One thing that bothers me about silicon valley influenced thinking is that "business idea" always seems to mean "disruptive startup that changes the world and makes billions."<p>Business doesn't have to mean that sort of business. Some guy making $3000 a month selling t-shirts and coffee mugs on etsy has, what I would think of, as a good business. Someone opening up a hotdog stand making $4000 also has a good business.<p>I noticed this in Zambia, lots of people standing by the side of the road selling soda pop and cigarettes or dried fish, or whatever they could get their hands on. Great businesses, great ideas, I'm glad they're doing it and I commend them for it.<p>The signs this article talks about are extremely limiting, to the point where the author is saying most people shouldn't bother. I think they apply for starting a big disruptive tech startup. I don't think they apply to an etsy store or hot dog stand, and those are viable and fairly easy to reach businesses. Personally I'd much rather focus on the easily attainable later sort of business rather than focus my time and energy in a quixotic effort to try and be the next Musk or Zuckerberg.
Not a bad post. One suggestion that has worked for me to stop me working on dozens of ideas at once is to write them down in detail in an ideas diary. This seems to take away most of the desire to start working on the idea right now.
That working on multiple things at the same time one is spot on. That has been the #1 reason I've screwed stuff up.<p>Something I constantly remind myself: it's not that you're not capable of doing that thing, it's that you don't have the capacity. You may be perfectly capable of doing something, but if you don't have the capacity to do it, there's a good chance you'll blow it. Disconnecting your ego from reality on this one will save you a ton of heartache and stress.<p>And for those who say "not me," I, too, was an egomaniac and thought everyone else wasn't as good. Pump your brakes and thank me later.
> That’s why entrepreneurs, myself included, waste years of their lives on shitty ideas that will never work, following the popular trend of “ideas don’t matter, only execution matters”.<p>The saying has to do with just having an idea is worthless in itself, you have to do something with that idea.<p>He interprets it as a shitty idea will be successful if executed well.<p>Wow.
I very much disagree with:<p>> 7. You are operating mainly on assumptions<p>You'll always be operating mainly on assumptions. Everyone will.<p>It does help to check your assumptions against external things, so if you're wrong, you can notice faster. But even the process of noticing that the data is confusing is like 99.99% rationalism and only 0.01% empiricism.
> You are the wrong person for the job<p>The first rule of "some level of self awareness" is to not completely hand yourself over to survivorship bias. So the argument is that Mark is a smart hacker and possesses "balls of steel" -> Mark is successful? And because you're the opposite way -> you'll fail?<p>No. He's been completely blindsided by survivorship bias. It's actually the other way, from that Mark became very successful (via good luck which was probably modulated by some highly attainable level of skill in execution) -> everyone thinks Mark is a super hacker with balls of steel.<p>It's terrible advice which gives you premonitions about yourself which would keep you from even trying. Or maybe the author can actually tell innate potential to some uncanny degree, in which case he should join YC to vet founders.
He says this:<p>“ideas don’t matter, only execution matters”.<p>Bullshit.<p>Ideas matter a lot, and if yours is a shitty one, for you, at that time, with the resources you have, it will almost certainly fail."<p>But most, if not all of his red flags are execution-centeic.<p>I'd like to add, it's not that ideas don't matter. They do. However, most of the time a good idea executed well will beat a great idea done poorly. Furthermore, very few ideas are born great. They usually reguire refinement. That refinement process is...execution.
In the current economic climate, in the tech sector, the idea doesn't matter. It's almost all about execution and social networks.<p>Does your business model leverage network effects? Did you get funding from the right investors? Does your business model reward customers for helping you recruit other customers? If so, then your odds are very good regardless of what you do.<p>If you don't have a network growth strategy, then nobody will know about your startup. You can have the best idea in the history of the universe, it's not going to work because no one has an incentive to use and recommend your product or service but they have an incentive to maintain the status quo.<p>Investors and users need to stand to gain more from your project than from upholding the status quo. And these days many investors are shareholders or employees of the status quo so this is a difficult thing to pull off.
Is it just me or the logic in #3 is deeply flawed? I mean who of the author’s heroes knew in advance what their companies were going to become (and thus how “special” they were)?
5. You can’t build a story / brand around it<p>Many articles focus on the idea of building your community etc, but few actually focus on how to do it amidst all the noise
> When I think about entrepreneurs who have given large amounts to causes, the ones I think of like Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Jeff Bezos<p>What causes has Bezos given to? He shouldn’t even be mentioned in the same sentence as Gates.
> 3. You are the wrong person for the job<p>This is ridiculously bad advice. How can you expect to make a dent in the universe if you can't even manage to believe in yourself?
> 2. You are working on more than 1 thing<p>This is so true it’s almost a cliché. Too often have I been in organizations that try to do a little of everything I hoped to eventually find something that sticks and it has almost never worked out.