[Cardeck1]

I agree. The reason people think ideas are "a dime a dozen" is because everyone overrates their ideas and you can't really measure the value of an idea unless it's executed. However, I must admit that after years of experience I must say the statement is not really true. 80% of the ideas suck. Plain and simple.

It doesn't matter if you are in the Valley or if you are super smart, some people are not made to create/innovate, only execute based on someone's idea. But those people who are able to create are an exception.

Have you ever met someone without a degree or any experience, looking at your product and telling you 100 ways to improve it?I met a guy/wonderkid or whatever that was able to do just that, and he is working for a hedge fund now as far as I know. It took him 20 min to give us an entire improvement plan on how to increase revenue without any papers or anything prepared.We had even backup plans and future competitor moves. He basically humiliated my A+ employee stars who were struggling for months.I was shocked.

[graycat]

> you can't really measure the value of an idea unless it's executed

Well, thankfully for US national security, the US DoD has been doing just this with batting average much higher than for VCs for 70+ years. Examples include the proximity fuse, sonar, radar, the atomic bomb, the U-2, the SR-71, GPS, and more -- all of these were funded just from proposals just on paper, without any 'execution', and came out fine.

For projects by entrepreneurs, my guess to do something similar is (1) pick a big problem, one where clearly a new and good or much better solution will be warmly embraced by the market, (2) do some research, original, powerful, valuable, to get the desired solution and a high barrier to entry. (3) Do (1) and (2) so that the solution can be delivered by software in a Web server costing $2000-. Then go live, get the revenue, grow the server capacity, etc. It's what I'm trying to do. Current obstacle: Windows and trying to use XCACLS and CACLS to delete a file system directory that doesn't want to be deleted. Previous obstacle: Poor Microsoft documentation for the differences between GUIDs and SqlGuids and how to convert between them. Previous obstacle: A virus from the security problems with Flash and the fact that Windows doesn't know how to run malware safely. Previous obstacle: The fact that Microsoft's ASP.NET is much easier to work with when inserting Namespaces, DLLs, and source code than Visual Basic .NET. Previous obstacles: A long list more from Microsoft. The work uniquely mine has all been fast, fun, easy, without delays. But I'm getting past the Microsoft nonsense.

Problem sponsors at DoD, DARPA, and NSF are used to being able to evaluate projects just on paper with high batting average. Apparently VCs don't want to do any such things.

> 80%

All the percentages on what arrives in a VC's in-box don't mean much because what a VC has to find are exceptional projects; that is, what the average project is, or what most of the projects are, is not very relevant -- again because what's required are exceptional projects. How exceptional? There has been a claim by A16H that there are only about 15 projects a year worth a Series A. If VCs would learn to read as well as, say, NSF problem sponsors, then there might be a few more, not a lot yet, but a few.

A problem of information technology entrepreneur project 'ideas' is that they are usually just a short description of what the product/service does, a description like might be given to a prospective customer/user. So, with such an 'idea' and description, usually there is no good way to evaluate it. E.g., how the heck, early on, to evaluate Twitter? Twitter fails my (1) about solving a big problem. Since it was not clear that Twitter would solve a big problem, it was difficult to evaluate.

What is wanted for (1), for an extreme example, is, say, a safe, effective, cheap one pill cure for any cancer -- there we don't have to wait for 'traction'.

As in my (1), a 'good' information technology project should have significant value as easy to see. And as for such a pill, want to stand on some research for an especially powerful, valuable solution with barrier to entry. The VCs just are not thinking this way.

It is quite possible for a person to be bright without education. If the field they are working in, e.g., computing, doesn't really require a lot of formal education, then a person can be bright and good in that field without formal education. But, doing really well in a Ph.D. program in a top research university tends to confirm that someone is 'bright'!