Ideas are Cheap | Hacker News Reader

Ideas are Cheap

weblog.jamisbuck.org

67 pointsjamis63 comments

When I was younger, I used to marvel at all the people who said they wished they could do a startup but couldn't come up with any ideas. I can usually sit down and write up a half-dozen ideas in an hour. They're not worth being possessive about, simply because there are so many of them.

Having spent the better part of a year thinking up ideas and testing them in front of users, I'll revise that opinion. Ideas are cheap. Good ideas are incredibly valuable. It's really easy to sit down and think up ideas that seem like they'd be both plausible and useful. It's much harder to find ideas that 1) can be implemented by a small team with virtually no resources 2) excite other people enough to overcome their "activation energy" and get them to try it out 3) would be useful enough in everyday life to keep them using it and 4) aren't already being done by dozens of other people. The filter isn't "1% of ideas that you dream up are actually good ones", it's more like "1% of ideas that you dream up and think are actually good ones actually are good ones."

Really good idea are rare. Bad ideas are common and sometimes because of luck and hard work bad ideas succeed. This causes people to discount the importance of truly good ideas.

The idea is one of the most important components to success - a good idea won’t guarantee success, but it makes it much more likely.

Maybe. I think the "good idea leads to riches" story is much more often constructed in retrospect because people like tidy narratives.

I also think that the whole notion of "good idea" is misleading, in that a lot of people think that good ideas come out of the blue and then you just run with them. The companies I find interesting don't start with one good idea; they iterate toward success and have hundreds of ideas along the way, winnowing the good from the bad.

Ernest Hemingway wrote, "The first draft of anything is shit." Artist friends say, "To make good art, you first have to make a lot of bad art." Ira Glass said, "It is only by going through a volume of work that [...] your work will be as good as your ambitions." I think this is true for all creative work.

I agree with this. Good ideas almost never come all at once and often need to be worked on over a long time period. In the end though what matters is not how long, or how much effort it took, but how good the idea is.

In that case, I don't think we're really talking about the idea. What we're talking about is that the idea has been validated through a lot of hard work. Ideas are still cheap; what's valuable is knowledge.

I consider an idea everything pre-execution. I have had the odd goodish idea in a flash of brilliance, but the truely good ideas all took a lot of thinking and improvement over time. For example, the idea I am working on right now as my next venture I had 15 years ago, but I could not think of any way to monetarize it. Three months ago I finally worked out a way of doing this and have since been spending around 20% of my time filling knowledge gaps and planning what I need to do to begin execution. Right now I have nothing but an idea, but it is a well thought out and considered idea that I think has a reasonable chance of success.

This pithy expression is overused and I would argue, unhelpful.

Ideas are cheap, but ideas that will make you rich are rare. And the ones that no one else is already working on are even rarer.

I remember reading another one of these blog posts with 1000 startup ideas and they were either ludicrously niche ideas with 0 market value like carpets for dogs, or in the realm of PhD research like making cellphone batteries last longer.

Ideas are not equal.

On the other hand, most of the best ideas seem like ludicrous ideas at first, so discarding an idea just because it seems ludicrous when glanced at may not be the smartest thing to do.

Getting into the habit of validating ideas is a good thing, but there's also something to be said for sticking with an idea that has a few serious issues and pivoting it until it actually makes sense (e.g. AirBNB).

If the idea of "A capitalist version of couchsurfing.com" was pitched to me, I'd think internally "a silly idea I don't want to be involved in. What absurd ideas these buffoons come up with. I hate the valley."

The most financially successful ideas to me, quite literally sound like they were produced in a 5-minute writing assignment given to a 3rd grader.

I remember talking with the snapchat people a couple years ago when it was just starting up. I thought "another clowncar with some half-baked idea that I could have generated with a perl script". The founders are billionaires now.

Having dumb ideas seem to be more communicable and easier to comprehend. Status updates but only 140 characters! Video uploads but only 6 seconds! mms and sms chat, but not archived! Please - these are the hottest ideas? Really?

Let's make an email service that limits you to sending 1 email a day or a voicemail service that limits you to 10 second recordings. A shower nozzle that turns off after 5 gallons. A restaurant that kicks you out after 800 calories. Is this where we are now?

> A restaurant that kicks you out after 800 calories. Is this where we are now?

Yup! And a restaurant that kicks you out after 400 calories, and one that kicks you out after 1200 too. And one the gives you a bigger and bigger discount for every calorie you eat. And one that does the opposite.

Our purpose as programmers is to build every piece of software anyone will ever want. Just because very few people might want any specific variation doesn't mean it shouldn't exist. If someone is willing to write the code, why not? There's no reason why we have to all huddle a tiny handful of mass-market applications.

