Ideas aren't worthless

We sit in the YC house. We full well know that we rarely end up with the idea we start out with. This makes the idea itself, worthless, and starting to validate any idea much more important and valuable.

Ideas are relatively worthless because there's so many out there that are reasonably possible. "Software is eating the world".

Ideas are also relatively worthless because any idea person is paralyzed by at least 47 of their own before someone shows up asking to sign an NDA for the 48th. Ask any technically capable business minded person.

Ideas are also worthless compared to execution on them.

Ideas are also worthless without the implementation expertise and marketing expertise to get it real, and the money that it might take, whether its funding or bootstrapped.

If the idea doesn't come with an owner who can code or market, they better be bringing their own money or some way to pay for the time of others. I have plenty of my own reasonably validated ideas and niches dying for attention that I could rather lose time and my own money on.

The "idea" guys in my life know now an idea is worthless without the real legs that will prop it up, the skills to build, the skills to build the right thing, and the skills to find and reach your audience. Giving an idea more value than traction with a paying audience is confusing activity with results in many ways.

Ideas might be more valuable to someone who doesn't have any other value to add in getting from activity to a measurable result.

Got an idea that still stands that test? It's much more worth talking about :)

Of course ideas aren't worthless.

The reason this meme became popular here is that the audience to Hacker News is predominately developers, and many are sick of people that don't value the ability to execute and try to negotiate as if the developer would be lucky to join them.

Business = Marketing + Advertising + Sales + Idea + Implementation + Finance

Even this is too simple though. However, my point is that business isn't just about "execution" of an idea into a product...

The most important thing is working in skilled, multi-discipline teams where people will support each others weak areas.

I find this to be very wrong on many levels. I understand the OP worked in VC, so he comes from a place of knowledge, but let me deconstruct the argument slightly.

- "The idea is the core of a company and what defines it entirely"

But ideas change. An early stage company might work on a completely different idea next week, or a company that has not found product/market fit might pivot. Will the company have changed? It will still have the same founding team, still have the same employees, and the same tech. I don't think there is any evidence (none was provided) for how an idea "defines a company entirely".

- "That’s where an investor’s evaluation will start and end"

Bullshit. I know you are (were?) an investor, but it would be wrong to say that your method of evaluation is the way all people evaluate. Could a team of idiots with a great idea get funding? To give a pathelogic case, could a team with an amazing idea to change social networking, made up of unproven non-coders in a distributed team spread across the Eastern Europe, get funding? No.

- "Idea = “market + problem + opportunity”"

Well, if you redefine the term, its quite easy to say it has value. But even this disregards the value of the team.

- "If an investor turns you down, they probably think that, in order of probability: your idea is bad"

Again, different investors are different. There are plenty who look at the team first.

- "BUT, extraordinary teams executing extremely well on any idea doesn’t guarantee success."

Any team worth anything will pivot away from a bad idea.

But the biggest criticism I think I have is that the reason "ideas are worthless", is because you can't think up a good market, opportunity, and customer base. You start with the kernel of an idea, and refine it through continuous customer development, until you have a product which may differ substantially from the initial idea.

I think the notion of ideas being worthless is, essentially, an overreaction to the trend of ideas being grossly overvalued at the expense of more practical considerations.

In my mind, this belief is best illustrated in the rapid rise of startups who have an interesting idea, but very little market validation or plans for monetization.

As with most complex topics, the truth is somewhere in the middle. Ideas are not worthless, but they're certainly not worth much. To be valuable (in a business sense) an idea must also be coupled with a strong need or desire derived from knowledge of the market. Add to that a strong plan for execution and you've got something of value.

I'm certainly not suggesting that these elements are always known from the beginning, but for an idea to grow in value, I think these factors need to be taken into consideration.

They are worthless, you can't sell them. They are not useless, you can use them.

My day job is web app development, but for the past year or so I've dedicated much of my spare time to making games. Or, more accurately, I've been trying to make games. So far I've just published only one, a mobile game that was not successful and, I have to admit in hindsight, really wasn't very good.

When it comes to game development in particular, I've heard it over and over again that 'ideas are worthless.' But it's become obvious to me that the exact opposite is true: ideas are everything. What I've been struggling to do in this past year is idea-forging, basically. I've been desperately clawing my way towards an elegant game idea which is both (1) fun/unique/interesting and (2) small enough in scope that I can create it in my spare time. At many points I've thought I've had such an idea, only to realize that the idea wasn't that great or the scope was much larger than I anticipated after some prototyping.

