NSX2

Good for him.

I'm sure he, like all VCs everywhere, says exactly what he means and would never tell an audience of prospective entrepreneurs what they want to hear just so he doesn't narrow his own investment options in the future.

Not sure what a speach on venture capital funding has to do with creating a successful business based on convincing customers to hand you their money, but I digress ...

Let's say a "business" is defined as "getting a venture capitalist to write you a check."

Try to get him to follow through with cold, hard cash for for, say, a problem you face that nobody else cares about, let alone cares enough to pay for.

For example, go call him up and tell him, "I have this problem: there's this annoying poster on Hacker News called "NSX2" and rather than manually respond to posts he puts up that I disagree with, or, for that matter, rather than respond to any such posters, in a flash of inspiration I created this superb program that summarizes all the key points of my essays into a set of 79, prioritizes their uses as responses, and anticipates what annoying posters are most likely to say based on empirical data I've collected since starting Hacker News and matches their anticipated annoying posts with a point in one of my essays that has the most statistical probability to express what I disagree with and how. Fund me."

Please let me know how that works out for you.

On another note, I just looked at your profile and read some of your articles. Why take issues with "my understanding of Google" when it turns out I'm making a similar point to what you wrote about in terms of being humble enough to put pride aside and find out what people actually want/need/will pay for rather assuming for them only to find out that nobody cares about the brilliant programming of an idea nobody but the programmer appreciates?

Isn't that what you yourself said in one of your posts on your blog, or am I misunderstanding your position?

Nope. I think you're just redefining execution and idea to blur the line so that what is the result of a good idea is now under the category of execution.

Why the hell are people still arguing this point.

In my mind the argument of "execution" vs. "good idea" is like arguing whether food or water or air or sleep is more important.

You need all. Case closed.

I think as people who "execute" programmers tend to have (from what I've seen over a year) a knee-jerk "execution is everything" reaction out of some deep insecurity or something.

The very existence of this "I can't think of any good ideas" is testament to the notion that execution is not the be-all end-all.

If I can never find a programming partner, worse case scenario I can still use my contacts to raise capital and then hire programmers, though my negotiating leverage in raising capital would be a lot less than if I had a partner who can help put together the idea.

What is this programmer going to do without a good idea that people want and a good idea how to make money off of it?

Start programming randomly until he accidently codes a useful service people pay for?

"O----kay"

Sadly, I am not a heavy drinker. Usually 1 six-pack of Sapporo Light and 1 six-pack of some sort of Belgian white ale is my "thing."

But for what that's worth, that comes out to about $16 per week. Which I have full confidence I'll get to keep the majority of based on a poll like you'd describe.

I would venture that 95% of "startups" never get past my personal modification of question #2 from the consumer perspective, ie, "We do this."

Consumer version: "What do you do for me?"

Go ahead and start your poll! I got 16 bucks to play with!

Uh ... not sure what business plans your talking about, but I would take the worst business plan any VC gets and wager that more people would pay money for whatever it describes, however poorly, then stuff that most programmers put up on the web with a "me and all my programmer friends think it's cool, so give me your money, how about it?" approach ...

How could that possibly be when this post comes after yours?

My understanding of Google may not be accurate, but my understanding of why people hand their money over to Google is probably as accurate as it is possible to be.

Misunderstandings of any details you have in mind aside, in general Google too fits into the general idea: before Google started thinking about how to channel its technology to meet the needs of people with money, it was an interesting startup, but not a great business. The second it took the needs of customers with money into account, then those people handed over their money and that made Google a great business.

My point is that in my mind there is a simple distinction that most startups seem to either accidentally or purposely ignore: startup = bunch of guys working on a cool technical thing / business = bunch of guys working on a thing that makes life better for paying customers.

Having not seen Benny Hill since childhood, I assumed that the reason people were starting startups were to transition to businesses which made life better for paying customers.

Apparently I was wrong. People here, for the most part, as well as just about every programmer I've run into over the last year or so trying to start my own thing, seem to be more interested in starting a startup so they could post "Hey guys, check out my cool thing" type of posts.

I don't know where I'm going wrong here, but unless somebody finds a way to transform positive feedback from Hacker News into cold hard cash, that's not a business. At least not IMHO.

