launched. If you only work on things that people agree seem like a good idea, you are probably the 5th team that is working on it, and you probably started about 3 years too late. This actually ends up giving many real success…

I have to disagree a bit with the idea that no-one thought social networking was going to be big. Were you not around for Friendster? Amongst my college friends it was huge. The problem was that it didn't scale. I logged on frequently until logging-on became too painful. It was the first site I used to reconnect with lost friends, and that was valuable to me. Apparently Google also saw the value in Friendster, as the…

Agree about social networking -- it was around in early forms, soon after the web launched: PlanetAll.com (1996; acq by Amazon for $100mm in 1998) and SixDegrees.com (1997; acq for $125mm in 2000).

Re: Bad Startup Idea - Your next weekend project

#40

Post by wfn »

DigitalSea wrote: post #37

Stumbleupon but for knowledge — this could actually work. You stumble knowledge of particular subjects instead of blog posts and comics. Very interesting. Cool idea, lots of fun I've been generating ideas for 20 minutes now.

I always enjoy 'wikitripping' -

* http://xkcd.com/214/

* http://xkcd.com/903/ (see tooltip) (and corresponding wiki entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Getting_to_Philosophy)

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random

So agree, this sounds like a fun idea!

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