Ideas Aren't Worthless | Hacker News Reader

Ideas Aren't Worthless

techblog.bozho.net

48 pointsbozho47 comments

In every context I've heard or said myself that ideas are worthless, it has always been about money.

You build the product for some equity and I bring the idea - no, ideas are worthless.

I'll sell the idea - no, ideas are worthless.

I can't tell you what I'm building without an NDA because you'll steal my idea - no, ideas are worthless.

The context of "ideas are worthless" has never, in my experience, been that of personal projects, learning projects or other things you do for fun. In these cases ideas obviously aren't worthless.

Many, if not the majority, of people do believe ideas are worthless because they've not put the time or effort required into refining ideas to a nuanced level. Once you hear an idea, and it sounds simple and good - then hey, simple idea, anyone could come up with that - they'll very often seem obvious too.

Anyhow. What's actually more important relating to ideas is if you've discovered a market that has needs to be met, and there's an opening and opportunity to meet those needs. It's very possible ConnectU would have been the platform we'd all be using - or a variation if they decided to later update the name - instead of Facebook, if Mark Zuckerberg hadn't been dishonest with them for the purpose of launching first.

Software is just ideas that are refined in full detail. Nobody would claim that the value in software is because of physically typing in code; the value is in the ideas that preceded the typing. So to claim that ideas are worthless without qualification is indeed ludicrous. What people usually mean when they say this is that abstract, unrefined ideas are worthless.

I'm not so sure this would hold if you applied it to real-life circumstances. I could be telling you an "end point" idea - which only would have come from all of the refinement, even if the idea itself encompasses a large scope. Not trying to start an argument, I just don't think most people who say "ideas are worthless" have really thought through this statement..

Yes, the context I've heard this phrase the most is in Craigslist posts, for example, where someone's had the idea for the 'next facebook' and wants a developer to build it for him. It's not so much that the idea itself is worthless (though it very well might be) - it's just that in terms of value, the person who has the idea is probably going to contribute nothing to the implementation of the idea, which is the part that takes solid hard work, planning and maintenance.

It's not so much that the idea is worthless - it's that a person whose only role in the implementation is to come up with the idea in the first place is worthless to the process of implementation.

This is generally true, but the implementer(s) may think that the idea originator will have more good ideas in the future - they may decide to cut the idea originator in just to get access to their future ideas.

The future ideas are just as worthless than the first.

This is exactly the point. Often the person with the idea additionaly greatly underestimates the complexity and time it tooks to actually build the product.

Ideas are like children. People love their own; and relatively few others.

did you just come up with that? it's a pretty brilliant turn of the word.

Apparently; after googling; it seems I plagiarized this.

Way to steal someone else's child. You monster.

I can have a dozen ideas per day.

And that's why they're close enough to worthless to not bother qualifying the descriptor. They're easy to make, and if you don't do anything with any of them (which amounts to darned near 100% of all of them) they're worthless. Think of all the otherwise useful stuff you throw out because one piece is missing: an idea without execution is destined to the mental trash bin.

Some ideas are worthless. Not all of them, and the hard task is to distinguish. And an idea is not simply "hey' let's have this". An idea includes specifics :)

“That's why it's always worth having a few philosophers around the place. One minute it's all Is Truth Beauty and Is Beauty Truth, and Does A Falling Tree in the Forest Make A Sound if There's No one There to Hear It, and then just when you think they're going to start dribbling one of 'em says, Incidentally, putting a thirty-foot parabolic reflector on a high place to shoot the rays of the sun at an enemy's ships would be a very interesting demonstration of optical principles.”

-- The many and varied advantages of philosophy

(Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)

Ideas are valueless, not worthless. Obligatory link to Derek Sivers’ ideas being multipliers: http://sivers.org/multiply

It's not that ideas are worthless, more like ideas are like assholes, everyone has one. Ideas are cheap, execution, implementation and "finish" is hard.

I think founders are inspired by the challenge of creating a company. The whole "I could make this but it's not interesting enough" is an excuse I used for a long long time. There are things I would never do (such as social media) because they don't interest me in the least bit. But, the fact is, you will probably pivot. And if you do, you may be working on something that is no longer interesting to you.

But, building a company is interesting to me. Creating culture, cultivating talent, contributing to GDP and changing an industry are the motivational factors behind me creating a company. And it's extremely challenging. Anybody can create interesting technology; turning it into an self sustaining business is the hard part.

Just my two cents. I agree that ideas are not worthless. Some are plain bad. I've always wanted to ask a VC, "If ideas are so worthless, and the focus is on the founders, why do you have them pitch their company to judge them? Wouldn't another interview process be better."

Slightly OT, but I ran the text your blog post through the TextAnalysis API demo (another link on HN's front-page today) and got a very interesting summary. In fact, I think it captures the soul of your post in the last two/three lines:

> An idea will bring you nowhere – you need implementation, focus, a good team, the right environment, luck, etc. > And I won’t argue with that – obviously, an idea doesn’t bring you anywhere by itself. > But that’s the perspective of the businessman. > And that’s all great. > Except that it’s not technology.

DISCLAIMER: Not affiliated with AYLIEN, TextAnalysis or the OP of this post. Just a random commenter, that's all.

I think one of the main objectives of anyone is to achieve freedom. I think hackers do this, they do stuff to first achieve the freedom to pursuit other achievements. I dont care the money, I just want enough money to seriously do all the things I want.

