Maybe we should make a list of "common knowledge" (topics that have been discussed to death and for which there seems to be a pretty strong consensus) and then refrain from posting/upmodding articles about those subjects if they don't bring something truly new to the table...
Here's a start of the list:
Ideas don't matter, execution does.
Stop thinking about doing and just start doing.
Release early, release often.
We might live in a computer simulation.
Unit-tests let you make change to the codebase while remaining reasonably confident you didn't break anything.
It's very hard to start a startup if you still have a regular job so consider quitting.
News.yc is, among other things, an educational resource -- and teaching is about saying the same things over and over and over, to a new group of students each time. That's how it works.
If you want to read a site where "we've already discussed that, so you can't publish it again" is a valid criticism, you need to switch to reading scientific journals. I don't think that the alternative -- trying to turn news.yc into a site that behaves like a scientific journal -- is going to fly. We don't have a required curriculum that prospective upmodders must read. We don't make them pass an entrance exam. They're allowed to just turn up and vote. That's how this system works.
On this and other sites, I've always craved a moderation system whereby I could nominate a certain collection of modders whose votes I trust above others. For example, if I could click a button and see what news.yc would look like if only the YC class of 2007 were allowed to vote, I might be able to filter out the articles which were of interest only to freshmen in CS. Unfortunately, I've never really seen such a thing. Obviously, allowing an arbitrary set of such queries would risk creating a huge scaling problem, but you'd think that a site could offer a choice of two or three ways to weight the moderations. You could divide the incoming readers into "cohorts" based on year of arrival (or even other demographic information) and offer options for reading social news within your own cohort.
How are the new folks to know what ideas have been discussed to death? And, sometimes there is a delta of thought that does add value, specifically for frequently/commonly discussed topics.
Okay, usually I just disagree when folks say there's a certain degree of arrogance in 37Signals bloggings somemtimes, but I've got to comment that it's certainly evident here.
I certainly see the point David is trying to make in this writing about the competitiveness of the startup scene, and it certainly makes sense to know what's going on out there before you jump in head first you're going to get burned.
But good lord, if you pride yourselves on building quality products, have a quality blog behind it that doesn't punch readers in the face like that.
He only had success with one item that he was selling to, or using for, his existing clientele, and developed the rest of the products, and started his blog, and persona, to capitalize on that.
So the real question isn't what's the best idea out there right now, or if ideas are worth anything until they're made, but what simple thing can you make that will give you some traction right now... All his other products and blog posts are just a distraction from the real, key birth of his original product, and why it succeeded (he had a clientele, and made the product to track them), and it is THOSE things that should be noticed and looked at, NOT what the person does after they've already become famous, popular, and rich. Well you probably might want to copy those things since that maintains popularity and stirs up debate, but as far as doing your own startup, that's what you want to think about... how do you get that initial customer base... even if the idea isn't something big... and what did the person do in the initial 3mo, 6mo, 1 year. Better yet, not what he did but why. But definitely not what they suggest doing 6 years later when the landscape has changed.
David is an expert at what he did 3-5 years ago, with what the landscape was back then. That is a long time ago. Since then, 37Signals has been a media company, which ANYBODY can play once they're successful, pointing at themselves being successful as the reason others should listen to them... even though they're out of the loop now (I am America, and so can you!). It's the same thing as a 100 year old company stating they are successful and therefore you should take their advice and work for them, though everything has been almost on autopilot compared to the uncertainty of the first year.
If you're applying for a designer job at a small slightly famous company, against tons of competition, and you can't take 1 minute to double check that you spell the company name exactly like they do, you don't deserve to be hired.
Designers are supposed to be totally detail oriented and notice things like spacing, typography, color, font, etc. 37Signals <> 37signals and a designer should totally notice that.
They probably had a few hundred other applicants do it right and they were absolutely correct to throw out every single application that had any kind of small errors, spelling mistakes, grammar mistakes, etc. They still probably had too many to interview after that.
I am sure most of my ideas are not unique, but on the other hand I don't think they are so common that, like, every second person alive on earth has them. Maybe there are 100 other people, or 1000, I don't know. Or maybe only two or three.
I don't think I deserve anything for having had an idea, but it is OK to kick oneself if one sees that the idea could have been made into a success after all. It is one of those occasions where you tell yourself to finally ACT on the next idea.
Without ideas, common or not, there would not even be the option to act on something. So I really don't think ideas bashing is a worthwhile thing to do.
What worries me most is that maybe I am missing some secret ingredient to make my idea a success: being able to play the investment markets? I think it is possible that two people execute the idea equally well technically, but one makes millions because he has the right connections, and the other remains an obscure hobby.
What's with the hating on ideas? Ideas do matter. Sure, anyone could have had the idea of a photo sharing site, but someone had the idea to do it that way. Someone had the idea to make it look and work the way it does.
Ideas are the driver here. All good companies involve good ideas, and more good ideas on how to go about executing them. What, does 37signals say "Hey, look at our execution of our bad ideas!" Of course not.
Anyone can execute shit, but not everyone can execute their idea in a good way. The way to go about executing an idea in a way that makes it successful is itself an idea. Execution brought Flickr into being. But all the ideas that went into it made it great.
Anyone who thinks ideas don't matter in entrepreneurship is kidding themselves.
That wasn't a very objective post; there are many times I've seen ideas that I could have executed but for whatever reason chose not to, and I'm happy with that decision. As well, who is to say mine wouldn't have been better? This post reads very incomplete and immature, and even derogatory to young developers.
