Techcrunch’s Sarah Lacy asks if Execution is more important than Vision
Napster changed the music world, but it was iTunes that profited off of it. Google was one of the last companies in the Internet bubble to try their hand at building a search engine—and was laughed out of some VCs’ offices as a result. Palm pioneered the smart phone, not Blackberry. And Friendster was the social network pioneer before Mark Zuckerberg even entered college.
I’ve always been of the opinion that execution or implementation matters much more than vision or ideas. As someone who has a lot of ideas, this is no small amount of pain to bear – the knowledge that I’m seldom going to be the person building the ideas I have.
Back more than a decade ago when I was writing, the whole point of writing was to get some of the ideas I had out of my head and into the world. It didn’t actually matter if anyone read them, it was cathartic to write, I got real enjoyment out of it. It took my ideas and gave them somewhere to live in the real world. With writing I could produce something – but when the idea was an image, I’d have to pay someone to draw it. It’s the same with code – though it’s a lot more expensive to get someone to write code than draw an image (As I have discovered).
But rather than sit on these ideas, I’ve done something about it. No-one could ever accuse me of being secretive with these ideas, with my vision of things – quite the opposite when I have lunch with folk and they tell me to be more secretive. I’ve even threw a few ideas into a melting pot with two separate groups of developers to see if any of them catch. Maybe some of them will create something cool and maybe, just maybe, they’ll remember me. What’s more important to me is that someone does these things, someone builds them.
Y’see, implementation, execution, is important. I’m always hearing of folk who won’t talk to developers or potential funders without the protection of an NDA without realising that they themselves are the main ingredient. I’m sure there will be others who reckon we should maintain the secrecy, maintain a barrier of protection especially when speaking to funders. After all – if you have but 2d and they have a hundred grand, who is better placed to put together a plan to implement the idea? But if my heart and soul are not part of the vision, then it’s not an idea I’ll lose sleep over.
