You Dont Need a Good Idea To Start a Great Company

http://blog.eladgil.com/2011/01/you-dont-need-good-idea-to-start-great.html

by eladgil • 15 years ago

105 40 15 years ago

blog.eladgil.com

Charuru3• 15 years ago

It's true some successful company are the results of serious pivots. But I bet some 80% of them are the result of an initial good idea.

IMO you shouldn't build a company from a bad idea, but you can in your spare time try to validate an idea you're uncertain about. But don't quit your job at Google.

eladgil7• 15 years ago

Support from Fred Wilson's blog that most of his successful outcomes (success defined as "exit) were pivots:

"Of the 26 companies that I consider realized or effectively realized in my personal track record, 17 of them made complete transformations or partial transformations of their businesses between the time we invested and the time we sold. That means there a 2/3 chance you’ll have to significantly reinvent your business between the time you take a venture capital investment and when you exit your business."

Source: http://unionsquareventures.com/2007/11/why-early-stage.php

eladgil7• 15 years ago

More from the same blog post by Fred Wilson on his investments:

"Here’s an interesting breakdown of the “transformers” versus the “stick to our plan” investments in my personal track record.

Greater than 5x – 11 total investments – 7 transformed, 4 did not

1x to 5x – 10 total investments – 6 transformed, 4 did not

Failures – 5 total investments, 1 transformed, 4 did not

Unrealized Union Square investments – 6 total, 3 transformed, 3 have not"

Charuru3• 15 years ago

Are you sure we're talking about the same "transformation"? Also that 17 lumps major and minor transformations together...

For example if someone starts a dating site but later transforms into a general social network, I would call that a complete transformation.

However if you start out making a ruby IDE but later realizes that real money is in MMORPGs or whatever, well you might have as well as waited.

riffer• 15 years ago

It's true some successful company are the results of serious pivots. But I bet some 80% of them are the result of an initial good idea.

The successful ones that are a result of an initial good idea are a strict subset of the ones that choose a promising market.

revorad4• 15 years ago

If you're going to talk of great companies, you can't leave out the two juggernauts of our time.

Neither Google nor Facebook started as a company.

Both search and social networks were written off as markets when the two current leaders entered the space.

I don't want to invoke another semantic wrestling championship between execution and ideas, but you have to give credit to Facebook for realising that social networks are not just about dating. It was their idea of exactly replicating offline social relationships on the web, executed to near perfection that made them successful. Great ideas are a combination of many small seemingly trivial good ideas. They do matter, otherwise one wouldn't know what to execute.

I'm afraid this article does rather poorly on the swombat-o-meter - http://swombat.com/2011/1/20/how-to-write-good-startup-advic...

eladgil7• 15 years ago

I agree re: Facebook and Google. But to your point, both Facebook and Google could have been seen as bad ideas since, as you state: >Both search and social networks were written off as markets when the two current leaders entered the space.

The point of this post is not "Are good ideas bad for a startup". Obviously good ideas are much better then bad ones, and great ones are much better then good ones.

The point of the post is "don't think you need the most amazing idea ever to start something. it is more important to start something and learn what the great idea is along the way".

revorad4• 15 years ago

Sorry, this topic is bound to lead to a semantic merry-go-round!

Facebook and Google are examples of great ideas executed well creating huge markets, which did not exist when they set out. So how would have their founders fared if they chose to focus on a great market at the start? We would have yet another portal with banner advertising and a dating site.

I agree with the point of the post you mention here, but your post doesn't really support that.

Your advice is to focus on a great market. One of the hottest markets right now seems to be photo sharing. But I highly doubt the next great company will come out of there.

Can you give me an example of a great market today?

bowmande• 15 years ago

I would think you don't need a great idea to have a great company, but you need an idea that is worth something.

rradu• 15 years ago

Problem is that it's hard to drop a steady job and be motivated about an idea you know isn't very good.

