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Comment by mvpu | Hacker News Reader

"Take the ego out of ideas" is sound advice for investors, not entrepreneurs. Ego is a loaded word, but if you define it, in this context, as an irrational belief that you are right and the world will catch up, then it's essential for every entrepreneur. "New ideas" get no support. You're the only support. You have to strongly believe that the world will get there, do whatever it takes to convince them to get there, and survive long enough to bank on that moment. Without that ego in your idea, you probably won't survive long enough.

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You still need to be sharply realistic about your own ideas, though. Blindly charging ahead with the first idea that occurs to you, as an entrepreneur, is probably not going to work no matter how strongly you believe the world will get there. Neither will not charging ahead at all, assuming that because the last 10 ideas failed the next one will too.

Many years ago on HN, I think before he even became part of YC, Paul Buchheit said "You have to be arrogant enough to believe that everybody else is wrong, but humble enough to believe that you may be wrong too." That about sums it up.

Yeah. Entrepreneurs need to know that the average response they get in the stage seed is all about social proof. When you look like a struggling guy saying something crazy, the public is going to treat you that way. You're going to get that all the way up until you look like a rich guy, and then they'll be begging to know what you did to get there and trying to copy it.

This means that public response to the bare idea is never a good barometer, and you have to look to other things for data about whether it's going to be successful enough. This requires rigorous study and brutally honest introspection.

Don't get bent out of shape if people don't understand or respect what you're doing, but don't assume you're invincible or automatically right. Some wanna-be entrepreneurs waste their entire adult lives starting failing business after failing business, assuming that starting a business is the key to success, and that any idea they have is intrinsically valuable. Don't do this.

> Blindly charging ahead with the first idea that occurs to you, as an entrepreneur, is probably not going to work no matter how strongly you believe the world will get there.

Statically, you're just as likely to be right with the first idea as the one you're sat on for months

Sure, but statistically, if each idea has a 10% chance of working, you're significantly more likely to have one good idea if you test 10 ideas (1 - 0.9^10 = 65%) than if you test one idea (10%). And even if you work really hard at that idea, so that its chance of success goes up to 20-30%, you still would be better with the 10 quick tests.

In practice, that usually means do the minimum you can to verify the key assumptions of each idea, back out and try something different if any key assumption doesn't hold, and if you find something that has a good chance of working, stick with it.

I'm sorry, that sound a bit absurd to me. What did you mean?

If you sit on an idea for months, then that means it has survived a a good deal of reasonability testing and careful analysis, as you have been mentally prodding and poking the idea for a while, and haven't found a good reason to abandon it yet.

While the idea you just came up with has been through absolutely no deep analysis, by definition.

The subconscious mind is incredibly powerful, but it needs time to do its work.

Of course, slowly acquired self-delusion and emotional entanglement regarding the idea is a risk. But this varies significantly among people, can be somewhat defended against, and doesn't negate my main point.

Well said.

In the grand scheme of things though - I don't think most entrepreneurs are doing anything new. Anecdotally I failed on 2 new-idea companies and had 2 successful ones with very little new and I have a third on the way. Most businesses grow by stealing market share; not creating new categories. I agree that some need to be steadfast with their idea and vision but that seems to be an exception.

I will say that doubters are everywhere and you do have to be able to persevere. My own wife was one of them with one of my companies. She'd say why are you spending so much time on that business when it doesn't make any money? I also met with an industry expert at the beginning and they told me not to bother; that there's already an 800 lb gorilla in the space and the market doesn't really need another entrant. Needless to say I bootstrapped it to 40k MRR and that gorilla offered to buy my company and I told them no.

Many times the doubt is not about your idea; people are just scared of any existing competition. They think - oh there are other companies doing that. Non-entrepreneurs seem to get more jazzed about new ideas that aren't being done and they get completely disappointed and paralyzed when they find out their idea isn't new and someone is already doing it. To the point they won't even see how they are doing it and see if they can do it better. I get jazzed when I see companies making a lot of money in a niche but not doing it well.

For many people, maintaining the ego on your idea/vision results in second mortgages on their house, high credit card debt, a lot of time away from family, and not knowing when to hang it up or change course.

Separately - taking the ego out of ideas is definitely a good thing when building a company with one or more partners.

"You have to be ruthlessly open-minded and constantly willing to reexamine your assumptions. You have to take the ego out of ideas, which is a very hard thing to do." - Marc Andreesen

Having ego in the idea means to equate the idea with yourself. So if someone criticizes the idea, ask questions, points out flaws, or issues with it a) don't take it personal and b) you need to be open to those and not dig your heels in refusing to adapt because "then it isn't my idea!"

To me take the ego out of ideas is more "don't tie the idea up in you." If you tie it up in yourself, people pointing out flaws in the idea can feel like a personal attack no matter the validity of the concern, which can make it harder to look for adjustments to your idea to find the most correct path, as the odds are your original idea will need adjustment to reach its final, valuable form.

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

"Progress" isn't necessarily positive.

I don't view irratiality as a positive quality for entrepreneurs. From outsiders, they may seem crazy and stubborn. This is because those outsiders cannot understand the underlying assumptions or don't envision the world in the way the entrepreneur does. The entrepreneur should in fact always be rational, and make sure every decision is made based on solid ground.

I think there's an important distinction to draw between the problem you want to solve (your vision, the ethos of your company), and how you plan to go about solving it (your product idea, your go-to-market plan).

You should stick with your vision, but not tie your ego into how you originally planned to execute towards that vision.

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