How Important is Your Idea to You?
How experience changes the way we act upon our entrepreneurial ideas.
When the people around you are obsessed with building things you tend to see a pattern in how heavily they prioritize the idea. In fact, you can basically tell how experienced someone is by how valuable the idea seems to them (compared to everything else).
The Freshman
Definition: Eyes sparkling, the freshie is a first-time entrepreneur or developer that’s obsessively protective of their billion $ idea. Hopeful, energetic, and likely to fail.
Here’s an exchange that happens to me (and probably lots of other people) on a weekly-ish basis:
Friend: “Hey, I have this absolutely killer idea that is going to make tons of money and that nobody has done yet. I’m probably the first to think of it and I have all these cool feature ideas, but I don’t know how to code. You in?”
Me: “$10 says it’s a music app for house parties where everyone can add or vote on songs in a group playlist.”
Friend: “Shit.”
I’m probably exaggerating a little, but the point is that freshies don’t have any experience actually building anything, so the hardest thing they’ve done is think about building something. Let me be clear and say that I’m barely not a Freshman. But, I have poured thousands of hours into projects as if my life depended on it and watched them both succeed and fail over and over and over again. At best, freshmen “plan” for problems dealing with traction, monetization, and the like, but they still don’t understand that every single step towards every single milestone is going to be chock full of nightmarish problems. Even if you have a great idea, you need an awesome team that will kill to see it come to life.
Famous Words: “Sign this NDA and I’ll give you the privilege of hearing my idea before I offer to pay you nothing to build it.”
The Sophomore
Definition: Bearing scars of the rise and fall of the project that took over their life, the sophomore has now heard hundreds of ideas. They come to the conclusion that it’s 100% about the execution. Still likely to fail.
You know you’re looking at a sophomore when you see “The Lean Startup” under their arm, a project under their belt, and a vague disdain for all the “idea (wo)men” out there that don’t want to stick their hands in the mud. Now that the sophomore has gone through the process of building something (maybe) impressive, they know what it’s like to spend weeks fixing one bad egg’s mistake or reap the rewards of one proactive person’s insight. The good thing is that they’re more cognizant of the importance of method and structure, but they’ve now built a resistance to the onslaught of ideas and might be quick to shoot ideas down (I’ve definitely done this).
Famous Words: “From my experience, that definitely won’t work. Trust me, I’ve tried everything.”
The Junior
Definition: Having weaved in and out of a bunch of different experiences, the junior knows what it’s like to work with good and bad teams, ideas, structures, technologies, strategies, luck, timing, and other variables. Juniors tend to have more diverse ideas of what makes a successful product depending on their individual experiences. Still likely to fail, but knows it.
These people tend to have their own ideas of what makes a successful product but also understand that other people have valid ideas based on their experiences. They know that variables in the “success equation” might change depending on what the idea is or what area of interest it’s in. For example, Health products might prioritize research while social apps might prioritize marketing. They accumulate experience and balance strong principles with open-mindedness.
As an example, one common philosophy that I loosely subscribe to is that an idea acts as an upper limit to the potential of the project. In other words, no matter how good your execution is, if you max out the potential of your idea, you need a better idea to reach that higher potential.
The search for a better idea or a higher potential is called a pivot (diagram). A Junior might have a collection of these philosophies, but also sees the value in the philosophy of others.
Famous Words: “Do you like how I use retention technology to validate my growth hacking relationship integration (with disruption)?”
The Senior
Definition: Has some kind of almighty knowledge and basically shits gold. Still likely to fail, but refuses to believe it.
Who are they? Who the hell knows? I can’t pretend to know what it is that makes people like Elon Musk and Steve Jobs do what they do (or did. RIP). Sure, they make their fair share of mistakes but there’s undoubtedly certain people that just know how to churn out success after success.
It seems that these rare cases also reinvigorate the obsession with the idea, similar to the Freshman. Think of Elon and his obsession with the Tesla door handle or SJ and every thought that entered his brain.
Famous Words: “People don’t know what they want. I know what they want. Buy my butt-gold.”
Takeaway
What grade am I in? How important are my ideas? How do I know if execution is valuable to me? How do I know if my idea is good? How do I progress? The answer to all of these questions is that one size does not fit all. Statistically, you’re probably either “Freshman” or “a little bit of all of them”, but that ultimately doesn’t matter all that much. The college metaphor was an easy way to discuss (and make fun of) the different kinds of entrepreneurs out there, but it falls short by implying a clear graduation from one step to the next. Entering the Sophomore stage does require a serious, long-term project that forces you to make hard decisions and real sacrifices. Other than that, it’s really up to you to figure out which grades you identify with.
To answer the other questions, if you think you have a good idea, go for it, regardless of where you might be. You’re probably not going to be successful on your first try and it’s the experience of building it that really matters. Whether or not the idea, timing, resources, etc. are measurably favorable, you can only really learn by doing it. People might think your specific idea isn’t worth the time, so what’s most important is that you’re unshakably passionate about what you do.
This was fun to write but I do acknowledge that it is an oversimplification. Zuck, Gates, and Jobs were all first timers who graduated through the ranks and still managed to keep their companies from tanking. I can imagine that some people will have issues with the college metaphor, which is valid. However, as a structural element for this essay, I think it served its purpose pretty well. Finally, a friend of mine pointed out that the article downplays the role of the visionary, which can be crucial in more research-intensive fields, so I’m acknowledging that shortcoming as well.
Thanks to Gideon, Alex Lenail, Arielle Chapin, Denis Bravenec, Jared Moskowitz, and Kofi Asante for their input.
Written by Richard Kim. Another word-thing: how building a semi-successful app taught me that the app store was broken:
