Execution Over Ideas

"I was just the simple mastermind who planned the whole thing and executed it to perfection."

How do you come up with a unique startup idea?

Chances are... you won’t.

You can probably identify a problem and come up with a clever solution. You’ll tell your friends. They’ll nod their heads and say they’ve thought about that before.

You can probably identify multiple ways an industry could be improved. And when you dig in, you’ll find innovative people in that industry quietly working on those improvements.

You can probably come up with something that’s frighteningly ambitious. An idea that you know will change the world. Even so, someone is likely brainstorming the same idea at this very moment.

But what is the value of an idea?

Paul Graham, co-founder of Y Combinator, wrote in a 2005 essay,

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.

Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz once wrote,

I am firmly convinced that invention is something that happens over long periods of time, by lots of very smart people, playing each others’ ideas against each other. I think there are very few eureka moments, very few genuinely new ideas.

Ideas aren’t startups. They’re just the first step.

The point of this exposé is not to deflate your great idea. It is to remind you that the magic happens in what comes next.

The importance of your idea is quickly eclipsed by how you execute it.

• How you build your solution

• How you listen to users

• How you integrate user feedback

• How you help people solve their problems

• How you market

• How you treat your customers

A simple idea with excellent execution is far better than a unique idea.

Take Liquid Death for example.

They were founded in 2017 to sell… water.

Water has existed forever. Water has been commercially sold in bottles since 1767. Water is not a unique idea.

But theirs was a simple idea with excellent execution.

They have delivered on masterful branding, creativity, distribution, and purpose (most single-use plastics end up in the ocean or landfills; not the case for their infinitely-recyclable aluminum cans), have raised 130M to date, and can boast they’re “one of the fastest-growing non-alcoholic beverage brands of all time.”

They took something old, made it new, made it matter, and executed the hell out of it.

Don’t spin your wheels looking to be unique when you could put that energy towards executing better than anyone else.

Execution will always matter more than the idea.

Is the execution of your solution one people will love and advocate for?