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Comment by WilliamEdward | Hacker News Reader

One thing that separates entrepreneurs from normal people is they aren't afraid of having stupid ideas. A good 90% of the ideas on this list, particularly the early ones, are laughable and are ideas you wouldn't catch a serious individual dead trying to come up with. Some people try from the start to be perfect and always fail because they don't understand you need dumb little ideas to be an entrepreneur.

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So true! I’ll be the first to tell you the _vast_ majority of those ideas were objectively terrible but every single one of them taught me _something_.

It's also tough to accept the fact the market will buy things that one thinks is "stupid". Back in the 80s, NBC executives hated "The A-Team" despite the immense success it had on the NBC network. They felt the show was low-brow and cartoonish, "a hamburger show on a caviar network."

I really enjoyed seeing the list, Josh, and I appreciate the share via Twitter and here. My guess is that there are several serial entrepreneurs on Hacker News, and like myself, definitely can identify with your efforts.

Thanks so much!

hey - thanks for participating in the discussion here.

I've got a giant list of ideas (99.9% horrible) i've kept over the years. they always seem exciting when I'm writing them down ..but a week later they seem laughable. I always find myself thinking, despite realizing the idea is horrible - that I should have created a 2 or 3 page website as a business-like pre-mvp on the concept while I was still excited about it.

Yeah, I think a lot of it comes down to motivation. Most of these items were simply me having an idea or interest and wanting to learn more about it. Building something is sort of creative exploration for me. If it becomes something, cool. If it doesn't, also cool. I still learned stuff.

It's often been a surprise to me which projects succeed, several times I've looked at a product and thought that is never going to work only to be proved wrong.

While that is true its certainly not the only way to do it.

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