But judging by the feedback I get on other posts, not too many people seem to care about starting a business, just starting "startups" where "startup" = somebody pays me money to sit around writing code and drinking Mountain Dew.

I can't see how that's different from a job where you happen to be working on a cool project.

> Trying to create some kind of voting mechanism to supersede them is like trying to beat a market economy with a planned one.

HUH??? I'm not sure what this has to do with planned economies and such, but if you put it that way, I see it as exactly the opposite. People who he talks about are hard to get to by design - mostly by the design of their administrative assistants. On the other hand, tons of people voting your idea up is by definition the very essence of a market-based decision-making system.

In the spirit of your reply, I'll give it a go now: "Disagreeing with me is like trying to replace the Constitution with the manual for your DVD player."

Okay, let's review reality. This "bored developer" is apparently not PG. So PG's opinions/thoughts are not relevant here, since obviously this particular "bored developer" is straying from that view. For example, PG said you don't even really need a good idea - just get started. But this "bored developer" apparently can't start without the good idea, so he apparently is experiencing a different reality at the moment than PG.

Seriously what does my response to "bored developer" have to do whith what PG says/thinks/does/where he goes on vacation? If PG writes an essay that says he thinks oxygen is useless and somebody next to you has an asthma attack, are you going to turn around to them and tell them, "Well, didn't you read PG's latest essay where he tells you he thinks oxygen isn't that important?"

Not to mention that even an informal business plan forces you to do away with your own fluff and focus on stone-cold reality that will not go away until you address the questions it poses.

I don't see how most of your post has anything to do with what this post is about.

This post is not about a "pithy homily". It's not intended to "inspire" anybody with platitudes. This is about understanding the underlying reality of what makes people care enough about your "experiment" to pay you money for it.

I was under the impression that people here were starting startups in the hope they they may one day become successful businesses. To make that transition all the questions above need to be answered. I thought that might be relevant to some people as being able to answer all those questions is something lots of startups, Y-related or not, have trouble answering.

> The point of a scrappy startup tends to be that of > experimentation, not a sophistacated execution of a great idea.

Well, that may be the point of your startup, but this post was for people who want their startups to be about good enough execution of an idea that paying customers think is great.

That translates into financial transaction which translates into a functional business.

Experimentation should be the points of students still in school, major corporations with money to support it, and people who are tinkering while having another source of income. If you quit all that and "dropped out" of the system to start a business, well, the only point is to figure out how to start making money. Especially over the next 4-5 years.

To the extent the tinkering strays away from that and becomes absorbed in itself for its own ends, you'll wind up with an interesting experiment, not a startup that becomes a business.

That's not me "attacking" the delicate egos of any programmers, that's cold, hard economic reality. Whine if you wish but people still won't hand over their increasingly scarce money to you as long as you pout instead of figuring out how to answer all the above questions.

Okay, notice I'm saying "great business", not "startup." There are millions of "startups" working on cool technical challenges, of which almost none will become great businesses.

When all those things you described were happening, almost nobody cared = no business. When they turned to meet needs of a much broader audience then the few technical people who were interested in such a narrow range of issues, they took off as businesses. In my mind, "startup" does not equal a business. Business means lots of people pay you money for selling them your thing. So to a limited extent, for example, Woz had a "business" selling computers through ads to computer enthusiasts in the back fo Scientific American or whatever. But that was nowhere near as successful a business as when Jobs visited PARC and realized the research they were doing on GUIs based on the human mind could be significant for a lot of people.

The Yahoo folks may have started with a list specific to their interests, and students may have found it cool, but that was not a business. It became a business when they broadened to general idea of an organized list to the needs of a larger audience.

I've come across quite a few programmers over the last year who turned me down because they said they were busy working on their own startups, all of which were based on solving a problem only they seemed to care about. They incorporated, had a "company", etc.

But that doesn't equal business. Business means people pay you money. For that to happen you have to broaden your considerations to what those people want, not what you care to/can build. I won't, nor will anybody pay any of your startups a penny because somebody wrote really cool code that everyone on Hacker News agrees is awesome. But I'll pay you money if your code solves my needs. You don't care to solve my needs? Fine. You may have a technically awesome thing. I won't pay you for it, though. And neither will anyone else.