What you mentioned are all bad ideas only because they have no soul (You're just saying them for the sake of making your point) If someone could tell me with conviction why sending 1 email a day is meaningful for certain reasons and why the rest of the world doesn't realize it yet, then it's a different story. Most people who complain about "I had that idea too" are not lying, they probably did have those ideas, but were not insightful enough or didn't pay enough attention to see the real value in it. (Or maybe just lazy or lack of confidence) The idea came to them, but they didn't deserve the idea so it slipped away.

I was amazed that Facebook succeeded. I thought Myspace had the college student market covered.

I was not, but only in retrospect. Facebook succeed by keeping the ghetto out. It really was clever to only let in people from high status universities.

I strongly believe that facebook succeeded because myspace got bought. Unless the purchasers are really diligent and know the space, being bought seems to be a great way to kill a company.

Myspace had a pretty bad reputation long before facebook succeeded. As reddit has discovered maintaining a good community while being open to all is hard.

The true name policy was also very influential is stopping facebook sliding down the ghetto path once they opened up to the general public.

really? I think it's the walled garden that has more to do with it then the true name ... I'm familiar with all the (speculative untested) claims that true name is the secret sauce, but since those arguments come with nothing more than a spiffy domain and a nice stylesheet - I can't really go with it.

metafilter, yelp, hacker news, ebay, instagram, twitter, wikipedia, flickr, stackoverflow, github - none of these have true name policies and they work fine. Google insisted that the decorum of youtube comments would skyrocket after instituting it - but of course they're the same as they ever were.

I find it kind of interesting that the two of us are discussing the value of true names when we both are using our true names voluntarily.

You can have a successful site without true names, but it takes much more effort once you open the door to the masses. Almost all the examples you provide have major issues with trolls and spammers - the one exception is HN, but I think this is more to do with the strong community ethos here and it's limited appeal.

I guess the counter example to that might be 4chan. It's difficult _to_ be recognized on 4chan, if at all.

Obviously it has its "ghetto" parts (weird term, I don't fully get it) but it still manages to be a successful (and I would argue quite influential) site 10 years on.

Would you say the true name policy has assisted in them getting bigger too? Or just stopped them from getting "ghetto"?

> A restaurant that kicks you out after 800 calories.

That strikes me as being a rather brilliant idea actually. I wouldn't be at all surprised if someone made a ton of money from that one.

http://www.skynnykitchen.com/ is the execution I know of in this space. There's actually a lot of movement in the gimmicky restaurant space (there's successful franchises that are ONLY cupcakes, ONLY grilled cheese or ONLY milkshakes - it's totally absurd). LA's restaurant culture could have been written by Dr Seuss.

I am curious how the hipster cereal bar in London is doing after the novelty has worn off.

Actually a service that lets you send only 1 message a day would be very good - it would certainly cut down on the pointless work emails.

An email client or server without cc and bcc would also be great. If you want me to know something write to me directly, don’t cc me along with 200 other people.

Can we really stop with the meme that AirBNB was a good idea that sounded like a bad idea. The original idea of AirBNB (having strangers sleep on your couch while you are in your home) was and is a terrible idea.

What made AirBNB a success was not providing a way of letting people camp out in your living room, it was paying for professional photography and enabling/encouraging people to run illegal hotels. Both of these are good ideas, but they had nothing to do with the original concept behind AirBNB.

I don't think it's fair to say it had nothing to do with the original concept. It's just a couple of steps removed:

Idea 1: Allow strangers to sleep in your house on an air mattress.

Idea 1b: Allow strangers to sleep in your house.

Idea 1c: Allow strangers to sleep in your house and take great photos to promote it well.

Two steps from a dumb idea to a multi-billion-dollar idea.

I don’t disagree that AirBNB in its current form is a fantastic idea, just that the original idea was dumb. It is great that they were able to pivot out of their original dumb idea (and all credit to them for doing this), but this doesn’t change that the original idea was bad.

What I am objecting to is the idea that it was a good idea that just sounded bad. It was simply a bad idea that also sounded bad. If their original idea was we will develop a platform that will allow people to run an illegal hotel with their competitive edge being to send around professional photographers to make the properties look better than all their competitors then I would have said this is a great idea that sounded like a great idea.

Edit. I am surprised that someone has not tried the same approach with private car sales (maybe they have). Good photographers are cheap these days so it would be possible to create a car sales site that offered free professional photography of the cars.

So what are you saying? That his advice to develop your own ideas is a bad thing? I don't understand the objection to self-expression and creativity.

My best ideas to date came from simply repeating this process over and over - creating an idea and then developing it out a little, then poking holes in it. That's all he really says in the article. That ideas are cheap to create. So create.

My main problem is with the title of the story. Ideas are not cheap. Bad ideas are cheap. Good ideas that are obvious have probably been acted on by thousands already. Therefore only the non-obvious ones are left and you will only be able to find them by exhaustive searching through many bad ideas.

