So, I saw the Social Network yesterday and was BLOWN away.
Awesome movie and amazing story.The bulk of the minutes of the movie were spent on the controversies surrounding Facebook (and not the success of the business), and that got me thinking.
What REALLY is important?IDEA or EXECUTION?
A couple of years ago, I had presented at some marketing forum, and after I stepped down from the Podium and began mingling with the crowds, a sophisticated and mature man approached me. He rather cockily said ‘Alok, you know, I had thought of an idea like contests2win.com way before you did’. (Contests2win was my first Internet venture in India and made me who I am today).
I said ‘Wow…great…proves that good ideas always emerge many minds’.
Mr. Smart Ass retorted ‘ Yeah, and I had many more ideas about the concept than u did. It had x and y and z features and……’. He went on barking for 10 minutes.
When he ended his ejaculation, I looked at him and send ‘Dude, It was me who was on Stage, not You’. And I walked off.
Who damn cares about whose idea it was? Its all ABOUT EXECUTION.
In the Case of Facebook:- The original three ideators of the networking site may not have had even 1/100th the power of imagination that Mark Zuckerberg had that made FB – FB!
– Just by executing to their plan, Mark would have killed what has become the biggest phenomena on this planet.
These are the reasons I think EXECUTION is far more important than IDEAS:
– It only starts with an Idea. Its just the beginning.
What evolves is what makes a big business happen or vanish. Look at the case of eBay! What Pierre Omidyar imagined and started and what Meg Whitman MADE IT!
– Its all about massive hard work and burning those tyres on those roads.
I have met 4419 unique people to date (unique visiting cards indexed by me) and have begged them for business. That work is far more greater than an IDEA of Interactive Marketing and just talking about it.
– Lots of similar ideas abound.
Its that SPARK, extra benefit or even Marketing that takes it to a new orbit. Rocket Mail existed way before Hotmail came along…Only Sabeer Bhatia had the Imagination to add ‘get free mail on Hotmail’ as a slug… Now, Blackberry and Apple and everyone does it – but he DEFINED VIRAL MARKETING!
So – what’s your idea….Oops…your execution?
****
Daman Anand
Execution is very important but does not exists without any idea. Idea comes first and then execution.
Mahesh Khambadkone
Without execution, there’s no way you can determine if an idea would work. And how many ideas get refined and sometimes even changed as a result of the drudgeries of execution? I don’t even remember Google having ads in ’99.
Closer to home, I remember harboring ideas of a close-network site to share (often embarassing) photos of families and friends, and also of portal of a melting-pot of ideas and people.
But, the world has moved on since. And the one resource we all have in equal measure, Time, has been put to use on other ideas!
Aalok Pandey
Hi Alok. In absolutely endorse your thought of the “Idea of Ezecution” much more important than the Idea per se. I had personally spent more than 12 months working on the ‘Self-cleaning Toilet’ Idea, before we realised, that we need to arise the genius in ourselves to ezecute to the thought level of ideation.
Having said that, now we have to our alliance, a state of the art ezecutor, who works out magics,in every iterations…
The power to ezecute, lies, along-side the power to ideate. Its just the potential energy in former, while the kinetics, in latter..
Best
Aalok
Uttam
Everyone has ideas, you get about 100 of them every day! Its execution that actually tests the idea, and whether you have what it takes to make it see the light of day. I’ve worked with Alok for years, and we used to setup 1 company every year!! Some worked brilliantly (games2win), while others didnt – so you’d end up learning 1000 things not to do the next time round. It’s far better than (pardon my french) sitting on your MBA butt and theorizing for years on various scenarios – take it to the world and get real!
Alok – you really epitomize execution, just about 10 days ago, you mentioned on fbook that you were thinking of setting up a “social network” for entrepreneurs – AND THE VERY NEXT DAY, you had the rodinhoods come up – it’s not a work of art (yet), but its working, and far better than spending the next 2 years planning – execute and build according to market needs as you go along.
Aditya Singh
@Uttam, Great reply.
I would like to add that, great ideas need great people to come in and scale it up. Mark had a great idea which he conceived and developed a lot on his own. Mark met Shawn Parker (the Napster guy) and that was a turning point. Scaling up a business is a totally different thing than starting up. Needs a hell lot of experience / business-sense and knowledge for hiring/firing/fundraising etc.
Another important factor which people ignore while developing an idea is its commercial scalability. I have been following and going to events in India from the past few years and met many many startup guys and had spent a lot of time interacting and sharing ideas with them. Many of them have great ideas and look for funding. But the question is – what is the commercial scalability of the idea ? Does it hold the potential to become atleast a xxx crore company in future ?
Aji (Digital Marketing)
I sum it like this, success is not about one big thing going right but its about many small things going right, only the person who executes it know small things that matters most. Ideas are plenty but making it work is known as execution and geting this done at right time is imp …
I learned a lot from social network movie …
There are atleast 10 leassons for Startups in that movie ..
