Execute your idea, now!

(picture by qisur)

I just read about a story related to threewords.me. Mark Bao (creator of threewords.me) built his first prototype in about two days and released it. This led to an hype on facebook and shortly he got millions of visitors.

And there is the story of Brandon Watson. About one and a half years ago he wrote about a new app he wanted to build:

The app [my3words] will have user accounts, which you will need in order to leave feedback and view your own feedback. People can enter 3 words about another person, for whom they must have their email.

Today Brandon Watson wrote on hn:

2 years. I even registered the domain my3words.com.

What did I do with it? Not much. I have no idea if Mark saw my post or not. I kind of hope he did, so that I can feel a little better about not executing. That maybe I inspired him.

However, that doesn’t change the bottom line. He executed. Worth-ful. I had the idea, but didn’t execute. Worthless.

Hats off to Mark.

#6/111: Confessions of a Serial Entrepreneur

What is it about?

Stuart Skorman tells about his business and private life. He started several companies in his life, worked as a band manager and played high stakes poker for two years. All in all a pretty adventures life.

Key points?

Choose your business idea/model on logic and profitability. He tried to make an educational business to give something back to the world but forget to make it profitable. Result: The business failed and he and his investors (family, friends) lost a lot of money.

Conclusion

This is one of the few books where people wrote a lot about the failures. This makes is very valuable. He excelled on his first company (video renting) because he loved movies, had enough information about the customer and the retail business. This example shows greatly that you should rather go for boring ideas than for clever, new, exciting ones, which will probably fail.

Let’s raise Kids to be Entrepreneurs

Bored in school, failing classes, at odds with peers: This child might be an entrepreneur, says Cameron Herold. At TEDxEdmonton, he makes the case for parenting and education that helps would-be entrepreneurs flourish — as kids and as adults.

#5/111: Blue Ocean Strategy

What is it about?

There are red and blue oceans. Red oceans are highly competitive markets (e.g. commodities). In contrast blue oceans are markets with a low rate or non competition. The authors explain how to construct & execute a blue ocean strategy.

Key points?

There are several tools to construct and execute a blue ocean strategy. Some new ideas are targeting non-customers and tipping point leadership. The idea of targeting non-customers is easy. Before the Ford T-Model cars were expensive, so many people don’t bought them. Ford invented the T-Model which was really cheap, therefore non-customers converted to customers for this business.

The tipping point leadership is based on the popular tipping point phenomena. To change a company fast try to influence the key players (important and well respected people). These key players will allow you to influence a lot of people with a small effort.

Conclusion

You will notice that this book is written by academics. You can’t read it so fluently because there is some unnecessary complexity. However it got some nice examples of companies building blue oceans and shows how you can construct your own blue ocean strategy.