Most of the people here are probably more interested in startup ideas and not story ideas.

And you can not just rattle off 100 random ideas every day and expect that they will become better over time. In order to train yourself to make better ideas that way, you need to actually make a business out of each idea and see if it worked. And given the huge cost of starting a business, you cannot train yourself to make better business ideas this way.

This is a pretty common bit of advice, and I agree 100%.

That being said, coming up with your idea is hard. I could come up with a dozen ideas that could be huge businesses; finding that one idea that I can make a huge business is where it gets hard. I could come up with the idea for AirBnb or Zenefits easily, but never in a million years could I personally have made it.

Founder-Market Fit is a hugely underrated correlation.

Do what you know is the maxim that applies here.

If you can’t execute on the idea then it is not a good idea. A good idea is more than just an idea that in an ideal world would work, it is one that will work within the constraints you face.

Sure, but that misses my point. It's not that I just don't have the skills to make AirBnb or Zenefits; I just don't have the passion or understanding. While the AirBnb founders spent 1000 days with no traction and powered through; I would have given up after 100.

My point was, the idea and the founder need the right chemistry.

An idea that you don’t have the passion or understanding for is not one that fits within your constraints and so is not a good idea. As you rightly point out an idea has to fit the founder or else it is not a good idea.

"Ideas are cheap" is a misleading expression. The full expression is "Ideas are cheap without execution". But same goes for "Execution is cheap without a good idea". I'm annoyed at people preaching this expression out of context as if they know what they're talking about. From my experience, those who actually get stuff done appreciate BOTH execution AND ideas. Great ideas are very hard to come by, and the winners fully appreciate it and make sure they execute them when they see one. On the other hand, the losers always circle jerk about how ideas are worth nothing (while not actually doing anything themselves which is ironic). It's probably because they don't value the ideas that they never have enough motivation to execute on them.

Having the habit of writing down your ideas everyday sounds like a good exercise to improve your redaction skills. I don't see much more value other than that. Yes, ideas are cheap, getting them to actually produce value is not. On the other hand I would argue that the best piece of advice in this blog post is the development of discipline itself.

Developing discipline is difficult and expensive. At the beginning is a hard process. You need to get used to come everyday, sit down and do whatever you are supposed to do. The first few days/weeks you might want to set an special time for your activity. This time slot must be immovable and sacred. As the days go by you will develop a certain dependency on your routine, I call that effect momentum. Once you get a bit of momentum everything becomes easier and very enjoyable.

I'm on the process of developing discipline myself. I come everyday for 1 to 2 hours after my day job, sit down, grab an English etymology book to improve my vocabulary, and do the exercises very methodically. I do this because English is not my first language. The days I don't do my work I notice that something is missing, I even feel guilty for not pushing myself to do my daily routine. Using excuses makes my guilt even worse. That's why I do my best to not fail my routine.

When applied, discipline is a powerful tool to fully develop any of your ideas. And that's where the real value is.

I know it's really common to say that ideas are cheap, but I feel as though this line is too reductionist. I feel as though there are different levels of ideas. Yes, it's really easy to just say whatever ideas are on the top of your mind - and those ideas are cheap.

But true insight - bringing new, relevant data or new analysis to a problem and sound logic - framing your idea within the context of an organization or industry in a manner that can be executed by a business, is maybe a few steps above a random idea.

Your post reminded me of this:

"Ideas are just a multiplier of execution"

http://sivers.org/multiply

Sure, but your latter paragraph describes ideas + work. The idea is cheap; what's valuable is the proof.

Startups are a great example of this. Nobody at all buys ideas. Nobody. Startup ideas are, in market valuation, worthless. But go out and validate the idea, prove that they're money to be made, and you'll start to see investment. Actually generate results and somebody like Google or Facebook might want to buy you. But if you show up with unproven ideas and try to sell them, you'll discover that they have security guards to keep you out.

Ideas may be cheap, but that doesn't mean that good ones are not valuable. Execution against a bad idea is my largest frustration with SV.

Consider Color[1]. Raised $41m for a genuinely terribly idea. Social networking with random people in your vicinity just isn't a good idea. All of the time and effort spent solving that "problem" was a waste of brilliant people's limited life.

On the other hand, the AirBnB team has executed tremendously well. Their idea is also excellent. To say that ideas are cheap is to discount the vision of a company. It's to repeat the tired maxim that hard-work is all it takes to be successful. But no matter how hard you work towards putting Tinder on the Blockchain, it is still a terrible idea.

Start with a vision of how you the world will be different, then apply execution towards that.