Right. Case in point. Even though you can get to them through personal connections, you're reluctant to "waste their time." So what about people who can't get to them through 2 degrees of contact. What if they wanted to contact them with an affirmation of the value of their proposals? As in, "I don't know you and I don't want to waste your time, but 83,000 people in this industry think what I have to tell you is important enough for you to drop everything and read."

That in itself is something. Now compare that to the next guy who may be able to say, "That guy's idea is good. But my idea is sooooo good, 210,000 people in the industry think you should read and consider what I have to say."

As someone with limited time, which one, all other things equal, would you open first and which second?

And if the third next idea only had 300 votes and you were pressed for time, you'd skip it most likely, right?

Yes but how do you know it's worth your time to open and read in the first place? He's suggesting like a "digg" or "reddit" on behalf of those people, ie, "the public" reads your suggested email and vote up those they think is worth it for you as the "famous" person to read.

Um ... I'm not 100% sure, but I suspect what the poster had in mind was a little bit different. I'm thinking perhaps he meant like if you wanted to get in touch with Bill Gates or Larry Page or Steve Jobs or something like that. That's a tad bit different.

I think he's saying it's like an organically-derived algorithm that meets halfway between "I don't know you so I'm skeptical of your value" and "I may be skeptical but if this many people think it's worthwile, perhaps I'll take a look."

I don't know what famous people you're talking about ... I'm assuming we're leaving out "celebrities" and concentrating on "useful" famous people in business/academia? If so, you'd be surprised at how much correspondence they can have.

Not to mention I'm not sure if you realize how many of the "emails" on things like VC pages are bogus on purpose. Like when they say, "mail your business plans attention "Business Plan Manager" ... that's usually code for "just toss this in the paper shredder.

Here: test this out. Think of 5 famous people and email them something you think surely would catch their attention. See if you can find their real emails and if they bother reading it. Use one of those "verification of opened email" services.

It just doesn't happen that often. If anything it gets sent to an assistant who sends it to another assistant who sends it to the intern who gives it to his little sister who gives it to the cat.

I think this would be a good "idea" if not necessarily one that translates into a business.

Actually I taught myself how to program to a limited extent as an undergrad when I needed help from a professor to complete an independent study course and he agreed to help me if I learned enough MatLab and Mathematica to manipulate data as he suggested.

Our computer lab had nothing other than this mammoth book of "examples of code of stuff some people have figured out to do" ... but with no actual explanation of what code did what - just result, and accompanying code.

I learned enough to get what I wanted done.

From that experience I learned that:

(1) I barely have the temperment to review my own code, let alone rework other people's work, so as a career choice it was not for me to be a programmer and

(2) coupled with my economic background I learned that, intellectual stimulation aside, as a practical matter there was no way I could ever teach myself everything I needed to know in a timely manner to do everything myself, so it would be more useful if I could learn to put my ego aside and seek different people with different skills sets and work together to solve problems.

So, from an intellectual point, yes. From a practical point, that would be a waste of time.

That's ok. Just tell them that you have an awesome "ability to execute" dime-a-dozen ideas. According to their theories, that, the capital they would subsequently invest and their "value-added" should help you all become multi-billionaires. Surely they believe their own talk, so in theory they should gladly put aside their pittance of $500 an hour to share ideas you can execute for them.

Don't forget little people like me when you guys hit the big time.

The hard part is not writing a business plan. The hard part is tossing all the junk out.

Actually, this illustrates my point perfectly. By a lot of accounts, Coffee Connection came out with a similar, but much better tasting ("better executed" as you put it) drink. But though their execution was better, they got bought out by Starbucks. Why?

Boston is cold as hell in winter and not too hot the rest of the time. Nobody wants iced drinks when it's cold. Plus Boston is a small city.

California, on the other hand, is a huge state full of teenagers with lots of disposable income and most of it is hot most of the year.

So: introduce an iced drink in 1 city in a cold place = not so great idea, not that much money. Introduce an iced drink in the biggest state in the country where it's almost always hot in most of the state = great idea, lots of money. So the one with the better idea and the better idea of how to implement the idea (Starbucks) made a lot more money and bought out the business who executed better but executed better on what turned out to be a crappy idea.

Starbucks had what customers claim is inferior execution compared to Coffee Connection's version, but their idea was better and their ideas of what/how/where to execute was better.

