In my opinion, all of those are ideas that aren't really new. But they were executed in a new way and that made all the difference.
HomeAway was already well-known and successful at the time when AirBnb was founded. But the latter reached more potential landlords, due to their specific execution.
I remember using AltaVista for years before I ever heard about Google. So their business idea and business model wasn't new. Their initial execution was incredible, though.
And before I heard of Facebook, I was using MySpace, which was kind of the same basic idea, but pretty badly executed. Until 2 years after the iPhone came out, MySpace was actually larger than Facebook. So my guess would be that it was Facebook's superior execution of their mobile experience that crowned them.
Pet owners often care about buying the same food every time, but few people are buying hundreds of copies of the same book.
The important ideas here is in the realm of "how". And that realm is both ideas and execution. Ideas of how to execute?
Here’s the difference:
“I think people would buy a screwdriver with a built-in hammer”
“I just spoke to company XYZ and they would buy 1,000 screwdrivers with integrated hammers if we made them”
The difference is obvious to anyone. You can execute like a star on the idea and make it if you get lucky and a market exists. The opportunity only requires “minimum viable execution” to capture it.
One is a push, the other a pull.
The initial idea and its nth iteration are downstream from the real problem. What matters, therefore, is the iterative execution of those solutions. So instead of basing our judgment on the quality of the idea, we should rely on the execution ability because that is fairly constant in the development loop.
If you end up on the far-side of an idea-driven development process, you'll have solutions looking for a problem.
1. Customer/market risk
2. Invention risk
When invention risk >> customer risk (you can be certain there are customers, they have a need, you can satisfy the need), then a good idea will play a bigger role relative to execution (which still remains crucial).
However, we tend to grossly under-estimate customer risk, hence the "ideas are cheap" warning.
No
> a super successful company based on a bad idea.
Magic Leap
Super successful companies based on nothing ideas are a dime a dozen. Almost all sites.
- Amazon, it sells things. It's execution was cutting edge.
- Rocket-internet is a great example - https://www.businessinsider.com.au/rocket-internet-companies...
Even the great mathematical ideas were execution. Working out how to create protocols is execution.
Lots of drunk discussions about internet currencies in the 2000's but no one implemented the mathematics -
Satoshi Nakamoto also released bitcoin software on Sourceforge.
Bram Cohen created torrent protocol and also release the software and filled it with porn.
Could you point me to a super successful public company with a proven track record, high revenues, rising stock price, etc. that is focused around a bad idea?
But you could just say the idea is playing to medical regulation and a dumb public.
So the answer is any company that pivots. ie. Youtube - https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/308975
OT:
Scott Adams tried to sell an idea - https://www.scottadamssays.com/2012/10/01/selling-an-idea/
Read it and follow it up how he went. It might interest you.
I guess a good idea now also contains a good idea on how to execute it as well.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I have a hard time coming up with a super successful company based on a bad idea.
Just to be clear, I'm not discounting execution at all, it's obviously incredibly important. All I'm saying is that it bugs me when people always discount ideas as unimportant.