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Comment by huhtenberg | Hacker News Reader

> ideas have no values

Fully fleshed and well-justified ideas worth hell of a lot.

No they’re not. You can’t even patent or copyright business ideas. The only justification for a business idea is a customer, so GP is correct: no business has value without sales.

Then give us your best ideas.

That's my point. I don't have any "good" ideas because they're meaningless without the ability to execute. I know my limits, and I know that I can't tell if my ideas are good without intimately knowing the intended market.

There are certainly things that I suspect there would be a huge market for. That, I suppose, is my "good ideas" list (or, because I'm not an oracle, my "wish list").

An incredible execution with no good idea is also pretty meaningless, so clearly having a good idea must be some sort of force multiplier and thus have value.

I know a lot of people who laughed at the following ideas because they're so "bad": Uber, Twitter, Bird/Lime, and Instagram.

it is exactly the opposite imho

the idea can already be there, already implemented and even already successful

and an incredible execution can just take over

you don't take over on ideas, you do take over on implementation

few examples: hotmail and then boom gmail took over, IE6 and boom Firefox took over, etc.

in fact implementation is so much more important that you have to keep doing it right otherwise someone else take over

also you can not keep an idea secret forever, once you release your product, everyone know about it and get a shot at their own implementation of your idea

Properly explored idea is basically a business plan backed by a market research. Clearly as worthless as a random morning coffee brainfart.

It seems like you're being sarcastic, but you're exactly right.

Investors don't give people money for plans and research because they don't mean anything. It's easy to make a plan or find a hypothetical market.

The only people who get money without customers are founders with huge exits on their resume already.

All three of your statements are wrong.

Especially the last one.

That is certainly possible. However, the trick here is hidden in your saying the idea is "fully fleshed." Our temptation often is to fully flesh ideas either in our own imagination, with our friends, or with internet research. If instead you actually flesh out ideas by speaking to customers, building prototypes and testing them, gathering real user data, and even actual sales data, then definitely yes that idea could be worth a ton. But if this idea is fully fleshed out like in a research paper where you've spent 24 hours in a library, then your case is much harder to make.

> Fully fleshed and well-justified ideas worth hell of a lot.

"Fully fleshed and well-justified ideas" are worth 100% of $0.

Execution is everything. How you implement and execute the idea is what sets you apart.

listening to an idea is entertainment

showing the idea is proof

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