Nivi · May 28th, 2008
Go read Mike Speiser’s new blog: Laserlike. Its theme is, “Free ideas. Just add execution.”
Mike recently joined Sutter Hill Ventures as a Managing Director. Before that, he founded Epinions with fellow Venture Hacker Naval Ravikant and founded Bix (acquired by Yahoo).
Ideas
In his second post, Mike writes,
“The theme of Laserlike is that ideas are overvalued. Entrepreneurs spend too much time worrying about protecting their ideas and not enough time launching them!
“I’m going to share my thoughts during my presentation at TiEcon this Friday at 11am, during which I am going to “give away” three of my favorite ideas. I will then blog about those ideas in more detail after the presentation and will continue sharing and discussing ideas openly on Laserlike in the future.”
My favorite idea on his blog is Shadow Market: Money management by the masses.
Execution
Make sure you read Mike’s TiEcon presentation (pdf). The section on execution is invaluable. Here are some of my favorite snippets:
“The real cost of a startup is not career risk, but rather the amount of time and psychic energy they consume.”
“Startups launch to the world too quickly and then lose some of their natural advantage of flexibility by inheriting backward compatibility.”
“Apply the same filter on your investors as you do on your founders.”
“If you have traction, you have a good deal of leverage. Even if you don’t have traction, you are better off boot strapping than going into a long‐term business partnership with the wrong person or firm.”
“While it’s possible to invent a massive new market at the same time as building the market leader in that market, it’s a low probability bet.”
“The winner in your market will likely be the one with the best leader. A startup CEO needs to convince people to make “irrational” bets with their own lives. He needs to convince customers to be early adopters. He usually needs to raise capital and manage risk averse investors. A great group of people with a weak CEO will lose. A strong CEO has a strong grasp of strategy, can sell anything to anyone, and can inspire people to do what they never realized they could achieve.”
Excellent presentation, thanks for the share.
When I meet new entrepreneurs, signing an NDA seems unavoidable. My first advice to them is that I await the day when they’ll be talking about their idea in the open – Then they’ll know they’re on the right track.
Oh cool. I didn’t realize he’d left Yahoo. People love him. Is he making investments now? It seems like he was meant to build companies.
Yes, he is a Managing Director at Sutter Hill.
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To a certain extent he has a point, but it’s not just execution that is missing from the ideas – it’s the related ideas that can make a successful business.
http://www.tqcblog.com/archive/2008/05/31/the-value-of-ideas.aspx
I like the part about the “time and psychic energy they consume” being the main part of a startup. The truth is it’s also the main thing that will make you succeed. There is a site of Free ideas (http://www.openpatents.net) for new startups, but the truth is it’s not enough to have a good idea. It’s all about giving it a lot of time and not giving up.