You need to have an idea that you can believe has a chance of being successful.

scotch_drinker• 15 years ago

Conversely, dropping a steady job for a crappy idea might be just the kind of motivation you might need to become successful. Full disclosure: I'm trying to convince myself of this every single morning.

jayliew2• 15 years ago

Burn the boats: http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/06/andreessen-media-burn-boats...

disclosure: I burned my boat

justinmares• 15 years ago

I also think there are too many cases where people just drop everything and go with an idea that is doomed to fail. It seems like there is competing advice between "do your homework" posts and "go for it!" posts.

sursani• 15 years ago

It's definitely risky to do something like this. You have to be that sure and believe in yourself that you can pull it off. I am trying to do the same exact thing... move from a regular, steady job to starting my own thing. Thus far I have been working on it on the side but at some point I want to make a full switch to working on my company full time and support myself + family.

rwhitman• 15 years ago

Agreed. I can't imagine many people are going to be willing to stake much effort on an idea they aren't excited about.

An exciting idea doesn't have to be a good idea. A lot of dumb ideas seem like good ideas until you're half way through executing on them.

Whether or not having a good idea is critical to a good startup, that can be debated. But few people can muster up motivation to take risks on ideas that don't excite them...

apike• 15 years ago

I started my company around "Let's build an awesome company we want to work at, making products that people want." That was exciting enough for me to quit my big corporate job.

thesash• 15 years ago

It's all about getting the right people on the bus: http://www.jimcollins.com/article_topics/articles/good-to-gr....

ericmsimons3• 15 years ago

Hmm...I agree to disagree. I think the best companies start with an idea. It may not be a product idea, but a goal (ie: let's bridge the gap between technology and social = facebook).

The best products aren't slapped together using existing solutions. They are built from the ground up to solve a problem. If your company is building a solution to solve a specific problem, you are a great company.

jacquesm• 15 years ago

You don't even need an idea at all. All you need is to find a crossroads where two fields intersect and that has not been discovered by anybody else. Those crossroads are discovered, not invented and every time a new field is made by someone with a new idea a thousand new crossroads instantly spring up.

Remember when 'on the internet' was the only thing changed in all those patent applications compared to what was going on before then? Suddenly appending 'on the internet' to something made it worth investigating. New fields open up all the time, if you're observing new findings in popular science it's very hard to not see opportunities enough for several lifetimes to scroll by in a single sitting of reading. Whether they're worth pursuing is another thing but the opportunities are there for the taking, no need to have a good idea or any at all to get off the ground.

Another way to start a great company that is pretty effective is to take an idea that already exists and simply do a better job of it.

m0th87• 15 years ago

The last time I saw a post like this on HN, I replied that both idea and execution are important, with a contrived example. The creativity of the responses made me rethink my stance.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1404428

sabat• 15 years ago

The real point this guy has is: don't wait for the best idea possible -- just pick something that's promising and start. You probably won't end up doing what you start with anyway, but it's better than just spinning your wheels waiting for inspiration.

bretthopper2• 15 years ago

JERRY: So you're saying, I go in to YC, and tell them I got this idea for a startup about nothing.

GEORGE: We go into YC.

JERRY: "We"? Since when are you a hacker?

GEORGE: (Scoffs) Hacker. We're talking about a startup.

JERRY: You want to go with me to YC?

GEORGE: Yeah. I think we really go something here.

JERRY: What do we got?

GEORGE: An idea.

JERRY: What idea?

GEORGE: An idea for the startup.

JERRY: I still don't know what the idea is.

GEORGE: It's about nothing.

JERRY: Right.

GEORGE: Everybody's doing something, we'll do nothing.

JERRY: So, we go into YC, we tell them we've got an idea for a startup about nothing.

GEORGE: Exactly.

JERRY: They say, "What's your startup about?" I say, "Nothing."

GEORGE: There you go.

(A moment passes)

JERRY: (Nodding) I think you may have something there.

ssebro• 15 years ago

Best. Post. Evar.

j18490• 15 years ago

Straw man argument.

'You don't need a good idea' != 'You don't need an idea'

bretthopper2• 15 years ago

You're taking this too seriously.

umeshkacha• 15 years ago

I think link is down for this article. Could you please check?

You Dont Need a Good Idea To Start a Great Company

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