English | ASIN: B09LR84SWX | 528 Pages | AZW EPUB PDF | 21 MB
Quick question: Apart from being extraordinarily successful; what is the common thread between Twitter, Facebook, Groupon, Instagram and Pinterest?
Any guesses? Hint: Spoiler ahead, better watch out.
Each one of these trailblazing companies started off as an ATROCIOUS idea.
Yes, that’s the absolute truth! Kevin Systrom, Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey and Andrew Mason started off their entrepreneurial journey with frustration, contempt and terrible failures.
But that’s not what you heard, correct?
You probably bought into the Tech Crunch Headlines and unbridled cringe worthy PR of these Start-up founders tapping into their fountain of brilliance and conceiving the most flawless idea; an idea so exemplary, so complete; that the whole World colluded into making it a Success.
This is what the well paid PR agencies want you to buy into and it’s what most people think. Guess what; most people are 100% wrong.
The Eureka Myth; if you’ve heard that word before, then you probably have a decent idea of what I’m talking about.
The “Eureka” moment idea basically states that all brilliant people have brilliant ideas. And when they have their brilliant ideas, they happen like that.
Hence saying “Eureka” is the classic apple on Newton’s head. It’s the classic main character in a personal development movie who halfway through decides that something’s wrong, makes a revelation and changes everything.
Now, that stuff is great for folklore, and that’s a great story that founders can tell people. It’s also great for movies, but it’s complete $h*t.
The longer you believe in the “Eureka” myth that brilliant people have brilliant ideas and they just fall in their lap, the longer you are doing yourself a disservice.
People who abide by such a thought process have a tendency to think that they just need to wait for the perfect idea to come to them. And then it doesn’t actually take any active learning on their part.
You probably would think that some people have ideas and some people simply do not. That’s also just not true.
The vast majority of ideas that have changed the world or caught the headlines started as drastically different ideas.
The idea you know today is always a result of either a steady evolution of changes or a pivot.
Now, the steady evolution of ideas happens in every single Start-up. If you go back and look at the founders’ stories, most of the ideas started differently.
Over time they learned more things. The more they learned, the more they experienced. The idea evolved. And then as the idea changes, it tends to get better. Sooner or later, you can’t even recognize the original idea.
Idea generation is not an art form equivalent. It is not limited to those born with a creative genius.
Anyone on the face of this Planet and every other can conceive, evaluate and implement an idea; if executed eloquently such ideas can leave a lasting impact on the World and beyond.
