Comment by captainmuon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by captainmuon | Hacker News Reader

I disagree with the premise. There is a bit of truth to it, that ideas are a dime a dozen and it's a common mistake to underestimate the grind and good execution neccessary.

However: I have many ideas, but don't know which one to throw myself behind 100%. I can execute well, and in my day job I am executing all the time for somebody elses business. Why don't I make the jump and become an entrepreneur myself? Because I don't know which of these ideas are actually any good - in the sense that they have "market fit" and somebody willing to pay for it. And even if you have a potential market, the barrier to entry is often ridiculously high.

So far, I have not found a single idea that is actually viable as a business for me.

I have a lot of great ideas: A new kind of calendar app; a new declarative plotting library that uses CSS; a friend-of-a-friend P2P app that piggybacks on your existing contacts; smart light switches that physically flip when you switch them remotely. If I pour myself behind any of those, I'll make a great product that people will enjoy but I will likely end up broke because none of them is a viable business.

Now if I find a novel problem that I can solve - lets say a friend tells me that all municipal governments really need a certain app to track tenders or potholes or daycare slots and are willing to pay for it. Or I can use some obscure thing from my studies to fix a big problem in an industry. Then this idea becomes really valuable. I'm never going to be the only person in the world to be able to solve a given problem, but I can be the first. The execution is secondary, because a lot of execution is mediocre, and you just have to be good enough. The opportunity is everything.

> The execution is secondary, because a lot of execution is mediocre, and you just have to be good enough.

While that's true, you still have to execute. And when you see mediocre execution, that's still someone who put in the work.

In the context of games, which are more like creative works fighting for mindshare, an idea is analogous to a business opportunity, which is to say that the idea/opportunity will likely look different once it's actually executed on, and that journey is the valuable part even if it fails.

That's not to discredit someone who is good at identifying opportunities. That's a wonderful skill. But I think the author's take which I agree with is that someone who tries to execute, even with a flawed idea, makes more progress than someone who has an idea/strategy/proposal.

Also I think it's important to point out that this blog post is in the context of (board)game design. Everyone has an idea and the vast majority are under-baked, and the process of designing it and playtesting it is how you calibrate on what other people actually like or find fun. I think that's analogous to, say, tech startups, but game ideas are even cheaper than startup ideas.

Absolutely. There is no substitute to actually showing up and putting in the work. And you shouldn't be deterred just because you are not Elon Musk (or whoever the Elon Musk of boardgames would be).

> plotting library that uses CSS

https://chartscss.org/ ?

> friend-of-a-friend P2P app

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friend-to-friend ?

> smart light switches that physically flip

That sounds pretty awesome in a hilarious way, though very unlikely to be commercially viable because what does it really offer over momentary switches other than cool factor?

Also I checked and even this idea isn't new: https://hackaday.com/2018/01/18/solenoids-and-servos-for-sel...

My point is that he is right. Ideas are 10 a penny and most have already been thought of. (Btw check out Half Bakery for a collection.)

The thing that's difficult is actually implementing it well.

Thanks for the links, I didn't see the hackaday post. Half-bakery is fun but also a bit depressing :-)

The point about the self-actuating switches is to make them as close as possible to a conventional switch, for the spouse-acceptance-factor. Also I really hate "tap buttons" for light switches. The next step would be a dimmer, not a using a flimsy rotary encoder (that turns around infinitely and reacts slowly) but an actual potentiometer that moves when you change it remotely. There are such potis in high end studio equipment. I think this idea actually has merit and there is a market for premium haptic interfaces, for example in cars. But it is hard to make a MVP and get a foot in.

Agreed. I think 99% of ideas are not worth pursuing, at least in their current state. A viable idea with a real shot of going far is a lot more rare. I think vcs like to convince us they are worthless, and they execution is all that matters because they fund/enable that execution, and it makes you value their funding more

It strawmans “ideas.” 95% of programming for example is ideas and ideation and communicating those ideas, only 5% is typing. But if you define “ideas” as being what some clueless jerk with their head in the clouds thought of while on the can and then lorded over their peasant implementors, of course ideas look worthless

>99% of ideas are not worth pursuing, at least in their current state.

This has as much to do with Timing the Market [1] as with the actual Idea itself or even its 'quality of implementation' as a multiplayer effect.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26978933

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