Ideas to Reality
2009-02-26
Long ago, I wrote a short article called “ideas are just a multiplier of execution”. It's one of the most popular things I've ever written, quoted and linked-to all over the web and books.
A few days ago, I posted a free, open song contest idea just for the fun of it. It was just a thinking exercise after reading What Would Google Do. A total of one hour, including writing up a database schema for how it'd work.
I didn't intend to really do it. I just put it out there as an idea. Maybe it will influence the other companies already doing song contests. Maybe someone else will do it.
It's not even really a business, since it has no plans to make money. It just seems like something worth doing, that musicians need.
I feel like I could write up one of these ideas every day, though I wouldn't sleep well at night, wanting to turn these ideas into reality.
Then today I saw 998 business ideas from Seth Godin's Six Month MBA team.
Brilliant. What a great exercise. By turning off all self-censoring to come up with that many ideas, it makes it so clear that ideas are just ideas, and the hard part is the persistent work to make it happen.
The scary part for me is that I'm pretty good at designing the tech and business blueprint for how to turn an idea into reality, so it's daunting but tempting to make an incubator company, where I'd take every half-decent idea for music-based companies, make the execution plan, own it, fund it, hire people to build and manage it, then I'd just oversee it.
UPDATE: after writing this, I paused, realizing this is what I need to do.
Derek,
I believe I speak for many aspiring music business pursuers when I say that I would LOVE to see you get behind an "incubator." If your past successes are any indication, I think it's got a pretty good chance to turn out well...
-Adam Wexler
Derek, anyone who starts a company, then waits a year to name it... and calls it, Now Now Now, is found in the dictionary under Mellow.
However, it's a brilliant name, and I think shows your brilliance in marketing once again.
You've processed that calling something, say, CDbaby, in an age when digital music has taken over, will not work... even Hostbaby, too stiff.
Now Now Now.
Wow wow wow.
If you could spend all your days being an idea guy, you'd be a happy man.
But you've read the story of the guy who tried to do that -- all ideas, no execution.
Locked him up, he was insane.
Derek,
It would be really interesting to find out how you picked up all of your tech know-how. Did you study it in school or did you pick it up through practice/self-learning?
Ciao!
Christian
Necessity. I wasn't very technical when I started CD Baby, but as it grew I had to learn, and couldn't afford to hire a programmer, so I went to the bookstore and got a couple books on PHP+MySQL programming. I've learned slowly over 10 years.