I use those instances as confirmation that my ideas are typically realistic and worthy, but not ready to act on until I get a group of developers and have functional knowledge of major platforms and content creation tools such that if I had a group of people and three months to launch something, I would be able to focus on developing without having to refer to a manual or query google all the time. I think when a solid dedicated team has been found, and I can make good calls on which language, framework, platform, and content creation tools to use through actual experience with them depending on which task is needed to be solved, and then do it without wasting time figuring out how to actually use tools, then I will be able to go for 3 months, 6 months, or even 12 months at a time, without having to focus on analyzing the current state again (which, after a year, I would have to all over again as much would have changed.) As well, my team would be confident in me and themselves and even if turned out that the idea was the problem, my team, our investors, and customers would love for us to do another one.
In fact, you could say that's what 37 signals did--as they were consultants, they likely had a group of people develop web sites for other customers, and we can guess they did this in a 3 or 6 months time frame, and using the latest technologies, and confirming they love working with each other and can go on their own ideas.
So saying that a single person should just start randomly programming an idea, for as long as it takes, is actually not very great advice. Even if it turns out to be a great and useful program, and saves customers thousands of dollars for the $30 a year it cost (like something I've developed in the past), a single person will typically choose to pursue an idea that would not be as amazing and sell-worthy as an idea that 3 people pursue, and with investors to boot. The other thing is that as a single developer, my customers loved what I did, but not something anybody around me cared for, and my parents wanted me to get a job. So I was alone for years programming an app that nobody gave a damn around me, but my customers in about 49 states and 10 countries loved, but I didn't know one person around me who wanted to touch it. In fact, telling people around me, mostly adults about it (I did this when I was 20-23), would get me fake smiles and agreement of how great it seems to be but nobody wanted to use it, like it couldn't have been great because I was so young. I wasn't judged by merit but by being 20-23 years old. And looking 2 years younger than that.
Of course my customers did not know I was young since I never met any of them; I didn't even use my real name; I talked in e-mails as a 45 year old would, since that was approximately the age of the target market. But this gave me the benefit of knowing that I could create a great product that had some features that competitors didn't even have and a much better user interface, and could kick ass, if I didn't have to put up with age discrimination and dumb idiots.
My guess is having cofounders not only confirms your effort to investors but also each of your parents, and on top of that, it is possible to make much greater progress and cover each person's weaknesses and insecurities with the right team, getting to a certain point in a year instead of three, therefore even further increasing your startup's competitiveness as well as confidence from yourselves and others around you.
I joined a big company where I'm treated well, and think it was a great choice--but of course lost a lot of say and independence that I had before. But a good thing is that I've become used to working with and relying on others, as well as better at talking with people in my own age group! This means I'm going to take 1-3 classes full-time in the Fall as a Junior at a University with a good CS Major, while also working, thus meeting the kind of people I would want to meet for a future startup, maybe even the January-March round of YCombinator, something I couldn't have done otherwise going from a single founder to a multiple founder company--how would I meet these people and learn how to work as a team? The company gave me these skills. (Where I work, I'm the youngest, but I also only have an A.S. Degree and was hired solely by my communication skills and the software I showed to them I already discussed above, so it's college where I expect to find startup people.)
The other problem with doing something alone full-time and for years, is that even though it feels good to know you're kicking other companies asses and getting the perspective of software development from all sides, including business and marketing, is that you'll eventually realize you've become totally behind on the latest technologies, because even if you feel like you're very close to becoming big, you're the one doing all the work and you're always not getting one thing or the other done. (As well as slower than if you had multiple developers.)
So I'm using this time to buy software and training to learn the latest shortcuts and tools to developing art, 3d models, animations, and web sites as fast and efficiently as possible as well as functional understanding of rails, django, and Objective-C such that for any given task, I could comfortable pick a language and just go for it without needing to read things up as I go. I think that, along with a team, is key, as I've already described.
Now, a lot of people are at this point already, having college programming buddies and are ready to start, and they should! I think it's the best way to go. But one-fits-all examples and telling readers they shouldn't bother reflecting, and should always be going for a startup NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW, is doing injustice to many people.
In conclusion, reflecting upon one's past and current ideas based on similar startups when new ones come out can be educational as very motivational, but the author chose not to be objective. In fact, if ideas are worthless, waiting 6 months won't hurt, though of course you'd probably want a fresher idea by then--but at least you'd know that you typically come up with good ideas based on seeing your other ones show up in new startups... and that's another reason it's so useful to contrast what you'd think would happen versus what startups came out.
Also, insulting young people is ridiculously immature and unprofessional. Does David even remember how his company got started--with a bunch of developers getting a feel for new technology designing sites for others, then choosing their own ideas to sell to their own clientele? That's exactly what I'm saying, as well. It wasn't a group of 20 year olds or a single 20 year old trying to create a great product over a period of years. He beat other web site design companies (by basically leaving that market, actually), but he didn't come up with an idea for an app and then start out programming for a random idea he had no experience would be needed. His Startup School speech that one doesn't necessarily need VC's? Very valid; I even transcribed it and posted it on N.YC almost immediately after the speech. His efforts? Excellent. Some of his posts? Absurd.
Whoa... that was a long post. I don't think he meant to insult you with his jab at young people at the end. I think he just wanted some clever retort to end his article with. Sometimes people write things they don't mean because the statement sounds too good to not write down. (In this case, though, I think he should have just killed that last sentence. It didn't make sense to me, and it apparently made you made enough to write a small book about it :)
37signals are proof of what David is saying. None of their applications are original, and just based on old ideas (except, to a certain extent, HighRise, although that's arguable). It's the implementation that counts, not the idea.
Here's a start of the list: Ideas don't matter, execution does. Stop thinking about doing and just start doing. Release early, release often. We might live in a computer simulation. Unit-tests let you make change to the codebase while remaining reasonably confident you didn't break anything. It's very hard to start a startup if you still have a regular job so consider quitting.