It just hit me that this “plans as simulations” concept finally is allowing me to articulate my opinion on whether “ideas mean nothing and it’s all about execution”. Ideas can be thought of as simulations. Simulations that are imperfect and don’t account for various variables that pop up in the real world. When these things pop up, you have to “execute”. When your simulation turns out to be sufficiently inaccurate, you have to “pivot”. But the “idea” is a simulation of a lot of crucial, big picture things. It is the premise that the company is built around. That’s got to be important.
To try to steelman opposing arguments, I expect that they’d revolve around the idea that in practice, startups pivot and iterate so often that ideas are always being thrown out, and it is the ability to learn and adjust that matters, not the ideas themselves. My response would be that 1) Startups ideas are high-risk high-reward. Most fail, so most of the time you end up pivoting. That doesn’t mean the idea was bad though. It could still be good if the upside is high enough to outweigh the low probability of success. 2) I suspect that if people planned properly like you describe in your post, odds of success would be much higher, and ideas wouldn’t be these things that are just bound for failure.
In the phrase ‘ideas mean nothing and it’s all about execution’, I think by ‘ideas’ people normally mean (good, novel) ideas for a product/service.
But indeed they also mean visualizing their product/service succeeding (without thinking about all the implementational details, especially ways it can go wrong).
For a startup to succeed, you need a good product/service idea AND good execution. (As a good product poorly executed will probably fail, as will a bad idea well executed.) So neither is optional.
But by saying ‘ideas mean nothing and it’s all about execution’ people often imply that (good) product/service ideas are relatively easy, and execution is the hard bit. However the fact that only 5% of patents get commercialized, and only 10% of startups succeed, suggests that good ideas & good execution are both scarce.
So maybe ‘ideas mean nothing and it’s all about execution’ is simply a counter to inventors who assume that execution is easy and ideas are the hard bit. As they often do, e.g. individuals who file patents and assume incorrectly that they’re very brilliant/valuable and lots of companies will want to licence or steal their idea.
Or it may be that those who are good at execution can recognise good product/service ideas (fairly well), even if they can’t come up with them themselves. Whereas those who can come up with good ideas usually can’t do good execution. So good executors are more valuable for a startup.
Yeah, I think we agree that it depends on where you draw the line between “idea” and “execution”. It just seems odd to me to draw the line in the place that most people draw it, and which you refer to in your reply, as the idea only being about the product. If you think about an idea as a simulation, it’d be silly to only simulate the product part and to not simulate anything about customer acquisition.
Yes I see what you mean re drawing the line in different places. Similarly an idea for a product can be distinguished from the execution, i.e. creation, of the product.
A few times I’ve been approached by people who claim to have ‘invented’ some software, perhaps with a patent for it, but on closer question they’ve merely had an idea for some software and want someone else to write it. (Again assuming that the idea is the hard part.)
This illustrates that a patent is a simulation (or indeed a plan) of a product. If it were to be created, it would do XYZ. (US patents are meant to include sufficient detail to enable people with relevant skills to implement it—i.e. a complete plan—though European patents needn’t.)
It just hit me that this “plans as simulations” concept finally is allowing me to articulate my opinion on whether “ideas mean nothing and it’s all about execution”. Ideas can be thought of as simulations. Simulations that are imperfect and don’t account for various variables that pop up in the real world. When these things pop up, you have to “execute”. When your simulation turns out to be sufficiently inaccurate, you have to “pivot”. But the “idea” is a simulation of a lot of crucial, big picture things. It is the premise that the company is built around. That’s got to be important.
To try to steelman opposing arguments, I expect that they’d revolve around the idea that in practice, startups pivot and iterate so often that ideas are always being thrown out, and it is the ability to learn and adjust that matters, not the ideas themselves. My response would be that 1) Startups ideas are high-risk high-reward. Most fail, so most of the time you end up pivoting. That doesn’t mean the idea was bad though. It could still be good if the upside is high enough to outweigh the low probability of success. 2) I suspect that if people planned properly like you describe in your post, odds of success would be much higher, and ideas wouldn’t be these things that are just bound for failure.
My inconclusive thoughts around this:
In the phrase ‘ideas mean nothing and it’s all about execution’, I think by ‘ideas’ people normally mean (good, novel) ideas for a product/service.
But indeed they also mean visualizing their product/service succeeding (without thinking about all the implementational details, especially ways it can go wrong).
For a startup to succeed, you need a good product/service idea AND good execution. (As a good product poorly executed will probably fail, as will a bad idea well executed.) So neither is optional.
But by saying ‘ideas mean nothing and it’s all about execution’ people often imply that (good) product/service ideas are relatively easy, and execution is the hard bit. However the fact that only 5% of patents get commercialized, and only 10% of startups succeed, suggests that good ideas & good execution are both scarce.
So maybe ‘ideas mean nothing and it’s all about execution’ is simply a counter to inventors who assume that execution is easy and ideas are the hard bit. As they often do, e.g. individuals who file patents and assume incorrectly that they’re very brilliant/valuable and lots of companies will want to licence or steal their idea.
Or it may be that those who are good at execution can recognise good product/service ideas (fairly well), even if they can’t come up with them themselves. Whereas those who can come up with good ideas usually can’t do good execution. So good executors are more valuable for a startup.
Yeah, I think we agree that it depends on where you draw the line between “idea” and “execution”. It just seems odd to me to draw the line in the place that most people draw it, and which you refer to in your reply, as the idea only being about the product. If you think about an idea as a simulation, it’d be silly to only simulate the product part and to not simulate anything about customer acquisition.
Yes I see what you mean re drawing the line in different places. Similarly an idea for a product can be distinguished from the execution, i.e. creation, of the product.
A few times I’ve been approached by people who claim to have ‘invented’ some software, perhaps with a patent for it, but on closer question they’ve merely had an idea for some software and want someone else to write it. (Again assuming that the idea is the hard part.)
This illustrates that a patent is a simulation (or indeed a plan) of a product. If it were to be created, it would do XYZ. (US patents are meant to include sufficient detail to enable people with relevant skills to implement it—i.e. a complete plan—though European patents needn’t.)