[kw_]

This one is bittersweet, as we had the idea, the staff, and the time and money to implement it, but chose not to, because we substantially underestimated the size of the market.

Where by 'we' I mean 'I'. It's completely my fault that RedLaser was allowed to win this market. I killed the project.

It's nice to see that we were at least somewhat correct on the general goodness of the concept, though.

Congrats, and nice work, guys.

[tk999]

It is never too late. If you think some more about the bar code idea. These are actually couple more ideas related to this that you can expand and it will be even bigger than redlaser. For example, if you get the bar code for a book, it will display review and so you can determine whether to buy it or not. On the same line of thinking, you will find out that you can do even more once you "identify" the object by the bar code... email me. I am interested in building something similar.

[iron_ball]

I have a barcode scanner for Android that already does the book one. You scan an ISBN barcode, and it lets you immediately do a "Search inside this book".

[kw_]

I just went to email you, to discuss a few of the additional ideas we had in our original plan, see if there might be a way to differentiate it sufficiently from RedLaser and Google Goggles to make it work.

Unfortunately, I can't find your email address :-)

If you want to contact me, kevin at massive.io.

[credo]

Great illustration of the fact that ideas are generally not unique -- and that it is the execution that matters.

In one of his essays ( http://paulgraham.com/ideas.html), pg talked about the fact there was no such thing as a million-dollar idea and that "The fact that there's no market for startup ideas suggests there's no demand. Which means, in the narrow sense of the word, that startup ideas are worthless."

[trominos]

I really think that this "only execution matters" thing is ridiculous.

Startup ideas are worthless in the sense that you're almost certainly not gonna be able to get anybody to pay you for one. If you want to prove that they're worthless in any other sense -- in particular, if you want to prove that you can't improve somebody's chances of succeeding in the startup world by giving them a good idea -- you have a lot of work to do. In fact, I bet you can't do it, because I don't think it's true.

Now, I have almost no experience in this area -- my conclusions are mostly a priori. But I don't think anybody else really does either, and in particular I don't think Paul has actually seen enough startups succeed or fail to judge the value of ideas. How many YC startups have "succeeded"? Depends on where you set the bar, but at this point in time the answer's somewhere between "not many" and "none".

And I'm kind of surprised that you're using this as an example of how idea doesn't matter; in my eyes, it's just the opposite. This succeeded because it was a great idea executed decently, not because it was a decent idea executed spectacularly.

[credo]

I'm not sure what you're trying to argue against. My first sentence said (a) "ideas are generally not unique" and (b) "it is the execution that matters"

I didn't discuss whether the execution was spectacular or not and I didn't discuss whether the idea was great or decent.

on (a), as a matter of fact, this thread proves that the idea was not unique on (b), as a matter of fact, the difference between the guy who had the idea and succeeded and the other guy who had the idea can be boiled down to one thing. I also suspect that hundreds of other people had the same idea. Again, what distinguished them from the guy who succeeded is simple. One guy executed, the other guys just had the idea, but didn't execute (either because they were incapable of execution or because they had other priorities ...)

[brandon]

My partner and I had a similar "oops"

We started down the path of developing a Google Latitude-like system before Latitude had been publicly announced. Our prototype apps quite literally had the same workflows and functionality that you'll find today in Latitude. So, when Google announced their intention to release Latitude for the iPhone, we killed the project.

Fast forward to today, Apple blocked Latitude from happening on the iPhone and if we'd put in another month or two of work we may have been successful. What's the moral of the story? I guess I might not stop executing in the future just because it looks like the market isn't viable or someone big is poised to eat my lunch. Then again, that could be a recipe to end up penniless or hungry.

[ramanujan]

Why don't you get in touch with them and see if you can join? No shame in that at all, I'm sure you have a bunch of ideas, code, market opportunities and stuff that could be a big help -- and they'd also head off competition with a "merger".

[pclark]

remember its less about the idea and the nitty gritty execution :)

sorry all the same.

[kw_]

Yes. I'm kicking myself for halting the execution, because I made order of magnitude errors in my projections.

If I'd simply had the idea (not the idea plus all resources required for successful execution), there'd be no twinge.

[jfarmer]

I had the idea, but didn't have all the resources! I spent two weeks trying to patch something together but couldn't get it to work.

If only we had met...!

That said, I think RedLaser as it exists now is a "one time thing." It's a product, not a company, and they're going to have to pivot into something more sustainable than "download this app."

So $1MM is great, but not as great as $1MM/year.

Microsoft manages this by charging for frequent and expensive upgrades, plus OEM deals. That probably won't work for an iPhone app.

There are lots of interesting ways they can go, however, so I am a little jealous that they're in such a great position.

[vulpes]

Whats interesting is the fact that they license their tech to any other app that wants barcode scanning functionality in exchange for 10% cut of the sales (10 cents on the dollar) so the "app" will live past the success of redlaser.

Of course Occipital has other things brewing as well :)