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Ideas are a dime a dozen. It's the execution that matters. Show investors traction, growth, or profit — if you can't reach any of those milestones, rinse and re

Ideas are a dime a dozen. It's the execution that matters. Show investors traction, growth, or profit — if you can't reach any of those milestones, rinse and repeat until you do — now you're ready to talk to investors, but wait, now you've reached a point where you don't need investors anymore. I actively avoid entrepreneurs that are looking for an investment as a form of business validation. An entrepreneurs job is to validate ideas, to find something that sticks.

random_user 13y ago
> Ideas are a dime a dozen. It's the execution that matters. And you are right. And if I had done absolutely nothing in my life. If I was a kid either dropping out of school or just out of school your sermon would be well applied. I'm not. After over thirty years of entrepreneurship I tend to use "idea" to really mean "opportunity". Most ideas are utterly worthless. They are great as thinking tools. Never stop generating ideas! A few ideas are worth millions, o billions. Instagram started as an idea. Of course, that idea happened thousands of times. One team executed it well and at the right time. What this means is that ideas are not always obvious identifications of market opportunities. To over-use Instagram, I know I would have thought that was a stupid idea. I wouldn't have given the Instagram idea the time of day. I would have discounted it as useless and moved on. So, here's an idea, worth billions when matched with the right team, timing and execution, that most people would think was just plain stupid. As I got older I've tried to be less critical of ideas. I listen to them and I log mine assiduously. I allow myself to generate and consider ideas that, on first inspection, seem utterly ridiculous. I try to review them from time to time. What happens is that sometimes two or three combine into one. That's the case of the quadcopter opportunity I have uncovered. It's the combination of a number of thoughts and an interest in a couple of market segments I've had for years, decades, possibly. Now it's just about execution. Still, inspired by your comment I edited my post and replaced "idea" with "opportunity". That's what I am talking about, opportunities, not ideas. I have hundreds of ideas, the vast majority of which are not opportunities. Thanks.
- mcintyre1994 13y ago
  I don't see why your opportunities are any better than ideas, aren't they just your really good ideas? The opportunity is surely for you to execute it now, because to everyone else it's just a really good idea?
  - random_user 13y ago
    No. An opportunity is an idea connected to a market need. There's more than one way to connect an idea to a market need. One case is where the market already exists either entirely or to some degree and you have a solid idea of how to make it better: iPhone. Another is where you are the target market yourself and know the market very well. You see the need. You see the pain points and you are equipped to address them. I could argue that might have been the start of Hewlett and Packard. FedEx is a case of an idea that was discounted and then proven to have been right on the mark. Some ideas can't be tested with $15,000 over a summer. There are other cases where the idea and the market opportunity reveal themselves during some kind of an instant or event that provides the necessary clarity, if you will, that connects the two. A friend of mine and I had the idea for what eventually became LoJack a year or two before that company came out with their product. We were young, making very good money at our respective jobs and simply didn't have enough of that "clarity" (for lack of a better word) to take the idea seriously. To this day we laugh about it. Ideas that are just ideas with no connection to a market happen at least two ways. One is the case of a well established or entrenched set of players against which it'd be almost impossible to compete. It'd be hard to go up against Google or Facebook. The insight an idea would have to have in order to connect with a market opportunity in search or social would have to be so incredible that people would literally want to throw money at you. Even with that, it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars to even begin to have a shot at that. For all intents and purposes you can say that ideas in social or search really don't have a market because you really can't get that market. The other category are ideas that really don't have markets, at least in the context of what makes for a good scalable company. Local restaurants. Great idea if you want to work 20 hours a day seven days a week, have huge risk of failure, no real scalability and no prospects of any kind of an exit that makes sense. For some people that would be a market. If it weren't there would be no mom-and-pop local restaurants. For most ventures that are looking for or need scale in order to be considered successful a mom-and-pop restaurant idea is an idea without a market. I could go on. There are, of course, ideas that really lead to nothing useful. Most of those are obvious to most except for the guy married to the idea.
graycat 13y ago
>Ideas are a dime a dozen. It's the execution that matters. Bad ideas are a dime a dozen. Ideas that are good and early on have solid evidence that they are good are rare. Here are some ideas that, just as ideas, should be valuable to VCs: (1) An algorithm that shows that P = NP and is fast. Why? Because it could commonly save 5-15% of costs in transportation, logistics, Internet backbone design, manufacturing, and allocation of resources more generally. (2) A computer operating system that is nearly 100% compatible with Windows and can run any software safely, even malware. (3) An algorithm that can implement the fundamental theorem of arithmetic, that is, factor integers of thousands of digits into a product of prime numbers quickly. > but wait, now you've reached a point where you don't need investors anymore. Not exactly true in all cases, but there is a major point here. E.g., recently I added the cost of high quality parts for a server in a mid-tower case -- 8 core processor at 4.0 GHz, 32 GB of ECC main memory, 10+ TB of hard disk -- ~$1500. Can get a wire rack shelf unit from Sam's Club, 18" x 48" x 72", and could put about 12 of those servers on a rack. That's a LOT of computing. If have a Web site that can keep that computing busy and send with the Web pages ads at, net, $2 per 1000 ads sent, can support a family in style: Suppose can send a Web page for 400,000 bits, have 4 ads per page, half fill upload bandwidth of 15 Mbps 24 x 7, and get paid $2 per 1000 ads displayed. Then get monthly revenue of 2 * 4 * 15 * 106 * 3600 * 24 * 30 / ( 2 * 400,000 * 1000 ) = 388,800 dollars. A year of that and have as cash as much as many series A equity rounds.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- Cardeck1 13y ago
  I agree. The reason people think ideas are "a dime a dozen" is because everyone overrates their ideas and you can't really measure the value of an idea unless it's executed. However, I must admit that after years of experience I must say the statement is not really true. 80% of the ideas suck. Plain and simple. It doesn't matter if you are in the Valley or if you are super smart, some people are not made to create/innovate, only execute based on someone's idea. But those people who are able to create are an exception. Have you ever met someone without a degree or any experience, looking at your product and telling you 100 ways to improve it?I met a guy/wonderkid or whatever that was able to do just that, and he is working for a hedge fund now as far as I know. It took him 20 min to give us an entire improvement plan on how to increase revenue without any papers or anything prepared.We had even backup plans and future competitor moves. He basically humiliated my A+ employee stars who were struggling for months.I was shocked.
runjake 13y ago
You probably should've examined the OP's link at the top of his post so you could've avoided posting this embarrassing comment. He has extensive execution experience and from his comments on HN, it's fairly easy to track down who he is.

