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Comment by alexjawad | Hacker News Reader

"People have to realise that an idea is worth nothing. A good idea with great execution has value, but without this execution, it’s worthless. Getting an estimate for execution of an idea in 2009 does not grant you ownership of it."

Bang on target!!

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The whole idea of good or bad depends entirely upon the concept of value. Saying a 'good' idea is 'worthless' (ie. no value) is a contradiction in terms.

An "idea" in the context of "great execution" can have good or negative value.

An idea that's not taken in the context of "great execution" cannot be good or bad in absolute terms, since that can only be seen after it is implemented. This is how it works -- people only have hunches that this idea, implemented for this particular demographic, combined with this other idea, delivered just in time for this upcoming conference, might just work; but you can't really say for sure, and truth is, it's like a lottery ticket.

Expanding on that -- the idea of buying a lottery ticket is great when you win, it's bad when you lose or don't follow through with the plan (which happens in more than 99.99% of the cases). Based on that, the idea by itself is worthless, as it depends on actually buying the ticket (implementation) + timing (which affects your winnings) + lots and lots of luck. Thus buying a lottery ticket is bad for most people (as they lose time and money), but great for a few lucky individuals -- and that's how it is with startups in general.

Broadcast.com? Myspace?

Don't know about broadcast.com, but Myspace had great value in the beginning. They were fast to market and definitely delivered something people wanted.

Their problem was and is their inability to evolve.

You're jumping the gun. The good ideas tend to be the ones which people bother to implement. You don't just pick an idea at random and go for it.

If you want to say 'the true value of many ideas which startups are based upon cannot be determined very easily due to conflation with other variables (luck, timing, expertise, effort)' then fine, but just say that (though that is hardly a problem exclusive to measuring the worth of ideas). What I object to is this 'good ideas are worthless' doublespeak which butchers logic and the English language.

First, you should reread what I said -- no, you don't pick an idea at random, and ideas can have a negative impact on your product (it's right there, in my comment).

    'good ideas are worthless' doublespeak which 
    butchers logic and the English language.

The article says:

    People have to realise that an idea is worth 
    nothing. A good idea with great execution has
    value, but without this execution, it’s worthless.

And it is the truth, simply because ideas cannot be classified as good or bad until the implementation happens. You can't call someone out for stealing your idea, if you're sitting on in from 2009, and not doing anything about -- in this context, the idea is worthless.

If you don't think it is -- try having a "good idea" and then sell it.

You don't pick ideas at random, but then you can't classify them as good or bad either? So how do you pick them?? Random also matches up with your lottery analogy.

The logic of the article's statement is still flawed anyway.

    A good idea [without great execution] [is] worthless.

    A good idea is worthless.

^ That's what the sentence reduces to, and it's nonsense. And talking about selling is a massive oversimplification of the issue.

IMHO, that's not a possible reduction -- things have value with context attached (what is value anyway without context?). And if evaluated by boolean algebra, it also doesn't compile as ... second statement implies first statement, but not the other way around, unless first statement is false ;)

Sure, a value must be rooted in another concept, ie. it must be a value to someone (ultimately they'd judge it in the context of does it improve their life, although a whole chain of other values may be necessary to reach that point), but so in turn must value judgements such as 'good' or 'bad' be in the context of value. (Which was my original point.)

For instance we have images of far away galaxies that don't exist anymore, you certainly cannot sell one of them and they have no value to us - so it would be ridiculous to talk about faraway nonexistant galaxies being good or bad.

Gee, who would've guessed this would turn into a philosophical discussion.

I wonder how many people who say ideas are worth nothing would be willing to publish every business idea of theirs as soon as they conceive it, before they get a chance to be the first to execute it?

check out: http://sivers.org/multiply

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