Ideas Suck: A Tale of Lust vs Love
This is a guest blog post by Chris Prescott, Founder and CEO of Fantasy Shopper, a social shopping startup launching in the Summer 2011 You can follow him on Twitter at @cpresc
It’s often said that great idea + great execution = great startup. Sure, that’s a reasonable summary, but the real ingredients of a great startup are most certainly not just 50% great idea. You know why?
Ideas suck.
Ideas are everywhere and pop into our heads all of the time. Ideas are not the inspirational spark that ignites us into becoming startup entrepreneurs. We only ever need one of them and the rest suck because they do nothing more than cause noisy distractions.
I hear new ideas every day. Usually pitched by enthusiastic, slightly scatter-brained developers, and the ideas normally arrive like buses; 3 at a time. They can often be shot down with utterings of revenue generation, market size, barriers to entry, team resource and cashflow. Ideas tend to be poorly thought out, flash in the pan business suggestions with no substance.
Ideas suck.
Before joining HackFwd, I had way too many ideas. I would jump from one idea to another on a daily basis. I would stay up all night pondering, sketching, smoking, coding, designing and drinking coffee until the sun rose.
The more I think about it, the more I think an idea shares the same traits as lust; you’re up all night with it, but after a while, you get bored and drop it… then the next idea comes along and your excitement re-emerges… for a while… and then you get bored and drop it… and so it continues… round and round you go…
Ideas suck.
An alternative to having an idea is to have a vision.
In terms of traits, a vision is more similar to love than lust. It takes time to achieve a vision, it’s something you nurture, something that you grow into more and more each day and the more you put into it, the more you get out of it. A vision is something that you spend every waking minute thinking about. Something that is so ridiculously complex that it becomes beautifully elegant. Simplified. Real. A vision will give you the foundation for genuine confidence, hope and expectation.
My advice to anyone running around chasing ideas is to pick the best one, marry it, stay faithful and start developing your vision as soon as possible.
Like love, your vision should be built around:
Trust - Iron out the flaws in your business model so that you trust it entirely. Once you trust it, others will trust it too and this will create energy and momentum.
Pride - Take pride in your product, focus on its best features and elaborate on them. Your product will not ever be perfect at everything.
Effort - Long term reward requires long term effort. Accept there will be ups and downs and and be prepared to overcome these challenges. Make it work.
Strength - When the time comes, have the strength to pivot. Like love, a vision is dynamic and can change while still maintaining its core value.
Passion - Stand on the metaphorical mountain top and tell the world how much you love your startup. Passion is viral.
Respect - Don’t get complacent and let things slip. Respect that your competitors are waiting in the wings, ready to whisk your userbase off into the sunset.
Commitment - Be in it for the long run. Ask yourself whether your startup is something you would want to work on for the rest of your life. If it isn’t, you don’t love it enough.
Ideas suck.
Visions rock.
Fantasy Shopper started off as an idea but after hundreds of hours of sleepless nights, brainstorming, researching and discussing, it slowly grew into a vision, something the whole team now shares. And just like love, our vision isn’t something we can really put our fingers on, but we know it’s there as we can feel the magic happening every day.
So referring back to the earlier model, I suggest replacing great idea with vision - and I’ll cover vision builders in part 2 another time!
great idea + great execution = great startup
vision + vision builders = success
You can keep an eye on Fantasy Shopper’s progress by liking their Facebook Page.