I've never understood this.

You want money, you want what it offers, but you don't care about money. That strikes me as an inherent contradiction in terms. Money represents your time, labor, etc.; it's merely a vessel holding value you've generated. I assume you do care about those things. If you work for 80 hours to generate $8,000 - those dollars you get represent your time and labor. Would you then say you don't care about your life / time / labor?

I'm also guessing that the response to supposedly not care about money, is because the love of money as an end in itself is viewed as being evil. Money is properly merely a tool for exchange however. Who doesn't regard their own time to possess a high value?

I believe money becomes important when you need it to survive. When you have all the money you need to survive, it becomes irrelevant since it doesn't represent the problem. Most millionaires I've meet don't care about the money, they mostly care about the projects they're involved into. They know they have money, they know they will get more money. I want to have that feeling: to not worry about the money at all till the last day of my life and worry about the things I want to do. Most of us will do this while working: someone hires you to code, to paint, but isn't the same, imho.

"The ultimate point is not to have a startup, to get acquired, to make money. The ultimate point is to make something cool, something different, something technologically innovative."

The point to make money is no more selfless and noble than the point of making something technologically cool.

I think the only selfless goal is to find and solve a problem that needs a solution.

Simple ideas are worth little.

Ideas that are well-researched, catching a good technological or sociological wave, consider possible pitfalls and optimal implementation plans that are presented in a professional manner can be worth a considerable amount monetarily.

Great ideas are the ideas that aren't worthless.

Hm, can you name one idea, where the idea was so strong that the execution didn't really matter?

Yep :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Mathematical_Theory_of_Commun...

Mhmmm, but you can't really call that an idea anymore. Then you could also count Einstein's theory of relativity as an idea, since with these two the execution is basically proving things mathematically, no?

An idea as it is debated here is more like a paragraph describing the idea.

These are certainly great ideas that have value outside of any implimentation. A simpler pure idea of great value would be something like the Kelly Criterion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_criterion

Every original scientific finding ever started with an idea.

To be fair it is possible to patent an idea and make money from it without a brilliant implementation. Compression algorithms are an example where the spec does not need to define the best compression algorithm, merely how to decompress.

Can you name a bad idea where good execution made it successful?

PHP, Perl, and Javascript.

And they didn't even need good execution--the time had simply come.

I mean, it's good to have write ups that speak to the broader point that an idea by itself can have inherent value and then it ceases to have value if you don't execute on it.

Maybe thinking about ideas like a limited time coupon is probably the best way to summarize the idea vs execution debate, in my mind.

"Ideas are worthless" is obviously false -- investors will occasionally invest on an idea alone, so there is clearly some value to them. "MOST ideas are worthless", however, is very much true. "GOOD ideas are priceless".

An investor who invests in "an idea alone" is actually investing in the person (or team). They believe that the person with the idea is capable of implementing it. Implementation is where the value lies.

It's the combination of idea + you that creates the value for a given idea...and that value is always relative to how valuable the 'you' in that equation really is (and keep in mind that value is always relative)

Ideas can be useful to those who have the ability to execute them.

Ideas guys are not useful because they do not have that ability.

Meaning "Ideas are worthless" is a (semi) polite way of saying "You are worthless".

Maybe a more tactful (and effective) response: "if your idea is so good, why aren't you implementing it?"

The obvious answer is "Because I can't." Unfortunately, this admission of incompetence carries a nasty subtext which is "because the task in question is beneath me."

That's why you hear people saying "It's 'just' a matter of execution", which simultaneously elevates the person with the idea while diminishing the person bringing it to life (which frequently requires fairly major departures from the initial concept).

God I hate that word, "just". 9 out of 10 times the person using it is an irredeemable asshole.

Unfortunately, this admission of incompetence carries a nasty subtext which is "because the task in question is beneath me."

Funny how their idea is so valuable and would make so much money if implemented, but it's still "beneath" them. If it ain't worth them "lowering themselves to that level", it ain't worth my time to consider implementing it, much less signing something like an NDA or agreement where I do most of the work and they keep most of the profits.

Scenario: An "idea guy/gal" comes up with an idea upon which a non-idea guy/gal builds.

Scenario: An "idea guy/gal" comes up with an idea and tries with all his/her might to bring it to reality, but fails. Yet, the idea is proven "useful", posthumously. Ever heard of Babbage? Babbage wasn't "useful"?

Useful: What a dreadful word to use for a person. Are you useful?

anyone who says ideas are worthless has never tried to execute on a bad idea.

ideas are like a tool. it's only useful if you know what to do with it

This keeps coming back to HN every n months. At this point i would expect every HN reader to fully understand that ideas are, at best, a potential starting point from which opportunities might be discovered. The vast majority of ideas anyone generates do not align with real opportunities and, therefore, would be foolish to pursue. An idea backed up by a tangible and real opportunity could very well be like finding a diamond in dirt. The value is in opportunities.

I'd rather someone come to me with an opportunity than an idea. You can throw money at an opportunity and have it multiply. Not so with ideas.

Now, to be fair, sometimes it is really hard to recognize and even quantify the opportunity. Examples abound. Facebook, eBay and Pinterest come to mind.

There is some truth to it, because there are a thousand ways to implement the idea you had, however only five of these ways will make the idea take off.

That's why an idea without knowing exactly how to get 10,000 users without any funding isn't worth much.

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