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Comment by danieltillett | Hacker News Reader

Yes the market is awash with idea - ideas that are just OK or so-so - very few are a really, really good. The problem is as always telling the truly good ideas from the just good. Having a good checklist is one way I think.

I am most defiantly not saying that truly good ideas should be kept secret, but I am saying they have true intrinsic value. Sometimes this value can be best utilised by sharing widely and sometime is best utilised by keeping quiet. The important thing is knowing when it is best to stay quiet and best to talk.

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A lot of fantastically great ideas seemed like terrible ideas until they were executed. That is why a lot of people say that ideas are cheap, execution is what has value.

And honestly, a lot of ideas were terrible until they were executed. It was only through the process of exploration & execution that a practical use or market emerged & evolved from the original spark.

This is not such a great approach to take if you have limited resources. Sure you might get lucky and find a great idea (ala AirBnB) even though your first idea is not great, but it is not the optimal way to proceed. I would much rather start with a good idea that I try to make better, than a terrible idea I have to figure out how to pivot into a good idea.

I think there is a massive difference between your own judgement of an idea and others' judgement of it.

The latter has to go through difficulties in expressing the idea and the justification of it, and in the understanding, by a different person, of those details.

I think the "ideas are cheap" / "good ideas seemed terrible" thing is mostly from the perspective of other people.

If that's true then individuals shouldn't take it too seriously when it comes to their own ideas.

This is true, the key is seeming like a terrible idea, not actually being a terrible idea.

A good idea does not have to appear to be good after 15 seconds, in fact, it is probably a warning sign if everyone thinks your idea is good straight away as then it is likely that someone else has had it and is working on it, or there is some fundamental flaw that you have missed.

Execution most defiantly is critical, but the quality of the idea make execution much easier. The purpose of my post was not to downplay the importance of execution, but to touch on the value of truly good ideas and more importantly how you might find them and recognise them.

> A good idea does not have to appear to be good after 15 seconds, in fact, it is probably a warning sign if everyone thinks your idea is good straight away as then it is likely that someone else has had it and is working on it, or there is some fundamental flaw that you have missed.

Have you ever been in a class where you feel lucky when someone asked a question which you felt too embarrassed to ask? There is a class of products, which would feel immediately useful but no one feels like building them.

For eg, Errorception[1] was probably the first Javascript error tracking product made. I could guess people before this tested manually on all browsers or had a custom front-end tracking solution. As a product, it felt immediately useful, one more headache resolved but it took till 2011 for the product to get made although the problem was always there.

Of course, products like these won't make billion dollar companies but definitely be useful to large number of people.

[1]: https://errorception.com

Except that one of the hallmarks of a really good or great idea is that almost anyone you tell it to says "oh, of course, it's so simple."

But you need a big enough sample size to know it's not friendship-bias from your trusted confidants and some crazy guy with money one of your college buddies knows.

Leading us back to execution...

I do address this in my post. One of the hallmarks of a good idea is one that is simple to explain, but hard to think of for the first time. These idea have the advantage of removing competition, but lowering the barrier to acceptance. They are of course rare.

I was responding particularly to:

> it is probably a warning sign if everyone thinks your idea is good straight away as then it is likely that someone else has had it and is working on it, or there is some fundamental flaw that you have missed.

I can't get to the original at the moment so my comment is specific to this comment thread's context.

I'll just leave my favorite economics joke:

Two economists were walking down the sidewalk discussing their recent research when one looks down and sees a $20 bill.

"Look, a $20!" says one, slowing to bend down and retrieve it.

"Impossible," replied the second, stopping the first mid-bend, "if there was a $20 bill on the ground, someone would have already found it and picked it up."

It is just a warning sign that you should be careful - I have picked up many a $20 bill off the street by being aware - both literately and metaphorically.

On this topic I found a wallet once with over $1000 in cash in it which I gave back to the owner. He could not believe that I would do such a thing, but the personal value it gave me doing this was worth much more than any monetary value I could have got from spending the money. Maybe I am an idiot :)

Sure, I agree with you. I think PG said that how good the idea is, is a value multiplier. I think the problem is when people believe that ideas, on their own, have inherent value.

