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Comment by ipiz0618 | Hacker News Reader

Yeah I've been there, being the person who executed the idea. It sucked knowing the person giving the "idea" (which I actually gave most of the directions) had so much leisure time for fun, while I was sitting there coding something I'm not interested in. I only execute my own ideas now. Even sometimes I can't finish it, I can only blame myself.

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> I only execute my own ideas now. Even sometimes I can't finish it, I can only blame myself.

Don't blame yourself. It's okay to not finish something.

Sometimes I just want to prove to myself that something is possible. That I'm not insane for thinking it. Once the result is clear, I usually lose interest. It turns into the exact kind of boring execution work the article's talking about. Better to find some new idea to explore...

Well there is much more to do than coding... They should be doing sales and marketing and other stuff. If they're doing nothing, that's a bad sign

Even that's lopsided. Assuming the idea is purely software (no hardware manufacturing involved), then the vast majority of the actual work is to make the product.

I would not accept a 50/50 split where he "has the idea" and I do the software. I wouldn't even accept a 50/50 split if the Idea Partner also does a little sales and marketing. I would maybe accept 50/50 if the Idea Partner also provided all the capital. Now we're talking...

If your "ideas man" has fully committed to doing all the sales/marketing and the dance of raising capital, leaving you to work on the product, I think that's a very fair division of labour. After all, a finished product is almost as worthless as an unexecuted idea if no one ever actually purchases or uses said product. I say almost because, in theory, your product could have enough "obvious" value on its own that you could just sell it to another company and exit comfortably.

But now they are taking all the risk and it would make sense to just pay you a salary and keep the 100%

But if anything this an argument in favour of the idea that ideas do have value, as it's equivalent to the situation where the capitalist pays $10,000 to set up the ice cream stand and wanders off while their partner does all the work. The arrangement may be unfair on some level but that's a whole different question.

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