“Ideas are useless, execution is everything.”

I’ve seen this concept around the internet for years, and the overall sentiment is (probably) beneficial: Get your ideas out in the world to REALLY tell if they’re good. It’s the whole “action over all” mentality, countering the overthinker’s nature to hold onto ideas until they’re perfect. But, I think in the year of our lord, 2023 — you need both a great idea AND great execution to have a chance at success.

Bad execution + great idea = bad.
You might have the next Uber-level idea in your head. But unless you’re prepared to really “do it right”, that brilliant idea will never create success. Dropping the ball in enough places means the experience will suffer, and nobody will want it. Need an example? Look at Threads by Instagram.

Great execution + bad idea = bad.
$10M dollars of product development, marketing, team-building, office-renting, logo-creating, and impeccable design can’t fix a bad idea. I see so many “built in-a-weekend” SaaS side-projects from internet bros that could have been actually pretty great businesses — but instead, they launched the potato-esque V1, neglecting the important details of user experience. An ounce (or twenty) more of execution finesse could make all the difference.

Takeaway: Practice actualizing your ideas into real-life things for the market to use… AND sweat the small stuff, because it can make or break the end result.