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Ideas Are Valuable; Stop Saying They’re Not!

Paul O'Brien
3 min readNov 17, 2020

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[Image source: “Lit Match” by Vivere Exultantis, via Yvelle Design Eye]

I’m realizing that I have a fetish for offering what seem to be contradictory points of view. In the world of entrepreneurship and our startup communities, one thing I’ve learned, certain with time, and it’s that the same advice, repeated ad nauseum, is helpful academically, to ensure everyone knows the fundamentals and tackles the basics, but when it comes to innovation, we must push people to think outside the box, not within it.

On a panel this morning, it was once again asked why founders struggle to raise money for ideas. And of course, the typical answer was repeated that ideas are worthless and that it’s all about execution.

Hearing it this time though, flipped a switch in my brain that made me react to that sage advice with a bit of revulsion.

Please, appreciate the point of it being said: no one funds ideas. And yet, entrepreneur communities, founders, and startups, indeed, our economy at large, suffers from a lack of ideas.

Ideas are precious and invaluable

And then it dawned on me, that contradictory fetish… I’m thinking ideas are precious and invaluable in the same breath that I just wrote Founders, it’s time for “the Idea” to die.

Both are true.

Are ideas valuable? Absolutely yes

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Paul O'Brien
Paul O'Brien

Written by Paul O'Brien

CEO of MediaTech Ventures, CMO to #VC, #Startup Advisor. I get you funded. Father, marketer, author, #Austin. @seobrien & @AccelerateTexas. https://seobrien.com

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