All right listen up, you may think you have the most
amazing idea in the world. This is an idea that's going to
change the world. It's going to change the way we do business, it's going to
change life every single way that we know it. Now you
may think your idea is amazing and world-changing and
incredibly valuable but i'm here to tell you that your idea
is worthless. Now stick around because i'm going to tell you why your idea is
worthless and how to take your idea from something that's worthless
and turn it into something that's priceless.
Now before we get too far into it I've signed hundreds of NDA's
NDA's are documents called non-disclosure agreements that protect
the person talking about an idea and i'm going to disclose
all the dark secrets of all the hundreds of NDA's that i've read... [drum roll]
100% of them 100% of every single idea i've ever
heard from signing an NDA, frankly isn't that interesting.
Most ideas are very pragmatic, they're incremental improvements they are
ideas of existing products or companies, they're things
that already exist in the world. So a lot of people keep their ideas
secret and that's fine, you can keep your idea secret but ultimately it's not
about the idea itself because the best ideas in the world are
executed. When you take an idea and you implement
it, it's about the execution not the idea. Let's take a look at a
couple examples, here's an idea for a better smartphone.
Here's an idea for an electric car. Here's an idea for
a better search engine. Now the ideas themselves were pretty worthless because
if you look back in time there were lots of phones. Electric
vehicles weren't something that was very new, and there were lots of search
engines. And so at the end of the day it's not about the idea. These are
multi-billion-dollar companies, but the reason they became multi-billion
dollar companies is because of the execution.
The entrepreneurs who are building these products who are building these
companies executed really well. Their products were exemplary and it's
the execution of that idea done really well
that sets the products apart from the hundreds of other
ideas that either weren't executed or were executed
really poorly. The other reason that ideas are worthless
is because the idea changes as soon as you start executing it.
When you start executing an idea and start delivering
value in that idea you learn something about customers
you learn something about the product you learn something about how people
use that product that makes the product itself different.
When you start executing an idea you may have grand visions of how that product
will work and interact and how to be used
but as soon as you put pencil to paper as soon as you start implementing that
idea you start learning and listening from
your customers and as soon as you start learning and
listening from your customers that's when the idea changes. Now early
on i used to develop lots of products lots
of mobile applications, lots of different digital products as well
and people would bring me ideas
and they'd say how about i give you the idea and you do all the work and then
we'll split the profits. Well that's wrong, that's fundamentally
flawed because all of the value creation is in the
execution of that idea it's not in the idea itself.
so it's important that entrepreneurs know how to roll up their sleeves
figure out how to deliver value, now value can be delivered in
multitude of different ways. It can be researching your idea, it can be building
a prototype of your idea, it can be talking to customers, it can be
signing contracts with customers, signing contracts with partners, make
traction on your idea. Don't just have the idea and think the
idea is valuable. Make the idea real, put your idea into
motion. When you can take that idea and turn it
from something that's a light bulb above your head
into something that people can touch and hold and feel and experience
something that has customers, something that has users something has people
coming back month over month, or year over year
that's when you're creating value. That's when you're creating something special.
Thanks so much for joining me, i'm Greg Raiz. I talk about entrepreneurship
design and technology and if you like that sort of thing
hit subscribe. Thanks so much!