Over the last weekend, I was reminded by my brother of things I was doing in 2009. Things that were – leaving my full-time job at a e-commerce startup, and starting a consulting / mobile app dev studio. It was the time, when Android was just a kid, and blackberry messenger was overly over-rated.
Me and a friend had started the mobile app dev studio together, and we were discussing which ideas to execute. We had roughly 100 ideas in mind (I remember 100 cause we have been laughing on that number ever since), ranging from a utility for room-mates to manage shared expenses, to backpacking guides, to an intelligent job portal. In between, was the idea for a messenger like the BB messenger. We wanted the messenger to work across all platforms – including iPhone, Android, BB and Symbian. I must admit, that though “whatsapp” was also founded in 2009, it was not available to general public when we were discussing our idea.
And then we left the idea in between (after a month) and moved on. Stupid / Foolish / Whatever. We had some valid reasons for abandoning the idea at that point of time. I might do things differently now; but then nobody learns to ride a bicycle perfectly at the first attempt :)
And that’s what my brother was trying to make me realize.
You need to execute ideas. Execute properly.
Well, the fact is (not to sound too clever or anything), I had already realized the power of “ideation” a long while back. But, what I hadn’t realized was how to calculate long-term impact of the business opportunity / set time expectations / envisage long-term growth plans, etc. Some people might call these as just components of the execution phase, and they would be correct in theory. But practically, these are often over-looked. Especially in startups. And sometimes even termed as over-rated.
To exemplify, there used to be an Indian startup (lifeblob) in 2007-2008 which was building a product called “timeline”; a feature that Facebook recently launched with a huge “awesomeness” and “loves” quotient from mostly everyone (users / journalists / critics). The point is – the startup in question was acquired by another Indian startup (really not the best acquisition – but nonetheless great) while the same idea was executed by Facebook a few years later to a large applause. The question is – when the idea was great (as proved by FB) and when the team did try to make it work / execute for 4-5 years, then what went wrong ? I could only assume wrong execution. But what wrong ? Probably a few of the hundreds of components in a typical execution cycle ?
It’s not easy to execute. Ideas are just ideas without execution. But execution without planning + insight + foresight is the killer.
This post is not meant to be taken as just another take on a startup or anything remotely near to a study on ideas/execution. It’s just a personal opinion and more than that just a reminder to myself for all the mistakes I made in the past. So if you are still reading this, you know why this random post now :)
P.S – Lifeblob was one of the best startups I have seen from India (atleast during that time); and if anyone from Lifeblob (ex-lifeblob) is reading this, then my respect for you guys for everything you did. No offense !