random_user 13y ago

> Ideas are a dime a dozen. It's the execution that matters. And you are right. And if I had done absolutely nothing in my life. If I was a kid either dropping out of school or just out of school your sermon would be well applied. I'm not. After over thirty years of entrepreneurship I tend to use "idea" to really mean "opportunity". Most ideas are utterly worthless. They are great as thinking tools. Never stop generating ideas! A few ideas are worth millions, o billions. Instagram started as an idea. Of course, that idea happened thousands of times. One team executed it well and at the right time. What this means is that ideas are not always obvious identifications of market opportunities. To over-use Instagram, I know I would have thought that was a stupid idea. I wouldn't have given the Instagram idea the time of day. I would have discounted it as useless and moved on. So, here's an idea, worth billions when matched with the right team, timing and execution, that most people would think was just plain stupid. As I got older I've tried to be less critical of ideas. I listen to them and I log mine assiduously. I allow myself to generate and consider ideas that, on first inspection, seem utterly ridiculous. I try to review them from time to time. What happens is that sometimes two or three combine into one. That's the case of the quadcopter opportunity I have uncovered. It's the combination of a number of thoughts and an interest in a couple of market segments I've had for years, decades, possibly. Now it's just about execution. Still, inspired by your comment I edited my post and replaced "idea" with "opportunity". That's what I am talking about, opportunities, not ideas. I have hundreds of ideas, the vast majority of which are not opportunities. Thanks.

