I don't know, Patrick. I've long been an "you can shout your idea from the rooftops and it won't matter" guy for a long time. All I'm trying to do here is point out that this isn't a blanket rule. Or at least I've stopped believing that it is. I think people see statements like yours and believe there is no tiny idea about execution that will generate immediate positive results if copied. But that's demonstrably not true. In fact, thousands of folks are chasing just such a thing. Folks know this instinctively.
Perhaps nobody cares that much about the large concept of selling bingo cards or the broad hunk of small details it takes to make that happen? Perhaps if I describe in detail how to make 2K a month -- and it takes a huge amount of effort over a year and a few try to copy and flame out -- it just kinda proves my point? People naturally like jumping on a bandwagon. And don't forget that much of what you, I, and others blog about is how to make decisions, not step-by-step guides. For somebody looking for a quick fix (which I posit to be most readers), it's not that rewarding.
So for my purposes I'm specifically talking about low-input, high-output ideas. Things like knowing the personal phone numbers of a dozen tech journalists and successful ways to pitch them. That is something you're not going to see. Not a huge corpus of text covering every general type of startup there is and the concepts that make them work. We have a lot of that. Heck, we've got dozens of HNers that are making a business providing the same kind of thing you're talking about. Sort of self-cannibalization. If the generalization were true -- if there were no way you could get people to follow your startup advice no matter how much you shouted -- we wouldn't have people paying for exactly the same advice from others. Something does not match up here.
Detailed business plans with lots of blogging about A/B testing and so forth only serve to dull the audience to sleep. After all, who wants to really work at something over a period of years? (I hope I have learned the importance of this, but I suspect many just give the idea lip service)
Thanks for the comment. I'd love to be wrong as well. I got the whole thing about how you could paint your idea on a wall and nobody would care, but that's not what I'm trying to get at. I'm talking about all the thrashing around that goes on around high-level concepts. That's not all just insignificant, especially if you are looking to a peer group for feedback. I probably mucked up the point. Sorry about that.
I find that I have to read the same concepts many many times to be able to apply them to a different business model. Most times it doesn't seem like there's anything I can do with it. Many times I'm reading it going "yeah, but why in the heck do I want to chase 3% increase when I'm only making ten bucks anyway"? It's not that folks aren't publishing all kinds of instructions and broad generalizations and such, it's the tension between having nothing in your hand and actually being ramen profitable. A lot of these articles are written by guys who already have momentum. For them, yes, some of this matters. They're already months in, seeing money, and ready to stay for the long haul. But I'd bet the large majority vacillate between playing around with startup ideas and sitting back and observing. This post was meant for those folks.
ADD: Apologies to the folks who are pointing out the poor structure of the article. While I was writing it, it definitely had a feeling to it of my viciously thrashing around an idea without actually getting to it. Fortunately Patio has helped me clarify what the thesis should have been all along: because of both the mixed messages we send and the size of the HN audience, we've actually created something we didn't mean to: an environment where lots of copying goes on, but not many are really working in a way that generates good learning about startups. Instead it's much more of a copycat, cool-for-a-day, chase-the-herd atmosphere.
Perhaps nobody cares that much about the large concept of selling bingo cards or the broad hunk of small details it takes to make that happen? Perhaps if I describe in detail how to make 2K a month -- and it takes a huge amount of effort over a year and a few try to copy and flame out -- it just kinda proves my point? People naturally like jumping on a bandwagon. And don't forget that much of what you, I, and others blog about is how to make decisions, not step-by-step guides. For somebody looking for a quick fix (which I posit to be most readers), it's not that rewarding.
So for my purposes I'm specifically talking about low-input, high-output ideas. Things like knowing the personal phone numbers of a dozen tech journalists and successful ways to pitch them. That is something you're not going to see. Not a huge corpus of text covering every general type of startup there is and the concepts that make them work. We have a lot of that. Heck, we've got dozens of HNers that are making a business providing the same kind of thing you're talking about. Sort of self-cannibalization. If the generalization were true -- if there were no way you could get people to follow your startup advice no matter how much you shouted -- we wouldn't have people paying for exactly the same advice from others. Something does not match up here.
Detailed business plans with lots of blogging about A/B testing and so forth only serve to dull the audience to sleep. After all, who wants to really work at something over a period of years? (I hope I have learned the importance of this, but I suspect many just give the idea lip service)
Thanks for the comment. I'd love to be wrong as well. I got the whole thing about how you could paint your idea on a wall and nobody would care, but that's not what I'm trying to get at. I'm talking about all the thrashing around that goes on around high-level concepts. That's not all just insignificant, especially if you are looking to a peer group for feedback. I probably mucked up the point. Sorry about that.
I find that I have to read the same concepts many many times to be able to apply them to a different business model. Most times it doesn't seem like there's anything I can do with it. Many times I'm reading it going "yeah, but why in the heck do I want to chase 3% increase when I'm only making ten bucks anyway"? It's not that folks aren't publishing all kinds of instructions and broad generalizations and such, it's the tension between having nothing in your hand and actually being ramen profitable. A lot of these articles are written by guys who already have momentum. For them, yes, some of this matters. They're already months in, seeing money, and ready to stay for the long haul. But I'd bet the large majority vacillate between playing around with startup ideas and sitting back and observing. This post was meant for those folks.
ADD: Apologies to the folks who are pointing out the poor structure of the article. While I was writing it, it definitely had a feeling to it of my viciously thrashing around an idea without actually getting to it. Fortunately Patio has helped me clarify what the thesis should have been all along: because of both the mixed messages we send and the size of the HN audience, we've actually created something we didn't mean to: an environment where lots of copying goes on, but not many are really working in a way that generates good learning about startups. Instead it's much more of a copycat, cool-for-a-day, chase-the-herd atmosphere.
Don't do that.