People who believe in painting... realize there is something greater than just coming up with an idea, and executing it.
Historically, I've done movies, but I've got a family already. I've been doing this for many years, and the idea of working consistently on something that I really, really love, and the steadiness of it, was really appealing.
President Herbert Hoover returned his salary to the government. His idea caught on, and now we're all doing it.
The brain is like a TV set; when it goes blank, it's a good idea to turn off the sound.
You want an idea that turns into a monopoly. But you can't get a monopoly, in a big market right away; too much competition for that.
... but the pendulum has swung way out of whack here. A bad idea is still bad, and the pivot happy world we're in today feels suboptimal.
You want an idea that not many other people are working on, and it's okay if it doesn't sound big at first.
There are exceptions of course, but most companies start with a great idea - not a pivot.
If you have several ideas that all seem pretty good, work on the one that you think about, when you're not trying to think about work.
A related advantage of mission oriented ideas, is that you yourself will be dedicated to them.
We hear again and again from founders, that they wish they had waited to start a startup until they came up with an idea they really loved.
The best ideas often look terrible at the beginning the truly good ideas, don't seem like they're worth stealing.
Remember that the idea will expand, and become more ambitious as you go.
It's become popular in recent years to say that the idea doesn't matter.
There's at least a hundred times more people with great ideas than people that are willing to put in the effort to execute them well.
You want an idea about what you can say. I know it sounds like a bad idea but here's specifically why its actually a great one. You want to sound crazy but you want to ask to be right.
I myself used to believe ideas didn't matter that much, but I'm very sure that's wrong now.
Ideas by themselves are not worth anything, only executing well is what creates value.
Why now, why is this the perfect time for this particular idea, and to start this particular company?
If you look at successful pivots, they almost always are a pivot into something that the founder wanted. Not a random made up idea.
Great execution towards a terrible idea will get you nowhere.
[In the late 80's] that's the first time I heard about that astonishing idea [that most photographs would be taken on telephones]. And now I've been watching the tsunami of images.
I will just say, appropriation is an intellectual idea until it happens to you. It's a philosophy, and it's got its own intellectual framework. Then there's what happens when it's your photograph. Then it's personal, and that's all I'll say.
To put it as simply as possible: I am not a Muslim.[...] I do not accept the charge of apostacy, because I have never in my adult life affirmed any belief, and what one has not affirmed one can not be said to have apostasized from. The Islam I know states clearly that 'there can be no coercion in matters of religion'. The many Muslims I respect would be horrified by the idea that they belong to their faith purely by virtue of birth, and that a person who freely chose not to be a Muslim could therefore be put to death.
I was 21 in 1968, so I'm as much a child of the '60s as is possible to be. In those years the subject of religion had really almost disappeared; the idea that religion was going to be a major force in the life of our societies, in the West anyway, would have seemed absurd in 1968.