mcintyre1994 13y ago
I don't see why your opportunities are any better than ideas, aren't they just your really good ideas? The opportunity is surely for you to execute it now, because to everyone else it's just a really good idea?
- random_user 13y ago
  No. An opportunity is an idea connected to a market need. There's more than one way to connect an idea to a market need. One case is where the market already exists either entirely or to some degree and you have a solid idea of how to make it better: iPhone. Another is where you are the target market yourself and know the market very well. You see the need. You see the pain points and you are equipped to address them. I could argue that might have been the start of Hewlett and Packard. FedEx is a case of an idea that was discounted and then proven to have been right on the mark. Some ideas can't be tested with $15,000 over a summer. There are other cases where the idea and the market opportunity reveal themselves during some kind of an instant or event that provides the necessary clarity, if you will, that connects the two. A friend of mine and I had the idea for what eventually became LoJack a year or two before that company came out with their product. We were young, making very good money at our respective jobs and simply didn't have enough of that "clarity" (for lack of a better word) to take the idea seriously. To this day we laugh about it. Ideas that are just ideas with no connection to a market happen at least two ways. One is the case of a well established or entrenched set of players against which it'd be almost impossible to compete. It'd be hard to go up against Google or Facebook. The insight an idea would have to have in order to connect with a market opportunity in search or social would have to be so incredible that people would literally want to throw money at you. Even with that, it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars to even begin to have a shot at that. For all intents and purposes you can say that ideas in social or search really don't have a market because you really can't get that market. The other category are ideas that really don't have markets, at least in the context of what makes for a good scalable company. Local restaurants. Great idea if you want to work 20 hours a day seven days a week, have huge risk of failure, no real scalability and no prospects of any kind of an exit that makes sense. For some people that would be a market. If it weren't there would be no mom-and-pop local restaurants. For most ventures that are looking for or need scale in order to be considered successful a mom-and-pop restaurant idea is an idea without a market. I could go on. There are, of course, ideas that really lead to nothing useful. Most of those are obvious to most except for the guy married to the idea.

graycat 13y ago

>Ideas are a dime a dozen. It's the execution that matters. Bad ideas are a dime a dozen. Ideas that are good and early on have solid evidence that they are good are rare. Here are some ideas that, just as ideas, should be valuable to VCs: (1) An algorithm that shows that P = NP and is fast. Why? Because it could commonly save 5-15% of costs in transportation, logistics, Internet backbone design, manufacturing, and allocation of resources more generally. (2) A computer operating system that is nearly 100% compatible with Windows and can run any software safely, even malware. (3) An algorithm that can implement the fundamental theorem of arithmetic, that is, factor integers of thousands of digits into a product of prime numbers quickly. > but wait, now you've reached a point where you don't need investors anymore. Not exactly true in all cases, but there is a major point here. E.g., recently I added the cost of high quality parts for a server in a mid-tower case -- 8 core processor at 4.0 GHz, 32 GB of ECC main memory, 10+ TB of hard disk -- ~$1500. Can get a wire rack shelf unit from Sam's Club, 18" x 48" x 72", and could put about 12 of those servers on a rack. That's a LOT of computing. If have a Web site that can keep that computing busy and send with the Web pages ads at, net, $2 per 1000 ads sent, can support a family in style: Suppose can send a Web page for 400,000 bits, have 4 ads per page, half fill upload bandwidth of 15 Mbps 24 x 7, and get paid $2 per 1000 ads displayed. Then get monthly revenue of 2 * 4 * 15 * 106 * 3600 * 24 * 30 / ( 2 * 400,000 * 1000 ) = 388,800 dollars. A year of that and have as cash as much as many series A equity rounds.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
Cardeck1 13y ago
I agree. The reason people think ideas are "a dime a dozen" is because everyone overrates their ideas and you can't really measure the value of an idea unless it's executed. However, I must admit that after years of experience I must say the statement is not really true. 80% of the ideas suck. Plain and simple. It doesn't matter if you are in the Valley or if you are super smart, some people are not made to create/innovate, only execute based on someone's idea. But those people who are able to create are an exception. Have you ever met someone without a degree or any experience, looking at your product and telling you 100 ways to improve it?I met a guy/wonderkid or whatever that was able to do just that, and he is working for a hedge fund now as far as I know. It took him 20 min to give us an entire improvement plan on how to increase revenue without any papers or anything prepared.We had even backup plans and future competitor moves. He basically humiliated my A+ employee stars who were struggling for months.I was shocked.

runjake 13y ago

You probably should've examined the OP's link at the top of his post so you could've avoided posting this embarrassing comment. He has extensive execution experience and from his comments on HN, it's fairly easy to track down who he is.