So in the end mediocre execution of better idea = billions in revenue.

Superior execution of a mediocre idea = get bought out by above and cease to exist.

It's true an architect can't build without builders. But unless the builders have a good plan, no matter how well they execute, they're just wasting time/energy/resources.

Telling someone who's taken the time to come up with good plans/scenarios/alternatives that once the plan is done they add no value is just as much a slap in the face as an "MBA-business guy" telling programmers that the second they finish writing the code for an application, they're useless and add no further value unless a change needs to be made.

And you can execute perfectly but these days you need so much insight and perspective to be able to detect changes in current and prepare alternate courses of action while managing remaining resources ...

Well, I just went to the link you provided and aside from 90% of the ideas being well-intentioned but half-baked, I can't help but notice there are no business ideas. So, to answer your question, no, there aren't. Why would anybody waste time documenting an idea they don't have the inclination to implement? Why don't they have the inclination? Because there's no motivation. Why? Because they realize they can't make money off of it. Hence the only ideas you'll find for "free" on the internet are ideas nobody can figure out how to make any money off of. If they could figure that out, then they would have the inclination and thus, logic indicates that they'd MAKE the time. And keep the idea to themselves, not post it up for all to see and profit off of.

Exactly. And it doesn't even have to be "economic worth" it could be a time/money saving solution that let's some one devote an extra 1 hour to playing with their kids. That's a worthy cause as any. You won't get published in any journal, but I suspect the feedback would be worth it in its own way. I just think there needs to be more of a balance. Google can afford to bankroll people working on problems for their own sake because they got the "value-added" part down pretty well first, for example. No shame in having your feet on the ground while your head looks upward (IMHO).

Not sure what you mean. I'm not posting this as an "argument with myself" as you put it. The poster above said that Yahoo wasn't an interesting technical challenge, just a useful approach to a common problem. Then I just acknowledged that. The "argument" is either based on a misunderstading of the 2 posts or a projection of your own self-debating thinking process.

Thank you.

Sometimes speaking with some of the programmers I have I suspect they think they're doing a startup, but in reality they're doing an extension of their academic programme and just secretly hoping that somehow they'll wind up making money off it.

I just can't understand why programmers are so reluctant to work on challenges with people from different perspectives.

My background is in economics. I can't stand lawyers and I can't stand psychiatrists and I don't care enough about neurologists and neuro-scientists to figure out what the difference is.

And yet over the last 10 years, the mixing of people of these seemingly unrelated backgrounds has given the world 2 of the most useful applications of economics: Law & Economics and Neuro-Economics. Fascinating and practical. Who knew?

Why can't all fields be like that, faster?

That's why ultimately I can't respect the programming ethos, as I've seen it, too much. Any true professional ... or academic "seeker of knowledge" ... should, IMHO seek continous improvement - bot vertical in terms of skill in their own field AND horizontal in terms of different perspectives.

Why does everyone respect Da Vinci so much, but nobody seems to want to emulate his methods?

> I've got a great idea: Crappucino - A frappucion with > extra sugar on top. Where are my millions?

No, I'M sorry but I don't quite think YOU know what a "great idea" is about.

Frappacino was a great idea where it took off in California because it's hot there and people liked the combo of cold and caffeine buzz.

Nobody (as) yet invented a portable high-power expresso maker/ice blender that can chop ice to smithereens in 7-8 seconds or so. So you need Starbucks.

Extra sugar on top is pointless because I can go to the condiment counter and just pour more sugar on top for free.

So you're idea by definition is not "good" because (a) it offers no value to the customer that they can't get by themselves without you and (b) you haven't figured out how you make money off of it (part of the definition of a good idea to begin with).

So in conclusion, you don't have a good idea - you have fluff you can't figure out how to make money off of. That makes you qualified for raising venture capital or applying to ... um ... this place I've heard of where there are a lot of ideas that never wind up making much money as stand alone businesses.

But that' doesn't mean you have a good idea. So you have no milliions.

Viola. Equation stands.

On top of which, I've never downgraded execution. My experience is that it takes a continual mix of both, plus lots of luck and timing, 2 things you can't control.

