The value of ideas
Mz: Is the "ideas are useless" meme being put out there just because so many newbies to the startup culture are too enamored with their ideas and think that the idea is all that matters, and so they have to be hit hard with the "ideas are useless" to snap them out of that thinking and start valuing execution?I wouldn't exactly phrase it that way, but I think that does sum it up fairly well.  I have spent a lot of time around the "gifted" community and I think an awful lot of extremely intelligent people are fundamentally lazy because, compared to most folks, they tend to skate through life and don't really have to work that hard.When I was in 11th grade and a member of a college level math honor society, I tutored a mentally retarded 10th grade girl who had gotten herself into algebra. No one else in the honor society doing tutoring wanted to tutor her because it was too hard to teach her.  So I always ended up working with her. She worked harder for her C's and D's than I ever did for my A's and B's.  She never got in a snit over not understanding something.  I learned to explain math concepts at least 3 ways without breaking a sweat and up to 12 ways if that was what it took.  It was one of the most valuable experiences I ever had.After something is built and makes a billion dollars or so, the world calls the founders/originators "geniuses".  People who have the subjective experience of routinely being smarter than everyone else in the room often have trouble with certain realities and are often overconfident in their abilities in some ways -- for example, they tend to think if you disagree with them or have some criticism, you simply are too dumb to understand and can't possibly have a real point.  They tend to think this because repeated experience in the real world has taught them this is typically true.  So I think a lot of very smart people kind of identify themselves with the after-the-fact pronouncement of "genius" and gloss over what it took to accomplish the stuff that ultimately convinced the world this label was appropriate.  And I think that is why you see this mantra that ideas aren't worth dirt, you actually have to roll up your sleeves and do the work to have anything of value.