If this is true, why do startups run in stealth mode and corporations have super secret labs?
The "idea of" hotmail was amazing and easily communicated. The value immediate. There are clearly ideas that are not a dime a dozen.
I have also solved seemingly intractable problems that groups had worked on for weeks with a single sentence. Every good idea has first thinker. I understand the stance that execution trumps the brilliance of the idea, but it overly devalues ideas themselves and encourages toil over elegance.
I guess the simplest way to say it is the following: Yes, there truly are new ideas that no one has thought of. But for any new idea to truly be valuable, it has to be “worked”.
This is true (IMHO) of anything, whether it is a way of viewing our would (physics), an insight into a new market (startup idea), or even a brand new way of doing something (pure invention).
In every case, unless you put work in, at best it is effectively a hypothesis. It is the energy to ‘validate’ that idea that makes the idea ‘real’.
In general, this is what I believe most stealth startups/labs are really trying to protect, the validation of a specific idea, and the specific method of executing that idea.
All that said, I would argue that truly novel insights are exceptionally rare. If you indeed manage to get one, you should question yourself extensively to validate it truly is new, and if it is, double check that perhaps the reason it isn’t done is because it is not feasible to execute. Even if you pass all those gates, I would argue that unless you can do the necessary execution, the idea, no matter how spectacular, is only marginally valuable.
1. So if an ideas guy does some basic prototyping and shows that the idea works, does it make the idea "real" ?
Or does it really require 100% execution to be considered a serious contributor ?
2. >> what I believe most stealth startups/labs are really trying to protect, the validation of a specific idea,
Could you please expand on that ?
3. What about doing serious research - finding in-depth and reliable knowledge, to show why the idea is likely to work ? Or similarly doing research to find cheap/easy ways to test the idea ?
I'm asking as someone who is strong in research skills, but relatively weak in executing.
To address your last comment first: For any business to succeed, you have to match yourself with someone that complements your skills. If you recognize you are week at executing, you need to find someone that is good at executing, at least if you want to start a business around one of your ideas.
However, if you go this route, PLEASE have realistic expectations on what you are contributing vs what they are contributing.
A great executer with a poor initial idea will still succeed. A poor executer with even the greatest idea in the world will not (with the caveat that luck always plays in things like this).
Therefore, it will not be an equal partnership, not by a long shot. Hypothetical experiment: you get person X to join you, and they do a amazing job, building the company and it is wildly successful. You can argue that X person would not have even looked here if it wasn’t for me. Yes, you would be right, but that is a very small percentage of why it was successful.
To answer your questions directly:
1. I think that in your founding teams you Gould always look at two things: 1. What someone is immediately bringing to the table (effectively capital), and 2. What you expect them to bring over time (and you can choose your time horizon for that second piece). If you only are going to be giving the idea, and not be the one developing it to make it real, you need to understand that is a capital investment. Whereas the person(s) executing are going to be providing value over time. It is important that a cap table reflects the relative value of these things, and that people agree on that value (and there are mechanisms to reallocate as needed). Otherwise things can go bad fast.
2. Expand on stealth startups/labs
While I don’t have direct experience with this one (I never did a stealth startup). What I have observed in stealth startups is that generally they have a “reason” to keep quiet, and it is rarely the idea itself per se. Usually it is because they want to do one of the following:
- build up hype/exclusivity (Segway, Magic Leap)
- try to “find market fit” before doing significant publicity
- in very rare cases, they are trying to protect the idea because it is “so obvious” and easy to copy, and therefore they are trying to give themselves as much of a head start as possible
3. Finally for your last question, I would argue that you aren’t 100% idea at that point, you have done some execution. The question would be how people would value it. But just to give some perspective, there is a reason very few startups are valued particularly high at the onset. Even the greatest startups rarely exceed the low single digit millions for initial valuations, and those are the ones that have already done a fair amount of work. So use that to be realistic about how much an idea is “worth”, even if it is a fantastic one.
Hopefully I am not putting too much cold water out there, but given the rates of startup failure, I would rather you have a realistic view of the world than waste time/resources otherwise.
The "idea of" hotmail was amazing and easily communicated. The value immediate. There are clearly ideas that are not a dime a dozen.
I have also solved seemingly intractable problems that groups had worked on for weeks with a single sentence. Every good idea has first thinker. I understand the stance that execution trumps the brilliance of the idea, but it overly devalues ideas themselves and encourages toil over elegance.
Could you explain?