Startup ideas

   Rent-a-wife – a woman who cleans, cooks, does laundry, 
   picks up dry cleaning, mail, etc but without the emotional 
   relationship.

Really?

There's an Australian business - http://www.hireahubby.com.au/ - where you can hire a "hubby" to do all the handyman jobs around the house...

Every time someone says something about ideas being less important than execution I feel like he/she is oversimplifying it (I'm not saying the author of the post is missing the point though) and someone out there is missing the idea.

Initial, untested ideas are worthless. The list of 998 ideas are probably all things they just came up with on the spot, unexposed to the effects of evolution.

But let's say we took this idea, "Prepackaged school supplies based on the lists from the school districts," tested it. The test would have to consist of some sort of execution. Now we let's say we found out that no one gives a shit about school supplies and don't buy it anyways. Well now we amend our original idea. We have a new idea, it's still an idea. We executed to determine what works and what doesn't. This new idea is worth slightly more. After many, many iterations, we'll still have an idea in the end. If it is carefully documented and proven with a history of execution. This idea is worth something, and I would buy it. The idea, only after execution has value because the execution is factual proof.

Therefore, ideas can be worth something and can be sold. In fact, the idea, plan, knowledge, whatever you call it, is what's worth something in the end. What's worthless is an untested idea, because it is grounded only in imagination.

Also every time you execute an idea, it becomes exposed. It loses it's value because it is free (unless you patent it, but that's just some artificial thing we invented to force value into ideas after they are exposed). But the idea, before anyone else knows about it, and in the instant it is executed, has value.

Of course this means that more important than any single idea is in the ability of the person to come up with innovative ideas. We can all follow the model of evolution and improve our ideas, but who can iterate faster, and predict more accurately what works (guiding evolution), will ultimately dominate.

Execution is simply how well you predict what works, and how well you don't lie to yourself. In this sense execution may be more important than any single idea, but an idea can still have value.

Just goes to show that the startup idea isn't worth a thing, but that it's all in the execution.