But (100 idea) * (0 execution) is still = 0

The reverse is also true, however: (0 idea) * (100 execution) is also 0

I think maybe what I believe (and many people believe) is that execution is weighted higher than idea, but that doesn't mean that idea has no value at all - just not so much that it is usually more important to execute well than worry about the perfect idea. Also, most people have many ideas, so if one fails or turns out to be bad, its not such a big deal and can be fixed.

Finally, we have the "ideas people" who bring little to the table but the idea. I would argue that these ideas have close to no value unless the person can augment it with something else of value too.

Yes the quality of an idea is a multiplier - I like to the think of execution as the multiplier of the idea given good ideas are rarer than good execution, but this is just personal preference.

Good ideas do have intrinsic value, because if you tell me a truly good idea I will steal it from you. If you have any idea that ticks 10 or more points from my list please send me an email telling me all about it :)

Hmm. Maybe. (re: execution being the multiplier) I'm not completely convinced either way, I guess.

if you tell me a truly good idea I will steal it from you

I think perhaps most people don't have a list, like you do (even unofficially in their heads). Most people are too busy with their own ideas to bother with others, even if they really are great. I suppose if you have a criteria for measuring the quality of the idea, as you do, then you can make objective decisions about an idea based on its actual merits (as defined by your criteria) rather than gut feeling or wanting to work on your own stuff.

I suppose what I'm saying is that most ideas are cheap because most people don't have a good way of objectively measuring their value beyond executing and seeing how it goes.

Note though that I've usually heard it as "ideas are cheap", not "ideas have no value" -- despite what I might have said in my previous comments :D

Yes I think if I have anything of value to contribute to this topic it is not my criteria of what is a good idea or not, but the idea of having some sort of objective list of your own. I would encourage everyone to put together their own list as just the process of doing this is highly valuable. In doing so you start to question your own assumptions and work out what is important to you.

> execution is weighted higher than idea

What does "weight" means in a multiplicative combination?

(3a) b = a * (3b) = 3 a * b

I simply meant that "one point of idea quality" != one point of execution quality, but since its all made up abstract stuff anyway, I suppose all I meant is that a "good idea" has a different value than "good execution" (some people say more, some people say less).

I got that, I was nitpicking about the formula, but not too much. I still have a point to make (and did communicate it badly).

What I don't get is any relation between "point of idea quality" and "point of execution quality" that could survive a second of thought. This is too much like mixing different unities, that are ok to multiply but not to compare at face value.

I don't see how "execution is worth more than idea", or the other way around, or anything in between could ever make sense.

You're probably right. I haven't really thought about it that much, I'm just trying to articulate how I understand what I've heard.

I personally think that perhaps good ideas without execution have little value, but execution without good ideas probably has equally little value.

I say this because I've experienced cases where I had an idea that I thought was good, but did nothing about, only to (later) find somebody else who did the exact idea I had in exactly the way I would have. Clearly the idea had value for that person, but not for me - but the only difference is execution.

Good Ideas that get tested will make money and mature with feedback.

Truly Great Ideas hidden away rely on you (and your confidants) alone to mature, grow, and test.

Perhaps part of that intrinsic value in a Truly Great Idea is the debt you start to incur working the Great Idea before it's ever given a chance to prove itself.

There's a bunch of discussion about this [0][1][2][3], but it comes down to the cost of opportunity and the drive to spend that effort and resources. You've had your idea, already bought into it, and have the history around the idea that will drive implementation and innovation.

Probably no one else you tell it to has that. And anyone else that wants to work on some awesome new startup is already circling their own fantastic(TM) idea.

So share! Get feedback from smart people who will help shortcut the path to takeoff for your idea. Because if someone has a good idea in the same vein as your great idea and executes, how long until your great idea is yet another "that could have been me"?

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4732684

1: https://beacon.wharton.upenn.edu/entrepreneurship/2015/02/no...

2: https://open.buffer.com/one-will-steal-startup-idea/

3: https://www.google.com/search?q=no+one+is+going+to+steal+you...

> The problem is as always telling the truly good ideas from the just good.

Not only telling the difference, but defining it. The difficulty is avoiding post hoc evaluation, ie. the idea that looks very good in hindsight because it succeeded and the great implementation makes it look compelling.

This is why it is great to have some sort of checklist of your own on which to judge the quality of your ideas.

Just putting together such a checklist has enormous value as you start to question all your assumptions about what a good idea must have - it is not “this sounds cool lets go”.

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