I agree with your brother. Look at Google. They were not the first search engine, they were number 7 or 8. But they took a great idea (search) and added "high quality implementation." End result = $billions and lots of happy users (myself included).

I guess you could argue that Google's process itself was the novel idea -- that Yahoo and Altavista hadn't thought of link-counting and algorithm's and thus the novel idea is what allowed for Google's success.

But then you might be getting into a semantics game.

Or maybe this means you're both right.

Maybe it's time I let somebody else comment.

In my case, my brother is contented in working for a large company and earning a salary and he works harder hoping for a raise every year...ugh, why doesn't he understand that its not going to be like that forever?

I've been saying that about a friend who took the corporate route while I took the solo route for about 10 years. So far he's making ~200k/yr reliably. Other friends with equity at dot com survivors/thrivers have $1m in the bank. It's not a bad path ;) it's just not for me.

It won't be like that forever? Um... that's kind of the point of working for large companies. The stability.

thats not even bad. take your novel ideas and develop high quality implementation based on that.

the questions is, is he willing to wait and do some quick and dirty impletepemtions just to test the ideas and then do the real thing.

and the questions for you is how sure are you of you novel ideas? it could become costly because eventualy you will have to improve the quality or someone else like google might take it from you and develop it better

He works for a large software company. He doesn't want to do anything with me at all.

maybe you can start on your own and just show him what you are doing. after a while I am sure he'll become terested and join you. but don't push him

Is he the older brother?

Younger.