Ideas are worthless
So many people, so many ideas, so few who do anything with it.
An idea is nothing.
A business idea only gains value if it has a financially stable basis. Usually this is income, but this can also be different for foundations, non-profit organizations, grants, etc. Let's focus on the standard model: you need income through customers.
So, a business idea is only of value if it has customers.
So only 1 assignment: find customers!
How many customers depends on the price and your monthly costs to survive.
In the USA you need at least $2000 per month to get by. In Vietnam you can get by on $300 a month.
For convenience, we target $1000 per month.
The price is also highly dependent. If we use a recurring model, the calculation becomes easier than if we sell a product once.
In this case, we assume a monthly recurring model to keep it simple.
At a service charge of $100 per month, we need 10 customers.
We can simplify this in total to 1 goal: Find 10 customers for the idea!
Executable. Give it a time limit and hey presto, you've got a SMART goal!
But sales are scary. People don't want to do sales. It's frustrating, especially online or over the phone.
But it is necessary to validate your idea. As long as you don't do this, it doesn't mean your idea is a bad or a good idea. It also doesn't mean that you were "too busy" and never found the time to do it.
It means you are afraid. Afraid to do sales. Afraid to carry out your idea. And when you're scared you stay in the same place.
You automatically accept your current situation…by doing nothing.
So instead of ideas, look for customers.
Absolutely. But not just individual customers, find a large group of customers that you can access cheaply.
Then of course you have to make sure your idea solves a problem for them.
This is a pretty tired topic, and I think it's not a black and white situation. All ideas aren't worthless, and they aren't the end all be all either.
Some companies succeed for inexplicable reasons, potentially due to the charisma of it's leader, connections, or in spite of itself. Others do everything right, on paper, and then reality wakes them up to the feeling of failure.
You can only try to put in work each day and then feel good about what you're doing. The rest is in destiny's hands.
But an idea only isn’t worthless if you act on it. I’ve found 20-year old notes with “business ideas” that were pretty much Uber, Deliveroo, etc. Not acting on them made them worthless, and in that sense all ideas are until they’re no longer “just ideas.”
I agree!
Just a note before I reply: This post was just in my notes, and I shared it to share my insights and share other opinions through conversation.
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I agree with you that it's definitely not just a black and white situation.
But to say you can only try to put in work each day, feel good about it and rest it in destiny's hands is too easy in my opinion.
First-time CEO usually think that the more ideas and pivot they bring, the better. The result — no finished product and no revenue. But extremely visionary strategy ideas)
Exactly the situation I'm in right now... I forced myself to do the 12/12 challenge. I learnt a lot, but the key take-away is customers or community first.
If one other person or thing likes your idea and uses it. It's not worthless and has value to someone else.
The amount of value is just amount of people reached. If my idea impacted me then I also give it some worth as well.
Not all my ideas are good but at least I can tell myself if I really used it or not.
"The amount of value is just amount of people reached"
I cannot agree more on this.
Unfortunately, a lot of people don't like sharing their ideas and keep them private.
Do you know of any group/app/whatever for sharing ideas?
Great post. Why not partner up to do this? Way more fun than doing this on your own.
I think you're spot on on validation and selling being important (and likely undervalued by many people), but I think saying ideas are worthless is a pretty large oversimplification. I think the key issue I've got with this conventional wisdom is I feel that it is less valuable until you validate. I'd also say that it's initial value is actually pretty decent if it has the power to get you started on something. I don't have large amounts of scientific data, so I could be incorrect, but I suspect that the getting started hurdle kills far more potential businesses than validating or selling late does.
It would be a little like saying that food is worthless until you eat it. While that is partially true, it greatly discounts the value of accumulating some food. While a warehouse of food would not be of use to a single person and would just spoil before they can use it (assuming they're not trying to sell it), it's awfully difficult to eat if you have no food at all.
I agree that an idea must be validated to increase its value and if you've got an area you can get started in, a great way to get an idea is from potential customers, but coming up with some idea that excites you can also be a great motivator for that start and at that point maybe you find a new idea or your original one morphs in to something better.
Just like in the food analogy: I suspect that the value of your ideas is inversely proportional to the number of them you're kicking around. A handful may be necessary to find the one you're excited about, but unless you're in the business of selling ideas (which I think most of us aren't) a warehouse full of them is just a waste of the time and energy used to accumulate them.
So just don't starve yourself. Either by discounting all ideas to 0 or by spending so much energy accumulating that you never sink your teeth into one.
Wow, thank you very much for this comment!
I am very biased - I am a software developer and isolated myself a few times on technical development for an idea. Most attempts failed in making decent revenue (lessons learned though!).
But, I have to say I absolutely love your point of view.
Ideas are very worthy for keeping.
I actually have a list of ideas which I can sort to pick the best one.
So at that stage it is actually valuable for me (ideas don't get lost).
Great point. Getting hyper focused on development without validating can be a slippery slope.
The idea of a sortable list that you refer to is really good!
The best way to prove that your idea is good is having someone willing to pay for it
Right on! Payment = validation
Ideas get such a bad rep. I love ideas. You cannot find a “customer” unless you have an “idea”.
Without an idea, you’re just speaking with a person… not a “customer”
I’m only kidding… I understand that’s not the point of the post. But yes I agree, execution and validation are the precursor to a successful business.
Instead of starting with an idea, people should start with a problem .
Of course, without good execution:
Ideas are worthless on their own without execution, but they're actually of paramount importance, because ideas determine market.
Shitty ideas have terrible markets (markets that are shrinking, resistant to change, needs education, saturated, or just flat-out don't exist).
In that environment, you can be the smartest founder and execute to perfection and still fail.
Conversely, in a good market, you can fumble your way around, fuck up more than twice or thrice, execute poorly, and still grow at a comfortable pace.
Ideas are nothing but also everything.
I agree...but only 50%. There is a "right idea for you" but it's based on your ability to find customers for it.
I worked on multiple companies in the past where as a founder I wasn't connected to the actual customers, so it took a lot of effort to go and find customers.
Now I'm working on https://zeplo.io that was so easy to get our first paying customers because I was connected to so many of them.
In this case the idea was definitely worth something, but only bc I could quickly get customers for it.
Agree that it can be harder if you are not directly connected to your target audience.
In that case, I would go out there and connect with them anyways. To learn from them, get to know their goals, struggles, e.g.
And after that, go for sales first anyways.
What would you do in such case?
Yes, so after understanding their goals and struggles, you need to have a solution/idea in mind. I don't think you can go to sales if you don't have something to sell?
You're a 100% right