In most startup circles I've come into contact with, I've encountered this ridiculous majority-held notion that the idea almost doesn't matter at all in a startup. It's "the team" and the "execution", they say. Well, I like to say: "a good team will tend to come up with good ideas!" In fact, the fastest way for me to be able to tell who is someone I likely wouldn't enjoy working with is by the ideas this person presents. Another quick way is by how s/he responds to the ideas I present. It's not whether they like them or not - it's whether their response is intelligent, even if they rip into them. It has been my experience that the smartest people are good at evaluating, analyzing, and critiquing ideas, of course including their own, and they are good at articulating this analysis. To me, it's insane to think that ideas don't matter ...
Those who tend to dismiss the importance of "ideas" usually add that even a bad idea in the hands of a good team can still lead to a successful business given proper execution. They also usually point out that on the other hand, the best idea in the world will fail when the team is weak or the execution is lacking. In other words, according to most in the startup world, the team and the execution are both necessary and sufficient, while the idea only modulates or "colors" the odds of success. So, it's as though a good idea is an added bonus, but not in any way necessary. I'm pretty sure I don't agree with this, because a bad idea that still offers some value to a yet untapped market is not that bad of an idea after all. I will however agree with the converse, which is a much weaker statement: that a good idea in unskilled hands likely will fail (I doubt anyone would disagree with this anyway as it merely states the obvious!)
What I would like to point out though is that no company has made it big with a poor or even a mediocre idea ... You can be successful with a mediocre idea, but you certainly won't be big. For "big", all of the following are necessary: (1) the team, (2) the execution, and (3) the idea, and you're almost guaranteed failure if one of them is slightly sub par. In other words, even with the best team and impeccable execution, you're not going to get very far in the direction of "disruption" with a bad or mediocre idea. This of course is aside from what I mentioned earlier: that smart people are good at evaluating ideas, and even if they might come up with a bad one now and then, they'll know how to quickly critique it and find out when they're wrong. But if they're smart, it'll look good to any objective observer at first or even at second glance - or alternatively, the observer just won't get it. Consider anything that has been disruptive - was the idea in any way weak or mediocre? Did the overall concept not usually convey a brand or facade behind which you simply were certain is a smart team? Let's think of some examples: again the obvious ones - IBM, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Intel, Benz, Ford, etc.
In fact, what I would argue is that one commonly overlooked necessary ingredient to disruption is something that goes beyond ideas. It's something more overarching, and perhaps the source of ideas: it's vision. It's vision for how a particular solution can change the way the world works, even in some small way. It's understanding culture and society, and where these currently tend to "break", and it's imagining a fix that is not overly complex that will bypass or mitigate those breaking points. It's simply understanding people and being smart enough to study the tools needed to make the solution work - the science and technology behind the whole thing - and really mastering the fundamentals behind them. Vision is that "je ne sais quoi" that people like Steve Jobs had, that some of us call "genius". I don't call it genius; I call it vision. Mark Zuckerberg clearly has it. What he did with Facebook shows vision beyond what any of his social networking competitors (and now, mere predecessors) displayed. He understood and understands how to "socialize" or "Facebookize" almost everyone's experience on the web. Vision is imagining a social network as not merely living within its own compartment - as a tool enabling people to keep in touch with each other and share news, but as a means to experience the entire web socially. Facebook comes up even when you're not on Facebook - doesn't it? That's a result of vision. I know that in my last post, I harped on those who over-philosophize online social networking and its impact. I still stand by that, and this is not what I'm doing here. I'm merely pointing out that people's (or social networking gurus' and enthusiasts') current "insights" about online social networking were at some point a vision in Mark Zuckerberg's and his team's mind. Now, they are merely observations and reactions.
In my next post, I'll discuss my experience with how people in the tech startup community respond to an articulated vision - or don't. Until then, I'll leave you with this old Apple commercial that has been circulating (you might have seen it), as I believe what it was getting at is quite simple. What distinguishes the people in the video from everyone else is that they had vision, plain and simple, and enough courage to pursue it. The video refers to it as genius - or something that comes across as genius. I would argue that vision results in that perceived genius, and isn't this true of the people in the video? Isn't this the very thing that the video describes, without using the word: is it not the foolishness to want to change the world, and the fact that the status quo doesn't interest these people, nor the standard "rules" of doing things, but something new and different, and markedly better? I am looking to befriend people like the ones in this video. Know of any?