[1] http://mashable.com/2012/10/17/color-shuts-down/

I actually think Color was a great idea compared to thousands of "Uber for X" ideas launching everyday nowadays. At least they tried to do something novel. In my book Color was a good idea executed badly. That said, idea is something that cannot be judged objectively. You saying Color is a bad idea is not different from people saying Twitter was a bad idea when it first launched. The only difference is one succeeded and the other didn't. Oh and I think "Tinder on Blockchain" is a good idea.

I actually think Color was a great idea

Me as well. Proximity is a sparkle for relationships. Look at the workplace. I have seen this time and time again, people who sit close to each other develop closer relationships. In small towns, the people you live close to are your primary friends, and if they aren't the people you used to live close to (before they or you moved) are your closed friends.

Mediumish association: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2015/08/19/urban-tribe/

Ideas aren't just cheap. They are free and in many instances completely worthless.

What isn't cheap is transforming an idea into reality.

Absolutely. Which is all the more reason why holding those ideas close is silly. Get some practice making those ideas real, and learn how to execute on something well.

But how do you find the one you want to work on without ever developing them and determining which ones are worthless?

Discipline is a (very underrated) virtue.

In my personal experience, discipline is the differentiating factor that dramatically increases chances of carrying an idea through to completion. I liked this take on the 'ideas person'(TL;DR - be a 'follow through' person) https://medium.com/the-year-of-the-looking-glass/the-idea-pe...

Among what community is it underrated? It seems to be very highly valued. Maybe it is still under-valued even given that, but I'd be surprised.

Discipline is also needed for not executing on every good idea. We all have a limited reserve of time and energy. Holding off and resolving to come up with something even better can be hard to do.

Blog posts, however, are cheap.

Agree. I'm surprised that this needs to be said on HN.

This reminds me of an observation I had when a family member, who had never talked about such things with me before, finally said he had an idea for a novel, and detailed it to me. He had never said anything about it before, he never said anything about it afterwards, and as far as I know, never worked on it.

Everyone has ideas for such in their heads, I think. Making up stories is a decidedly human activity. But what makes an author is not merely having an idea, but putting in the work to sit down, hammer out that idea, and refine it until it's good enough to sell. Even in the face of crippling self doubt, the knowledge people may not be interested, it may not find a publisher, etc, they're the ones who manage to get it done and get it out there.

I'd imagine correlations could be drawn to business ideas, but I don't know that business ideas are as universal as stories.

Reminds me of James Altucher: http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2014/05/the-ultimate-guide-for-...

Coming up with an idea, thoroughly validating it, and executing it well is hard. The value of each individual step is completely relative to the situation and should not be generalized to get blog readers..

I found the title inappropriate for the actual content of the post. That said the content itself resonated with me, particularly the part about trying to write every day, which is something I've done in the past.

I just hate hearing the same unqualified line over and over..

The fact that the hive-mind plays along with this doesn't mean one should go off parroting their potential moneymakers to people who could expediently execute it before they do.

Some ideas are your potential trade secrets. Simple design patterns was enough differential for Apple to sue Samsung in April 2011, alleging it had “copied” the designs of the iPhone and iPad.

Whatever it is think twice before you you round parroting it.

Well said.

I often wonder how a new product has many competitors within weeks of launch. Can't just be that everybody thought of it at once.

The hive mind will explain this away as coincidence but could there be something more sinister going on.

Investors are cavalier about this "trust us with your idea" rhetoric but the truth is that you, as the pig in the bacon & egg breakfast, have no recourse.

They may have liked your idea but not the team. They may have underperforming companies in need of a pivot.

The fact that cap tables get passed around from so called confidential meetings should scream play your cards close to your chest.

What else are they sharing?

Principles often crumble under self interest.

The lesson I learned is any idea is just the entrance of a chain/tree/network/set of ideas. Given the number of all the ideas hidden behind the entrance one, just think about the possibility of getting most of them right, it's easy to have the notion that entrance ideas are cheap. To be clearer, a team need lots of ideas in execution phase as well.

https://sivers.org/multiply

It's like saying metals are cheap. What level of discernment has the idea been subjected to? Can it be built quickly, cheaply and have wide ranging emotional hooks?

Many people don't do ideation properly.

People who say ideas are worthless just don't have good ideas.

Declarative blanket statements are worthless.

> "Declarative blanket statements are worthless", he declared, in reference to all blanket statements.

:) the irony was deliberate.

Given the fact that it is extremely easy to conjure ideas out of thin air, the better way would be to look for executable solutions to valuable problems.

Patents in wholesale seems to be going for 0.5-1M/piece. Is it cheap or not is a matter of personal perspective.

I'd argue that ideas are only valuable if you're the one who can execute on them.

The idea of using second-price auctions in ads sales gave Google tens of billions of dollars. Though Google didn't invent it.

Many expensive ideas are embodied in patents and code.

Cheap ideas exist, but not all ideas are cheap.

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