[bilalel]

Sadly, a lot of people think that only ideas matter. Too bad for them, because ideas worth nothing. Don't you think?

[beat]

Ideas aren't worth nothing. Most startups suffer from being bad ideas - and not in the "so-bad-it's-good" way that pg talked about. They're slightly tweaked copies of another idea, or something where there just isn't any money.

[marcus_holmes]

Every startup starts off as a bad idea. That's kinda the point of the lean process: you've got to start somewhere but you have no idea what your customers actually want. So you do a whole bunch of experiments to find out what they do want.

Doing the experiments takes engineers and money, which are important. The idea you start with is not. This is why investors invest in teams not ideas.

[ProAm]

Idea's are worth a nickel. Execution is worth millions.

(I can't remember who originally said that, but Ive remembered it. Might have been Spolsky?)

[CapitalistCartr]

But a company willing to change as they see the need is likely to have at least some success. A willingness to change is worth half a dozen ideas.

[beat]

That, exactly. You start with a maybe-bad idea, start executing and learning, and refine your way to a good idea.

But there are no successful startups that are actually bad ideas. Bad ideas with money are just walking corpses.