Disclaimer : this post is, for the most part, not my own original thoughts, but based on a podcast done by Tim Ferriss with Marc Randolph as his guest.
Marc Randolph is one of the founders of Netflix and has an extensive entrepreneurial journey before and after Netflix.
The ideas shared in the podcast were so profound, that I had to share them with my readers. If you would prefer to listen to the entire podcast, here it is:
Is there really no such thing as a good idea?
The traditional thinking is that - there is no such thing as a bad idea. But once you start trying some ideas, you realise that some ideas are definitely bad.
Spend enough time as an entrepreneur and you are bound to realise that most ideas are in fact bad - once you throw reality at them!
Here is the pitfall though. Once you realise that most ideas are bad, your first reaction might be to spend more time on getting to the great idea instead of generating more ideas.
Stop building in your head
Let’s be honest. No one likes failing. In primary school we are taught that failure is bad. We want our experiments to succeed the first time and we have been conditioned to feel this way.
What’s the easiest way to avoid failure? Keep working on the idea in your head and refine the idea until it is finally ready and 100% guaranteed to succeed? WRONG.
The issue with the above approach is that by refining an idea to this extent in your head leads to it becoming very complex and bloated. When you eventually decide to try it:
- It’s way too complex to execute
- You don’t have nearly enough capital execute it
It’s impossible to know whether an idea will be good or bad
This is something we need to accept. There is no way to know beforehand whether an idea will be good or bad, the only way to know is to try it.
Stop thinking - start doing!
The strategy
We have to stop focussing on good ideas. I t’s not about having good ideas.
- Focus on finding cheap , effective , measurable ways to test your ideas.
- Focus all of your energy on building the systems and the culture that supports testing ideas and figuring out whether they are good or bad.
This is what seperates good entrepreneurs from bad entrepreneurs.