Bobby
Hi Alok,
Last night i saw the movie and today i recv ur mail…. sme connection??… “The Rodinhoods” Drop d “The”…next big networking site for entrepreneurs…..Superb idea and swift execution all thanx to the “people” involved.
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal
Hahaha!!! this is so funny
Bobby Theodor said:
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal
Bobby,
Thanks to ur vigilance – I just bought rodinhoods.com :-))))
Bobby Theodor said:
Bobby
I can relate to Eduardo Saverin wen he says breakOFF.Lol.. like yeast to make the dough
Jyoti Shukla said:
Abey John
Good execution of even a bad idea has a better chance of success. Will need to see the movie soon.
vivekc2
i fully agree alok, out of millions of ideas a few get execute, no wonder there are very few billionaires in this world !
I spoke at IIT’s management college a couple of months back about entrepreneurship, asked couple of guys what kind of entrepreneurship venture they wanted to start ! two of the guys initially refused to share the idea, as someone in the audience would copy it ! 🙂 – I could not stop laughing for minutes, spent my entire lecture convincing the audience that entrepreneurship is about execution not ideas ! The only guys who will tell you that idea is important would be people who still have not taken the entrepreneurial leap. If someone copies your idea and executes it, they deserve the wealth they will create, trust me both of you will end up creating completely different companies with the same initial idea !
btw the concept of showing ads on a search query was created by Bill Gross through GOTO, which eventually became Yahoo – however as they it is Google’s execution that made it history
Bharat
The execution of Mark, depended on the ideas he had in his mind. It was only that there was always a difference of ideas and opinions between the co-founders. Never the less the movie was brilliant, a perfect screenplay for what it was such an ordinary story!
Aji (Digital Marketing)
FB co-founder speaks here https://www.cnbc.com/id/39675388
Abey John
Jyothi I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. It is the knowledge that you have the ‘power of execution’ that gives the inventor the confidence to share his ideas. Agreed that without execution your idea is nothing more than an interesting fly on the wall but there is a time and season for nurturing the idea within yourself as there is a time for sharing it.
In fact you’ve hit two nails on the head Jyothi. Only you can see your own idea with clarity in all its breathtaking wonder. Attempting to articulating it can sound lame even in one’s own ears. And most likely no one will see it in exactly the same way as you do. They say its lonely at the top. It is even lonelier at the bottom.
Abey John
The relationship between work and reward is a sticky mess. Each one in the equity circle will have their own justification mantra for their share of the pie or for slicing others out of the pie. You need some unthinkable thinking to arrive at something that is truly equitable (sic). The closest I’ve seen someone manage it with any sort of elegance is Ricardo Semlar, the Brazilian entrepreneur, with his company Semco.
Rabi Gupta
The important thing is that an idea gets stale in 10-15 days, coz if we don’t start implementing, it gets stuck at a point! An idea is a SPARK which needs a medium (and a good one) to keep burning. I completely agree with your viewpoint, Mark was already having ideas like Fasemash etc and when he heard about the social n/w concept his imagination crossed all boundaries!
An idea is just ONE idea and today’s facebook is a result of thousands of ideas- from delivering news feeds to innovative advertisement model, there is much more to FB than a mere idea 🙂
arpit shekhar
An Idea can change your life and of the world if executed properly…..not only think….act on it…
Bharat
https://xkcd.com/827/
I wish this was true 😉 !!
Pradeep Chaudhary
Both Idea and execution is important but then unless you execute it properly, an idea is nothing but a just thought. Does not matter how good your idea is, execution is important.
Avik is the full name
If one sees that their idea has been made successful by someone else, instead of living on the laurels of the idea, should execute the next one and then be satisfied. Value is better created outside the skull. so Execution rules.
Himanshu Mody
For the very same reason you should not worry about your ideas getting stolen knowingly or unknowingly if you have what it takes to execute consistently. My company is a pioneer in Flash platform training in India , I have experienced large giants like NIIT and also many me too companies attempt to do what we do. Also then there was this guy from US who understood what we do , made an offer to invest but the real intention was to understand in and out of how we work , he took our balance sheets, knew who our top clients were, he had the balls to call me to hyderabad to pick up the cheque but in reality only show me that he has started with a 5000 sqft office , hired large number of people and intends to do exactly the same thing that Tekno Point does , Ofcourse without me. I learnt my lesson from it and focused only on what I can do best, execute. In little over a years time , I got a mail from him talking about how they are now a 100 people team etc , but need my help with ‘executing’ a project. I had the last laugh, told him fuck off in the most polite manner. And last I have heard is that the company no longer exists. Sometime last year I saw him on a investors panel in one of the tv shows, I was like here he is still trying to steal ideas and yet not understood that its about execution. With a reputation which is worth zinch , what is the point of being a millionaire with zero credibility. As long as you know you can innovate and can focus what best you can do with what you have , what others do does not matter one bit. We do not have a sales team as yet , our execution has kept us busy and growing.
Anupam Kumar Sinha
Idea roams about….one who catches it and executes it efficiently is the winner….and as every1 says…winner takes it all!