Your Big Idea is Worthless Without This

We all know someone who clings to an idea, convinced it’s the next big thing. The idea is so precious they won’t even tell investors, fearing it might get stolen!

Some people even start companies where the equity is uneven because one of them was “thinking about the idea for a while” before bringing others on.

This begs the question, how much is an idea actually worth? And the answer is Zero.

Ideas are worthless without execution. Ideas are just multipliers. A brilliant idea multiplied by zero execution equals zero. Even a mediocre idea with great execution can hit the mark.

Execution is acting on your idea. It’s taking shots on goal. Being in great position doesn’t matter if you don’t shoot.

Execution Over Ideas: The Photography Experiment

The best example of execution over ideas comes from a story in Atomic Habits. On the first day of class, a photography professor named Jerry Uelsmann divided students into two groups. The “quantity” group would be graded on the number of photos they produced—any photo counted, with grades based purely on volume. The “quality” group, however, would be graded only on the excellence of one perfect photo.

At semester’s end, the professor was surprised to find that the best photos came from the quantity group. These students, constantly practicing and learning from mistakes, honed their skills with each shot. Meanwhile, the quality group spent time theorizing about perfection, resulting in only one mediocre photo.

How Execution Shapes Success

In startups, successful companies rarely look like their initial ideas. This is often surprising to outsiders. They think a startup is failing when they hear that it pivoted from its initial idea. But the initial idea matters less than the founder’s ability to execute, learn, and iterate.

Investors know this, which is why they don’t bet purely on specific ideas—they bet on the founder. Even the best idea is risky with a mediocre founder. A great founder, however, can take an average idea and build something exceptional through sheer relentlessness and adaptability.

Legendary Founders Execute

In 2009, a skilled founding team set out to build a fun, multiplayer online game called Glitch. The creators poured their hearts into it, crafting a quirky world filled with characters and adventures. But despite their efforts over 3 hard years of work, Glitch just didn’t catch on. It peaked at tens of thousands of players.

What did work was a small communication tool they’d developed internally to collaborate on the game. The team saw potential there, so they pivoted and refined this tool. Today, we know this tool as Slack, a workspace chat that Salesforce acquired for a staggering $27.7 billion.

Another story is a company that was building a platform for finding and subscribing to podcasts in 2005, called Odeo. Just as they were finding their footing after a year, Apple launched its own podcast feature on iTunes, pushing Odeo out of the market. Facing this, the team brainstormed new ideas.

One suggestion was a service for short, real-time updates—an idea that seemed so simple it could almost be dismissed. That feature grew into Twitter, which we know was recently bought for $44 billion.

The Real Test of Ideas

Execution turns ideas into something real and adaptable. Airbnb wasn’t the first short-term rental platform. Companies like VRBO and Couchsurfing had similar concepts, but Airbnb executed differently.

They focused on trust and user experience, creating a smooth booking system and safety protocols. This relentless improvement kept them in the lead, even as competitors flooded in.

The same goes for Facebook. It wasn’t the first social network—MySpace, Friendster, Hi5 and others came first. But Facebook executed better. Execution, not just the idea, propelled their dominance.

Another popular one is a famous photo iPhone app in 2009 that let people filter their photos. It went viral and won App of the Year. I’m not talking about Instagram. The app was called Hipstamatic and everyone was using it. Meanwhile, Instagram was an app called Burbn that let people check in at specific locations.

But users liked sharing photos on that app, so the smart founders pivoted all-in to that feature. They added filters, too. The better executed social feed allowed Instagram to race past Hipstamatic.

We know Instagram as the #1 photo app in the world. It sold to Facebook for $1 billion with only 13 employees. (Instagram is estimated to be worth $200 billion today)

The Execution Mindset

How do you build an execution mindset? Start small and have a bias for action. Don’t wait for perfect timing.

Builders and investors know this secret. They don’t guard ideas—they execute, they iterate, and they learn. Those who protect ideas out of fear miss out. Execution is the only difference between a good idea and a game-changing one.

Sam Altman taught us that the most successfully companies are the ones that can test ideas the quickest.

How to Protect Your Idea

The truth is that builders don’t care about your idea. They would never think of stealing it. An interesting thing happens when you start to build, you start to see so many ideas you never thought of before.

You don’t have time to try every great idea you have. You wish you could clone yourself to try all your different ideas in a parallel world.

However, someone who has never built will inevitably guard and marinate that one idea forever. Paradoxically, by not building, the idea people will tend to have less ideas.

Theft does happen. But not at the idea stage. It often happens when you’re product is taking off. Airbnb was cloned by a company famous for copying small, high-growth startups. It almost killed them.

Don’t Put your Idea on a Pedestal

Shaan Puri, multi-millionaire entrepreneur and famous podcaster with over 100M downloads, likens good business skills to pick-up artist skills. Don’t overthink, don’t fear rejection, and take many shots.

Shaan is in my basketball league. We played against him this week. True to form, he took every shot he got. And he missed every single one.

In the final seconds of the game, down by a point, he got the ball. Despite missing all night, he took the shot. This time it went in and he beat us. I’m still upset about the loss, but, yeah, keep shooting.

Final Takeaway: Share and Ship

Don’t hold ideas too tightly. Share them, gather feedback, and keep iterating. Building and testing reveal new paths.

Execution isn’t just a skill—it’s the main ingredient.