Ideas
A quasi-pessimistic view of Ideas.
“If only I can get one MAD idea”, everyone seems to be mumbling around these days, with so much enthusiasm.
Ideas, Ideas, Ideas. I feel they overrated. But of course, I believe they are powerful. An idea for me is about much more than the ‘hype’. It’s about the fulfillment that comes with you executing that idea and bringing it to life. While some people’s prerogative may be to have that mad idea that will make them blow, I take pride in being a maker. Make good shit that people want. when you do that, funds would most likely not be a problem.
There’s a nuance between having cool ideas and having good ideas that are actually worth executing.
I once tweeted this,
Shortly after, Mark Essien (coincidentally) tweeted his perspective:
While I have immense respect for M.E, I find his perspective a bit disconcerting. The difference between the two tweets highlights the contrast between pessimism & optimism, in validating any idea.
Paul Graham talks about the top idea in your mind, & the general quality/worth of ideas. More notably, ‘Social network for pets’:
“Millions of people have pets. Often they care a lot about their pets and spend a lot of money on them. Surely many of these people would like a site where they could talk to other pet owners. Not all of them perhaps, but if just 2 or 3 percent were regular visitors, you could have millions of users. You could serve them targeted offers, and maybe charge for premium features.”
While it may make little sense to some and much sense to others, questions arise nonetheless:
- What is the viability of the idea? (worth),
- How executable is it?
- Not just from a product developer’s perspective, but how do you intend to onboard users and make them stay?
- Is it truly something people want?
From PG’s article, ‘How to get Startup Ideas’:
“The danger of an idea like this is that when you run it by your friends with pets, they don’t say “I would never use this.” They say “Yeah, maybe I could see using something like that.” Even when the startup launches, it will sound plausible to a lot of people. They don’t want to use it themselves, at least not right now, but they could imagine other people wanting it. Sum that reaction across the entire population, and you have zero users.”
Now if we compare Tweet 1 & Tweet 2, and apply it to the hypothetical ‘Social network for pets’, this would be the nearest thought process:
Tweet 1
New Idea Alert: Facebook for pets. Cool.
- Why Facebook for pets? Pet owners may not really want a social network to share their pets pictures, etc.
- Next, you go on to look for answers to why pet owners don’t want a Facebook for their pets.
Tweet 2
New Idea Alert: Facebook for pets. Yes!
- Why Facebook for pets? Because there’s actually no social network for pet owners. This is important. They’d share photos of their pets, share stories of their intimate lifestyles with their pets and even find partners for their pets to mate and have babies, etc
and with pursuing a great idea in mind, both parties would go on to the next — Execution phase.
Now, why I believe Tweet 1 stays winning is because, with that right mix of pessimism in line with first principle thinking, the first step of execution would be Idea Validation. While the next step for Tweet 2 would be developing a prototype. Now, these are two very different (and actually) plausible approaches.
Generally, the sentiment — “This may not work” would tend to Idea validation/User research (and by user research I mean talking to users, not just Google search), while “How can this work?” would tend towards Product development/Launching.
But, While trying to validate your idea, you’d be building a prototype for users to interact with, for that sole purpose — i.e. to observe the users’ reaction and evaluate if they like it and by extension, would actually pay for it. Because according to Tweet 1, you should solve the problems of why it won’t work. Meanwhile [2] will be developing a prototype to take to market. Because according to Tweet 2, your default position should be “how could this work?”
Why does the balance seem to hinge towards Pessimism, rather than Optimism? From our little analysis, we can see that the viability of the idea behind Tweet 1 actually has more ‘latency’ than Tweet 2. Now, I am generally an optimist. That trait infact, makes me want to think ahead towards the future and where technology is taking us, everyday. But in analyzing good ideas with the premise of them turning into startups, you notice that the vast majority fail. According to CB Insights, the biggest reason why startups fail (42%) is because “The Idea did not serve the market need”. It is, for this reason,
I believe Ideas should be handled with the right mix of pessimism and action (talking to users), rather than a wrong mix of optimism and execution (building an ‘MVP’).
When developing ideas, it’s that right mix of pessimism and action that prompts you to take a chill pill, commit to finding (to a predictive extent) the loopholes and fixing them first, as opposed to executing head-on. Infact, that ‘hacker ethos’ of fixing broken things is a valid enough reason to be generally pessimistic while implementing ideas. You can understand why I think this way here.
One may argue whether it is safer to be generally pessimistic about ideas. This in my opinion is because when you start that way, you’d constantly find yourself going back to talk with users, to validate every single little feature you ship. You wouldn’t want to be optimistic so much that you depend on your views towards things only. This may sound counterintuitive because optimism is the trait that is generally associated with having that sort of eagle’s eye-view of your startup, which allows you see what your startup could grow into (& the use cases that satisfy that). While I agree with that, talking to your users is usually the best and greatest strategy.
At any giving point, a startup is failing because they are not growing. Essentially, startup failure is only solvable by growth.
But well, Ideas are probably not overrated — maybe optimism is.