I completely agree with the article when it comes to how difficult it is to evaluate ideas before they've been implemented: Good ideas probably don't often initially look like good ideas. And bad ideas often look incredibly enticing. And I'm pretty sure that truly new ideas almost always look like bad ideas until you've actually seen them in action. (I guess this is part of why we see so many sequels and remakes from established game companies these days. New game ideas are risky, hard to evaluate, and probably expensive to prototype.)

Ok Ideas aren't "worthless".

However, ideas are worth less then execution. Execution includes the investigation into the market and the gaining of knowledge of the technologies and refactoring of potential solutions to the underlying pain.

Given this - the "idea" guy should never, ever, be compensated more then those who execute.

And ideally, everyone should be in the executing group. There shouldn't ever be an "idea" person.

Of course not. Words aren't worthless either. Neither are numbers. But if the only thing you have is a word or a number, you don't really have much, and it's the same way with ideas.

Well... if you define it as “market + problem + opportunity”. Even then you don't have everything covered. If you are going to go that route you might as well broaden the definition.

Ideas = "market + problem + opportunity + solution + financials + Porter's 5 forces analysis + implementation plan + team"

I think it is called a Business Plan.

I submitted this recently but this is probably a good place to link to it too: http://1014.org/?article=468

Justin Frankel (Winamp, Gnutella, etc) writes that "Ideas are worth a lot to society, but not much to individuals. Execution is the opposite."

I don't agree that the industry is saying that ideas are worthless. Let's not forget that the "no idea" entry in the last batch of YC funding was experimental, which I am curious to find out what came out of it and what were the results. Also, I think the reason the regular batch of YC funding puts so much emphasis on teams is because it's a good guarantee that the idea will be executed one way or the other. YC gets a lot of entries from people that, at the end of the day, they don't really know or they don't have a history working with them. Dealing with a team of strangers is definitely safer that dealing with a single person.

Worth of product = (quality of idea) * (quality of execution).

An idea, on its own, is worth nothing (good idea * no execution = nothing).

HOWEVER...

Kickstarter (and other similar companies) are changing this notion a bit. Many companies have raised significant capital off of ideas alone, although producing a convincing video takes no small effort and the well-funded campaigns are usually run by people who have done their fair share of execution in the past. Capital does not equal profit necessarily, but it can if an excess of capital is raised.

Ideas are the result of a process: brilliance / talent / skill leads to understanding and insight, which identifies valuable needs and lacks, which then get synthesized into an idea.

The idea is the final product of that process, that's why it's normally dismissed as worthless. An idea by itself is like the combination to a lock for a case you don't have, which is in a place you don't know.

"Bad ideas are cheap. Good ideas are extremely rare and executing them is incredibly hard."

And the only way to tell them apart is to execute them.

Not ideas. Belief. There are tons of good ideas that you dismiss. There are tons of shitty ideas that you act upon. The difference is that one will call out to you and say "Make me happen" when the others don't, regardless of how many rational arguments exist for picking one or the other.

Develop healthy beliefs so that you can believe in healthy ideas.

> Idea = “market + problem + opportunity” that's quite far from idea, that's almost business plan

If you think ideas are worth something, I have a huge pile of them I will gladly sell you.

Good article. The Valley preconception that great execution on a bad idea will fix things always rang a bit hollow to me. Seems to me to be the most common cause of failure - people build great stuff for problems which don't exist.

The relationship between ideas and execution is not a sum of the parts, but more like a multiplier.

Excellent idea (1.0) * Excellent execution (1.0) = Excellent result (1.0)

Mediocre idea (0.5) * Excellent execution (1.0) = Mediocre result (0.5)

about NDA: I've worked with a friend on an idea. It was my idea. Because of the way he worked I decided I don't want to continue on that project. He continued anyway. The funny thing is that even though I told him all the details of my idea and I helped him even after I stopped working, he didn't build my idea. The result was similar with what was done before and so was not enough to differentiate in the market. Essentially he did all the easy stuff without understanding why it was so important to do the hard/new stuff.

Paul Graham is wrong. The focus should be on great teams executing good ideas. Execution matters - but you need an idea to execute. Changing ideas doesn't mean the ideas don't matter.

Ideas are indeed worthless today. But to believe that completely is stupidity.

Internet, as of today, is a gold rush. Anyone worth his programming skill can work on an idea and get funded. But then, with the passing of time, all the low hanging fruits will be gone. Once we reach that point, good ideas will become scarce. Great ideas may not even emerge. VC funding will be gone too. Perhaps, in a decade or so.

Internet based companies are extremely easy to replace today. A chilling fact but true. Compare this with firms like Citibank, British Petroleum, etc. They have been here for decades and will be here. The same cannot be said for companies like Facebook and to a large extent Apple.

Ideas are seeds. Figure out that analogy on your own.

Well written article, but I think this is the default viewpoint.