Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 48 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: How much is an idea worth?
— From A mash-up of two books: Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur, by Derek Sivers and REWORK: Change the way you work forever by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
“We all have that one friend who says, ‘I had the idea for eBay. If only I had acted on it I’d be a billionaire!’ That logic is pathetic and delusional,” say Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson in their book Rework. “Having the idea for eBay has nothing to do with actually creating eBay. What you do is what matters, not what you think or say or plan.”
I guess at this point I shouldn’t confess that I had the idea for Uber, but I really did. (Try to flag down a cab in New York, and you’ll see it’s not hard to have such an idea.) Needless to say, I did not act on it…
The point that Fried and Hansson are trying to make is that ideas are nothing without execution. They go on to say, “Think your idea’s that valuable? Then go try to sell it and see what you get for it. Not much is probably the answer. Until you actually start making something, your brilliant idea is just that, an idea. And everyone’s got one of those.”
“Ideas are cheap and plentiful. The original pitch idea is such a small part of a business that it’s almost negligible. The real question is how well you execute.” –Fried and Hansson
And that is the reason why Derek Sivers, entrepreneur and author of Anything You Want, says that he doesn’t want to hear people’s ideas, because he’s not interested until he sees the execution. That is why most investors won’t sign a non-disclosure agreement just to hear an idea from someone that is pitching them for money. They want to see a minimum of execution and thus, traction, before they invest their money.
Sivers created the table below to show how even the most brilliant idea is worth nothing without execution. “[Ideas] are just a multiplier,” says Sivers. “Execution is worth millions.”
IDEA
AWFUL IDEA = -1
WEAK IDEA = 1
SO-SO IDEA = 5
GOOD IDEA = 10
GREAT IDEA = 15
BRILLIANT IDEA = 20
EXECUTION
NO EXECUTION = $1
WEAK EXECUTION = $1000
SO-SO EXECUTION = $10,000
GOOD EXECUTION = $100,000
GREAT EXECUTION = $1,000,000
BRILLIANT EXECUTION = $10,000,000
And how does this work?
Sivers explains, “To make a business, you need to multiply the two components. The most brilliant idea, with no execution, is worth $20. The most brilliant idea takes [brilliant] execution to be $200,000,000.”
Had I sold my Uber idea, a very generous soul would have paid me $20, and I actually think that’s a stretch. However, the Uber team took that idea and has managed to turn it into a global brand worth billions. That’s extra-brilliant execution!
Ideas are not unique, so act on yours today!
ACTION
TODAY: Have you been playing with an idea in your head that won’t leave you alone? Take some time to figure out what it would take to put it in motion. If it’s worth the try, determine to do a quick, lean test in a near future.
FUTURE: Move forward with the execution of the lean test. Here’s a great book to guide you through: Sprint: How To Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days by Jake Knapp.
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