Your idea is brilliant, your idea is worthless (2016)
First, who has not heard this 10 million times, yet people keep writing that &quot;it is not the idea, it&#x27;s the execution.&quot;? What&#x27;s next, you&#x27;re going to tell me that the sky is blue, the grass green? How many more times is someone going to write the same article? It&#x27;s like writing about supply and demand - hey, did you know as supply goes down, price goes up? Wow. Thanks for that brilliance.<p>However, the reality is that the saying is completely wrong.  Totally, completely 100% wrong.<p>Sure there&#x27;s a sh-tload of ideas. Bad ones. Great ideas are truly rare.<p>If ideas are so nothingburger, that no one is interested in stealing your idea, why do you think that all companies make employees sign NDA&#x27;s? Why do you think that companies have such tight security? Did you read about the case where Apple had police raid someone&#x27;s home because they thought that he had a latest version of their iphone at his house?<p>Why do you think universities have classes on competition? What do you think they teach? That there is only one single day spent in the class, where the professor says, &quot;Don&#x27;t worry about competition or your secrets being stolen, there&#x27;s no such thing, it&#x27;s a fairy tale.&quot; And the only test on the final is, &quot;Should you worry about your ideas being stolen, yes or no?&quot;<p>This stupid idea that it is not the idea, that it is the execution makes me grind and gnash my teeth in utter rage every time that I read it.<p>Am I saying that execution doesn&#x27;t matter? Don&#x27;t be a twit. Of course it does. When I was young I had the idea to work at a restaurant for money. Did anyone think there had to be no execution where I didn&#x27;t have to apply for the job and do the work once hired? Someone has to write an article about that? Hey, did you know once you&#x27;re hired, you have to do the work??? But a friend had an idea that brought him an income 10 times as much as what I did. Did he tell me about the idea? No, because if he did, I would have done that, too, leaving less money for him, maybe put him out of business. Don&#x27;t tell me the idea isn&#x27;t important. His idea was worth $1000 per weekend to my $50 per weekend. He probably didn&#x27;t execute as much as I did, either. Work was much harder in a restaurant than his idea.<p>But let&#x27;s say you have the idea of, oh, razor blade sandwiches, where you have two slices of bread filled with razor blades. You can have the best mustard and mayonnaise, the best artisan bread, world-class marketing, 
 - the best freaking execution in the work, and nobody is going to buy your f-ing sandwich.<p>if you think ideas are worthless, just ask Tyler and Cameron Wilklevoss. They had the idea of Facebook, and hired Mark &quot;The Thief&quot; Zuckerberg to do the programming. Zuckerberg then started creating his own and did not work on the Winklevoss&#x27;, even though he said he was.<p>While you cannot patent an idea, Zuckerberg still stole the idea, which he recognized was a great idea. Yes, there has to be execution, but that is what the Winklevoss twins paid Zuckerberg to do for them, but, to repeat, Zuckerberg stole the idea.<p>And I personally have had ideas stolen by people whom I discussed the ideas with, to get their take on it. I&#x27;m telling you, nothing, <i>nothing</i> feels worse in the world when this person takes the idea and uses it. I had a bunch of projects I was working on, so I could not do anything for 6 months on it, but I was gathering information and ideas, and was asking for their thoughts on how to make it better. Nothing feels worse than having your idea stolen, nothing. I&#x27;m still bitter, all these years later, and it sure ended the friendships.<p>People say it is 1% idea, and 99% execution, but that&#x27;s so wrong. It&#x27;s 99% the idea, and 99% the execution.<p>And the author saying a terrible idea executed is better than a great idea not executed is just retarded in the real world.<p>And again, I&#x27;m not saying execution is unimportant, it is silly to think an idea is useful by itself by realistic and intelligent people, and execution is unimportant. If someone thinks that their idea is worth a million dollars and they want someone else to do the execution and split the profits, well, that&#x27;s not something to talk about, because that person is just an idiot. But that has nothing to do with the importance of the idea.<p>Keep your own council. Play your hand close to your vest.<p>I could go on about this forever, giving more and more examples and reasons, but I think you all catch my drift.