Those who tend to dismiss the importance of "ideas" usually add that even a bad idea in the hands of a good team can still lead to a successful business given proper execution. They also usually point out that on the other hand, the best idea in the world will fail when the team is weak or the execution is lacking. In other words, according to most in the startup world, the team and the execution are both necessary and sufficient, while the idea only modulates or "colors" the odds of success. So, it's as though a good idea is an added bonus, but not in any way necessary. I'm pretty sure I don't agree with this, because a bad idea that still offers some value to a yet untapped market is not that bad of an idea after all. I will however agree with the converse, which is a much weaker statement: that a good idea in unskilled hands likely will fail (I doubt anyone would disagree with this anyway as it merely states the obvious!)
What I would like to point out though is that no company has made it big with a poor or even a mediocre idea ... You can be successful with a mediocre idea, but you certainly won't be big. For "big", all of the following are necessary: (1) the team, (2) the execution, and (3) the idea, and you're almost guaranteed failure if one of them is slightly sub par. In other words, even with the best team and impeccable execution, you're not going to get very far in the direction of "disruption" with a bad or mediocre idea. This of course is aside from what I mentioned earlier: that smart people are good at evaluating ideas, and even if they might come up with a bad one now and then, they'll know how to quickly critique it and find out when they're wrong. But if they're smart, it'll look good to any objective observer at first or even at second glance - or alternatively, the observer just won't get it. Consider anything that has been disruptive - was the idea in any way weak or mediocre? Did the overall concept not usually convey a brand or facade behind which you simply were certain is a smart team? Let's think of some examples: again the obvious ones - IBM, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Intel, Benz, Ford, etc.
In fact, what I would argue is that one commonly overlooked necessary ingredient to disruption is something that goes beyond ideas. It's something more overarching, and perhaps the source of ideas: it's vision. It's vision for how a particular solution can change the way the world works, even in some small way. It's understanding culture and society, and where these currently tend to "break", and it's imagining a fix that is not overly complex that will bypass or mitigate those breaking points. It's simply understanding people and being smart enough to study the tools needed to make the solution work - the science and technology behind the whole thing - and really mastering the fundamentals behind them. Vision is that "je ne sais quoi" that people like Steve Jobs had, that some of us call "genius". I don't call it genius; I call it vision. Mark Zuckerberg clearly has it. What he did with Facebook shows vision beyond what any of his social networking competitors (and now, mere predecessors) displayed. He understood and understands how to "socialize" or "Facebookize" almost everyone's experience on the web. Vision is imagining a social network as not merely living within its own compartment - as a tool enabling people to keep in touch with each other and share news, but as a means to experience the entire web socially. Facebook comes up even when you're not on Facebook - doesn't it? That's a result of vision. I know that in my last post, I harped on those who over-philosophize online social networking and its impact. I still stand by that, and this is not what I'm doing here. I'm merely pointing out that people's (or social networking gurus' and enthusiasts') current "insights" about online social networking were at some point a vision in Mark Zuckerberg's and his team's mind. Now, they are merely observations and reactions.
In my next post, I'll discuss my experience with how people in the tech startup community respond to an articulated vision - or don't. Until then, I'll leave you with this old Apple commercial that has been circulating (you might have seen it), as I believe what it was getting at is quite simple. What distinguishes the people in the video from everyone else is that they had vision, plain and simple, and enough courage to pursue it. The video refers to it as genius - or something that comes across as genius. I would argue that vision results in that perceived genius, and isn't this true of the people in the video? Isn't this the very thing that the video describes, without using the word: is it not the foolishness to want to change the world, and the fact that the status quo doesn't interest these people, nor the standard "rules" of doing things, but something new and different, and markedly better? I am looking to befriend people like the ones in this video. Know of any?
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