In a business, is an idea the most valuable part of the creation?

In a business, is an idea the most valuable part of the creation? –@greenjobseeker

No!

I’ll give you an example: In 2006 I had an offer from a bank to buy the fund of hedge funds I was managing. The offer was a good offer except… they wanted me to sign a six year employment agreement. And if I quit at any point I’d have to give all the money back.  Even my lawyer said, “I thought slavery was outlawed.”  So I couldn’t take the deal.

So I outlined ten ideas I thought could be good businesses. Nine of those ideas were bad ideas. Anybody can outline ten business ideas. Anybody can outline nine bad ones.

Then I spec-ed out each business, I put the specs on elance.com, I took in over 100 possible bids from developers who wanted to create the businesses, and then I hired one for each idea, including for Stockpickr.com, which worked out well for me.

So the ideas were bullshit. You need to always practice the idea muscle else you won’t have any good ideas. But the actual important step was the next step: the spec-ing out of each site, using elance.com to hire a developer, paying the developer to get started, and then starting.

The idea held the ladder. But I had to climb the ladder to change the lightbulb. Climbing the ladder, despite my fear of heights, was the most important part.