Paul Buckheit is the 23rd Google employee, author of the "Don't be evil" slogan, creator of Gmail. Founder of startup FriendFeed. Invested in over 150 startups (60 exits), partner of Y Combinator.
Approx. Lane: It is very interesting to look back and test the strength of the statements of the creator of Gmail Paul Buckheit, which he voiced 14 years ago (in 2007). Some points now seem a little naive, but the main message is still relevant.
New product ideas can be divided into three categories:
- Obviously good ideas that are very difficult to implement . This group includes efficient cold fusion, flying cars, and a host of other sci-fi ideas.
- Obviously “good” ideas that seem possible but haven't been implemented yet . Video phones and HDTVs have been in this category for a long time. I think this happens when people get addicted to technology and overestimate its benefits (and perhaps underestimate the cost). I just don't give a damn about the videophone.
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I suppose that many people will argue with the fact that I have grouped "really bad" ideas together with ideas "that seemed bad, but were actually very good." Everyone thinks they can tell which ideas are good, but observations show otherwise. I do believe that certain people can pick the best ideas over others, but at best they are 50% accurate. I've seen a lot of very smart people (like Google) get it wrong about these things.
For example, I remember when Google Video's version of "a service for uploading videos to the Internet" was first developed. Almost everyone inside Google, myself included, was very skeptical that anything worthwhile would ever be downloaded. Everyone predicted it would be movies and porn. Of course, there was some of this, but skeptics were seriously mistaken when they talked about the lack of useful content. The uploaded video is one of the most important events of the last few years. Unfortunately, Google Video was saddled with an incredibly poor download process (it included installing a Windows client to perform the download!), And YouTube, which was launched AFTER Google Video launched, took over. I believe this error was partly due to negative expectations.
Here is my point of view: the best product ideas are often in the “bad ideas” category!
If you are a super genius researcher who wants to devote your life to a really important problem that you may never solve, then the idea of "cold fusion" may be a good option. If you've found some clever way to significantly reduce the cost of implementing the second category idea (as Skype did for the videophone), then this might be a good option. However, the real "low hanging fruit" is likely to be found in category 3 "bad ideas." You will have to deal with annoying skeptics and haters who say that you are wasting your time and you will not succeed, but sometimes you create something extremely important, or at least somewhat successful (and they will not).
Realizing that good ideas and bad ideas are often almost indistinguishable from each other, there are a few more lessons to be learned:
- Instead of endlessly debating whether an idea is a good idea or not, we need to find faster, cheaper ways to test it. This is one of the reasons why open systems like the Internet or the market economy are developing faster than closed systems like communism or large companies - individuals and small groups can create new things without getting approval from anyone.
- Your product idea is generally useless because for most people it is indistinguishable from other bad ideas. Very few people will want to buy (or steal, or take for free) your idea because they already have bad ideas of their own that they like better. (There are other reasons, but this is one of them. To make your idea valuable, you need to demonstrate that it is good by creating a real product - this also demonstrates your ability to execute .
Obviously, there is much more to be said about these two points, and I have not done enough to explain or justify them right now. Perhaps I'll tell you about this in another post ...
Thanks for the translation: Ilya Gorbunov (telegram: @gorilyad)
More translations by Paul Buckheit
- Serendipity will find you
- The hacker's worldview
- If your product is Great, it doesn't have to be Good.
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