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Comment by fencepost | Hacker News Reader

Even without the list being suitable for mockery, ideas are EASY. Ideas are like opinions, everybody has one. Take a shower, have some ideas. Go out for drinks, hear a bunch of drunk people talking about the great idea they just had. Winnowing out the chaff (not done here) is harder because not everyone agrees on what's chaff, and building a successful company for any of many definitions of success is harder still.

The idea is when an egg is fertilized. Producing a baby is a lot more work, and producing a successful adult is a lot more beyond that.

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Having a good idea is at least half of what will determine a successful product.

The problem is that people confuse having an idea with having a good idea. The latter will be something that has things like a justifiable business model, a business plan (seriously, things like path to market and understanding the consumer market are important), something unique that can hook users etc.

For a true Scotsman's definition of "good"

It might be closer to say that the ideas are like producing sperm. Easy and fun to do, but getting one to an egg requires some logistical expertise.

So fertilizing the egg is getting funding, and a successful exit is the kid moving out at 18.

I'd prefer a virgin birth, then selling the child a few years later

> ideas are EASY

That's true. I see a few things behind the monitor right now.

1) Trees. Let's do something with them, like planting them at scale, maybe mess with their DNA, WCGR?

2) The window has birdshit on it. Let's build window cleaning drones.

3) Ceiling lights. These are really crap make a really smart, well designed one for office environments.

3) Surprisingly enough (to me); Unifi has done just that. https://store.ui.com/collections/led/products/unifi-led-pane...

Their whole business model seems to be "take quality white box hardware and build a management suite around it". It's not even particularly expensive when compared to white box gear. They already covered the traditional IT MSP model with voice, data and video; so it makes sense they would branch out into facilities management (since a lot of non-tech shops are pulling office IT infrastructure under facilities anyway).

Not fond of their colour temperature. If they had an option to change it, I'd install them all over my house.

Hundred percent agree. Especially if they upgraded it with >95 CRI and adjustable colour temp based on separate warm-white LED chips (not an array of RGBs).

There are multiple companies building and selling window cleaning robots. Drones are... terrible for this use case.

You know, I never realized until I read your comment that "drone" seems to specifically refer to a UAV, and "robot" to a terrestrial type.

Which is strange to me, since when I hear "drone" the first animal that comes to mind is an ant. I thought it'd just be a catch-all term for any kind of bot.

A drone ant is a (fertile, male) flying ant.

I didn't mean a flying thing and I know multiple companies exists. Good ideas doesn't need to sound novel at their core.

I can't recall now where, but heard the word drone used for robots. Maybe the boundary is getting blurrier?

Well, I think the word "idea" covers a vast range, everything from ideas that you come up with in the shower, to ideas you come up with after a decade of specializing in a specific domain, noticing unmet needs and figuring out how those needs can be met.

What is important to understand is that both types of ideas are useless to the layperson. The former is useless obviously because it hasn't been validated. The latter is also useless however because even if the layperson learns it, they won't have the knowledge and expertise to understand its value, much less know how to execute it.

This is why when someone comes to you and says "I have an idea, but you need to sign an NDA first before I can share it", you should just smile, nod and politely change the subject.

You need to execute well, but you also need to be working on the "right idea" for it to become successful.

The simple core ideas behind Dropbox and AirBnB were seemingly disregarded by many devs and investors when first pitched, but have proven themselves to be valuable. Even Google wasn't initially considered to be a good idea where Yahoo rejected acquiring them for $1M, but turns out Search Engines displaying contextual relevant ads has become one of the most valuable businesses in history.

Ideas are easy.

Having valuable, proven insights that nobody knows, and are possible to extract value from , that's harder.

A thoughtful person can have insights that few knows.

but the really hard part is: "and are possible to extract value from"

I think that the point of this list is to say "there are lots of starting points, just pick one and iterate on it until it becomes something with value". It's a pretty well-worn maxim that ideas are worthless and execution is everything, but this is another way to present it.

it's a cute saying, but I've never actually been shown a success were someone just executed perfectly without any idea to execute from.

I've heard multiple times that for a startup to succeed, it needs an idea, a great team to execute it and funding, and that it is enough to have two out of these three. Invariably, the people that say the latter are the ones that have no ideas.

I have lots of ideas, but have very little success. It's super annoying that I'm not able to generate as much interest or momentum on them as they deserve.

Why is it so difficult to move us forward?

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