Your idea sucks, now go do it anyway | Hacker News Reader

Your idea sucks, now go do it anyway

blog.asmartbear.com

112 pointsjoel_liu16 comments

Great overview of two ideas that wouldn't have gone anywhere unless the founders got started somewhere. Good motiviation!

Yes, but too bad no one ever writes blog posts about the millions of bad ideas that just turn into other bad ideas. That's the narrative bias in action.

There's always a cynic, huh?

I think the point of this article is not that all bad ideas turn into good ideas or good companies, just that many good ideas and companies started out as bad ideas. So if you have an idea and you're not starting because you don't think it's good enough, that's a lousy excuse.

What's your solution: continue with the Eeyore routine and never start anything because there are millions of failures out there?

The purpose of the comment was not to be cynical, but to poke a hole in the logic of the article. Humans like to believe we can explain everything, so when we cannot predict the success of startups, we look at already successful startups, analyze their history, and create a story for why they became successful while others did not.

In reality this narrative we create is not a product of facts, but a story we use to make the world seem more understandable than it really is. This concept is discussed in The Black Swan by Nicholas Taleb.

I guess my point is, if you want to start a company you should do it because you have faith in your ability to provide value and execute on entrepreneurial opportunities, not because a few companies that started with bad ideas managed to succeed.

Humans like to believe we can explain everything, so when we cannot predict the success of startups, we look at already successful startups, analyze their history, and create a story for why they became successful while others did not. In reality this narrative we create is not a product of facts, but a story we use to make the world seem more understandable than it really is. This concept is discussed in The Black Swan by Nicholas Taleb.

I agree with the premise of your first two paragraphs, that often people will try to explain situations without being a participant of those events while decisions were being made. However, you have not shown that this premise applies to this article, which is a "logical hole" in your own statement. In fact, the stories mentioned by the blogger happen to be well known to be accurate, straight from the mouths of the founders of those companies.

I'm not sure if this is relevant to the article. The author says a friend wants to start a business but is waiting for a perfect idea (and logically believes the audience of the blog may as well.) So he suggests that he go for it anyway, and adjust his idea as he goes. He then gives examples of companies that kept changing their ideas as they went along.

I agree that you should start a company because of a core belief that you can do something unique and interesting in the world.

I even agree that you should completely believe in your idea -- you cannot use this as an excuse to not be passionate.

However, I see many would-be entrepreneurs stiffeling themselves with doubt. In fact I almost didn't start Smart Bear because of such feelings.

So, although I agree this is NOT a reason to start, the point is that such doubt is not reason to NOT start.

P.S. Also articles like this are IMHO most powerful when they are one-sided. There are always many facets to any point, but prose can get watered down in the hedging and exceptions, and I'd rather try to inspire.

The argument the article makes is, literally, "Your idea probably sucks, and it doesn't matter because your business will probably turn out to be something completely different."

You are arguing that "there are millions of ideas that keep sucking even when modified."

He's saying, yes, your INITIAL idea may suck, but any successful businesses created with it would likely not be the same idea, so it doesn't really matter to wait until getting a perfect idea, and here are some examples. So don't be afraid to start! If you succeed, it won't be with that idea, very likely! And it may take years of time! And it won't necessarily be the very next iteration of the idea that changes everything.

The author is not saying you will succeed for sure, or that changing one's idea is the most important factor (both are essential to your argument, but it's not what he's saying, on the other hand.)

True, especially for the many people who make one attempt, fail, and stop.

Though if you look at people who make several attempts, and who learn something from each, I think the probability of success fast approaches 1. I think that in practice, if you persevere and are reasonably capable, success is inevitable.

What a good post.

This reminds me of something I used to think in my creative writing classes: you're a real writer when you're prepared to say "this is how bad I suck", and put your work out there anyway. I met so many people who called themselves "writers", but if I asked to read something they'd written, they hadn't produced a single complete work they'd call their best effort.

Once you really put it out there, for all to see, you have to let go of your fantasy about how great you are and confront the reality that this really does represent you as a writer.

It's so similar with code and programmers. There are so many people who like talking about what it means to be a programmer, what it means to write code... but you aren't a real programmer until you put something out there, warts and all, and say "yep, this is my work, for better and for worse."

Basically, it doesn't matter what direction you're going when you try to climb the hill; it just matters that you're building momentum. Once you've got that, anyone (a VC, for instance) can point you in the right direction, and you'll be an instant success; without it, even the best idea will get slogged in a Sisyphean cycle of bad implementations.

um...bad ideas isn't one big contiguous space. there are good bad ideas and bad bad ideas. good bad ideas are those where you are trying to solve a problem or do something fun, but your execution isn't that great. bad bad ideas are those that invent a problem that doesn't exist and then solve it (watch infomercials).

But I would have thought that the MoneyBeamer example from the article (becomes PayPal) would classify as a bad bad idea going by your definition, and yet...

I think that the important thing is that you need to build the full widget, even if it is a bad idea. At some point during widget development, you'll nearly always have to solve a problem that could be applied to another domain with more success.

I think the core idea was just to make money exchange easier via electronic means. their implementation was a good bad idea. But I think it depends on how much resources you are going to commit to it. building a widget = no risk. starting a company based on moneybeaming was a bigger risk. With cheap implementations you can afford to play around with bad bad ideas until you at least get a good bad one. :)

Worth it just for the screenshot of Game Neverending - never saw the genesis of Flickr before, only read about it.

Same with me. I saved a copy of that photo. :)

When I read about Flickr a couple of years ago, I thought that it would have been a part of a cool 3D game that didn't take off. I never thought is was a tool for 2D game!!

b/w the screenshot... I'm not able to find any Flickr or photo feature that hints that there's a feature to take/view game screenshots.

I was actually one of their alpha testers. It wasn't that fun. You'd basically go around to trees and collect different colored paper. If you got enough reams of blue paper you could trade it in for red paper. Then if you got enough red paper you could trade it in for purple paper. That's all there really was. The game might have gotten better when it went into beta, but I think I stopped playing with it long before then.

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