Ben Point

The Anthropology of Software

May 22, 2007

Sorry, Ideas Aren't Worth Much

If you have 3 or more ideas it feels like you are bursting with ideas. If you have 10 or more ideas you'll probably say you have a "million" ideas. Why? Because ideas are like trees with branches reaching out into the sky in so many directions. Each idea has so many possibilities it doesn't seem to have boundaries, and so the effect of ideas in your brain is overwhelming. For budding entrepreneurs with active imaginations it can be hard to see the forest for the trees.

Some will insist that a good idea is priceless. But I am talking about business ideas. A business idea creatively connects your real circumstances with a real possibility of turning a profit. Such an idea is valuable only in the sense that the first step in a marathon is essential.

People assume it goes like this:

1. Entrepreneur gets Idea
2. Entrepreneur puts it into action

But this is a terribly inaccurate way of describing the process. To explain why it is misleading, let me go through a few things first.

Keeping the idea a secret

One of the common instincts when you have what you think is a great idea is to keep it secret. If you discussed it in a forum, why then everyone would jump in like a pack of, let me see, not a pack of wolves, that wouldn't be right, this is about creating, not devouring. I want a metaphor that evokes something trained and ready, waiting for that one single chance to build something amazing.

What is that animal in nature that sits for days and days, scanning the landscape, waiting to discover a great idea for what to create? There is no such thing! In nature, animals wait for something to eat, not something to create.

There are people who sit on their butts looking out for that next great idea, but you'll notice that if they do like an idea it is never quite perfectly suited to them and they soon grow disillusioned with it. People who can truly create things are already busy creating things, so busy in fact that they will not likely be able to change course and shift all that momentum because of someone else's bright idea.

Looking for an accomplice

Sometimes you have an idea and you even have something started and you feel you just need someone to understand your dream and put great passion into helping promote it and bring it to reality. Actually I think to some extent everyone hopes for this at some point. But again I don't recall reading a single story where this happened, except perhaps the one where Simon Peter dropped his not unprofitable fishing business to dedicate his life to the new purpose he had just discovered.

Your partners will be partners due to relationships and coinciding circumstances, not due to your idea.

Are you really an entrepreneur?

Creative people are rarely idle. They are trying to accomplish something, tinkering with a car, painting or planning excursions. Creative people are not necessarily entrepreneurial.

I think you know if you're an entrepreneur at heart. When you were a kid you were the one who sold lemonade out front; you advertised to draw signs for a small fee; held a raffle at a family event to help pay for that go-cart. And in each case you had discussions with adults about the monetary logic behind it all. Hey! You were already negotiating with potential board members!

And you rarely created anything you were proud of without wondering if you could make your first million off of it.

A buffet of ideas

Benji Smith challenged himself to blog about 30 ideas in 30 days in an effort to decide which idea to focus on (he felt compelled to explain the thinking behind the ideas to show they weren't flippant, so it took longer than 30 days). The other reason he did it, I suspect, was just to show how many legitimate ideas one could have and how ideas are the easy part. Well, he finally made a choice and later a new choice and who knows where it will lead.

Reading about other peoples' ideas and business stories helps you to recognize what makes for a good idea. Even your own ideas might be ones that someone else could do better than you. Ultimately the best idea for you is going to come from what you're already doing. The key to a good business idea is that you have a unique opportunity to execute on it, and the best place to look is in what you've been doing recently. Yes, you're a software developer, but what specific project captured your interest, had you so fascinated you couldn't stop working on it?

Idea versus execution

If an idea is truly right for you and your circumstances, then you will have the fascination with it necessary to execute on it, and it is unlikely that anyone else will be in a position to hear about it from you and execute on it better than you.

You'll see it discussed a lot, that "it is all in the execution." It is a common response to would-be entrepreneurs who go off every second like firecrackers, they've got the next big idea, the next hot thing, and its just hanging there like ripe fruit for the plucking. Then nothing happens.

I regularly run across what I think are fabulous ideas. So often that it can actually be an obstacle to getting other things done as I consider the possibilities. Someone will get together with me and discuss an idea hoping I will magically find an abundant as yet undiscovered reservoir of time I didn't know I had.

Actually, there is no "Idea" with a big I

Although in some cases there might be what could be considered an "initial" idea, there was probably already something before that. In truth, there is really no "Idea" with a capital I, there is really only a steady stream of execution constantly adjusted according to a steady stream of ideas.

At the top I said this was inaccurate:

1. Entrepreneur gets Idea
2. Entrepreneur puts it into action

The real story goes more like this:

1. Entrepreneur has many projects hobbies and contacts
2. Entrepreneur discovers a genuine prospect in amongst these
3. Entrepreneur puts his full attention on it
4. It changes, perhaps one facet of it becomes the main focus
5. Entrepreneur keeps at it

Ideas are not worthless

The purpose of this is to temper your sense of the value of an idea. Of course an idea is priceless in the sense that so many of the blessings we experience in life are priceless. But for an entrepreneur, business ideas are like a fluid running in and around (and coming out of) the things we do. The milestones are built on actions, not ideas.

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