"they aren’t that much better than many of the great coders I’ve worked with. They’re just bolder."
Interesting way to put it. Sounds like an critical ingredient for success.
Interesting way to put it. Sounds like an critical ingredient for success.
A startup needs:
1) Boldness 2) A crazy idea that most people think is stupid. 3) Persistence
All of these things seem to be absolutely required for success. But none of them is sufficient. Combine 'em with good "product/market fit" (a la Andreessen) and I think you win.
Startups need to offer something of perceived value, that's pretty much it. In some cases, it's doing a typical task in a non-typical way, or doing something non-typical altogether (your crazy idea), or marginally improving your typical task in a very typical way.
In the end, it's all about value.
So really, you need "a crazy idea that most people think is stupid, but is less crazy for customers than for competitors." Either that, or there has to be some barrier to entry that lets you execute but prevents everyone else from executing, even though they can see the same opportunity that you can.
examples:
1) When google was on its way up, it was a well-understood fact that no one could make real money on search. Oops.
2) When Excite was getting funding, everyone told them that search was dumb. People would do 1 search and bookmark what they cared about (and would never search again).
3) The very idea of youtube (giving away tremendous piles of storage and bandwidth) didn't seem very smart to a lot of people. Plenty of online video startups had failed.
4) Blogger couldn't get more funding and had to lay off their entire team.
5) If I described twitter to you 3 years ago, would you have been blown away by the idea?
6) Salesforce.com was not exactly warmly embraced by the enterprise when they first launched.
7) Marc Andreessen said he was constantly stonewalled by businesses when selling them stuff at Netscape. "The Internet? Inside our network?! MADNESS!"
Hindsight make these ideas seem obvious-- but at the time, they were pretty ridiculous.
As you say, most ridiculous ideas ARE really ridiculous. Thus the "necessary but not sufficient" part.