It's usually "execution" people dismissing the value of good (by which I mean you can make money off of) ideas, almost like some obsessive-compulsive insecurity or something. And now there's this post, and when I ask the simple question: what does a person who gives you a good idea get in return, nothing but crickets.

So if execution is the be-all end-all, have fun executing hot air people might use but never pay for.

See how far that gets you in this new global economic reality we'll be experiencing for the next 3-5 years.

Go on. Go execute ideas you can't figure out how to make money off of. Keep me updated.

That's my point exactly. They focused on what people wanted more than a challenging technical problem. That makes them the exception to most programmers I've come across who are fascinated with technical challenges so obscure the resolution of which nobody cares about. In academia, that's respectable and commendable. In business ... nobody cares.

What does this have to do with programmers? Aside from the fact that I'm talking about programmers and you're extending this to include "all technically-minded people everywhere", in general you're citing exceptions to my observations.

Example:

> Who was the market for the original telephone/telegraph

Gee ... um ... I don't know. Everybody in the world who thought it would be more convenient to get instant verbal communication over a letter that took weeks or months to deliver/respond to?

Let me put it another way. Pierre Omidyar is a technical guy, and more specifically a programmer. Did he choose to develop something that solved an obscure technical challenge, the goal of which was to be published in some computer science journal with a subscription base of 12 people?

No. He had a rare abililty of having both the technical talent and being able to think from the perspective of the general population.

Hence someone like him would be an exception to what I said I've observed.

But for everyone like him that can be cited, I can introduce you to 20 programmers that are trying to start startups around "challenges" so specialized and irrelevant-in-the-scheme-of-things that I know for sure they did zero market research before starting or even during.

Sure, lots of things that seemed like a waste turned out to be very useful with the benefit of an unexpected consequence coupled with unpredictable developments and the benefit of hindsight.

In general, though, I'd prefer to start with "what's needed" and try to come up with a technical solution as simple as possible rather than "what's the coolest thing I could work on technically" and then spend time on that only to find out that 5 people in the world would actually buy it.

Anonymous = I don't have to tip my hat to people who can come up with ideas / admit that good business ideas are not as easy as everyone says they are / share any resulting credit/profits from application of ideas because nobody knows who I am.

I could be wrong. But I can't think of any possible other reasons.

Useful implies nothing but useful. People don't "want" to pay for anything. People want to keep their money in their pockets. They reluctantly pay for things whose usefulness, real or perceived, substantially exceeds the asked price. Gmail is "useful" but I sure's heck wouldn't pay for it.

As for Starbucks, it illustrates my point perfectly:

(1) Starbucks is mostly neuro-marketing. I guarantee you that the buzz people get dopamine-wise from expecting the "reward" of a sugar/caffeine rush is much more important (again, the "idea") than the execution, which counts to about 1% of the customers. I know when I need a quick fix 9X out of 10 I couldn't care less if they got the wrong number of pumps of whatever in there.

(2) To illustrate the value of an idea, the Frappucino was the idea of 1 store manager. Cost: peanuts. Contribution to bottom line: about a billion a year directly, who knows how much indirectly as a "gateway drink" for non-caffeine drinking teens ...

The point was not about the execution, it was a manager thinking, "Within the realm of what we can execute fairly easy, what is a good idea that takes what we can do and adds more value quickly and easily?"

And in the larger context, Starbucks doesn't "execute" anything better than countless immitators these days can; but the idea in my mind is "a special little treat I deserve after a long day." A perfectly executed drink with the same stuff in it just wouldn't make me feel the same if I got it in, say, a sushi place. Again - it's the idea of Starbucks = sexy drinks for sexy people. They're not executing that, I'm imagining it. It's an idea.

Patentable and useful doesn't necessarily mean good business. I'm assuming the "bored developer" wants to start a business around whatever idea he can't think of. There are ideas, some useful, some even patentable, but to make a business you need not so much patents but the ability to present it in such a way that a prospective customer thinks, "That provides me with more value than the price they're asking for, so I should buy it." Think of it this way: are Starbucks lattes patentable? But they are a good value to half-dead zombies on their way to work/on their way back from a grueling day of work. That makes them I think like 10 billion a year, roughly same revenue as Google. BeOS was awesome and technically advanced and I'm sure had many patents. Who paid for it? Nobody. Company's gone. There's a difference.