THOUGHT: In starting a company or project, success is defined by how good a team is and has nothing to do with the initial idea. Focus on the making the team great or don't do it.
A few weeks ago, I was at a college friend's barbeque (He had just gotten a Green Egg BBQ with integrated temperature feedback circuit - definitely worth it!) and we were talking with a few other college friends. What was fascinating was that with the background of people who were there (MIT, Harvard, Ideo, Google, Apple,...), interesting start up ideas were thrown out every 30 seconds.
These ranged from many really good technology solutions across all categories, to how to create a self optimizing shower which manages heat and pressure, and to creating the perfect toilet (Thanks, Tim). While some of the ideas sound funny, the amazing part was that by the end of the five minute conversations, everything down to the smooth moving seat returner for the toilet had been discussed and debated, including how to minimize the bill of materials when shipping from China.
With good people, not only do ideas flow freely, but solutions are created which truly make sense.
So, how does this apply to start ups? I read an interesting post by Art Lebedev, a Russian product designer. His thesis was that ideas are actually worth "negative money"(Translation from Russian) because of the amount of effort you will put in to each one before you realize it is wrong. This isn't far off.
People, however, can create solutions, which are worth money. Therefore, teams are significantly more valuable than ideas. In building EmSense, we debated hundreds of ideas over the first few years and adjusted our strategy and products multiple times because the team came up with better approaches or business areas. We have had a great team. What we arrived at in the end looked nothing like what we started with.
Everyone says teams matter when you ask for advice in starting a company, but I don't think we realize the depth of their statement. At this point, if I had an A+ team with no idea what to do yet, I would choose it over any fully funded start up with a great idea.
