Ripe Ideas

In 1962, four different companies launched discount retail chains: Kresge opened Kmart, F.W. Woolworth started Woolco, Dayton-Hudson opened Target, and an independent in Rogers, Arkansas, opened Walmart. The same year. Four different founders, scattered across the country, who'd never met—all acting on the same idea at the same time.

This wasn't coincidence. The idea was ripe.

In the 1990s, it was impossible for search engines not to be invented. They were inevitable. Larry Page and Sergey Brin didn't create the first search engine. They created the best one. What made them remarkable wasn't that they had the idea—the idea was already there, hanging in the air like fruit ready to be picked. What made them remarkable was that they succeeded in executing it.

Ideas, it turns out, have a life of their own. They ripen according to their own schedule. And when their time comes, they'll find someone to bring them into the world—with or without you.

Marc Andreessen names the mechanism from the market's side. "In a great market—a market with lots of real potential customers—the market pulls product out of the startup," he writes. "The market needs to be fulfilled and the market will be fulfilled, by the first viable product that comes along. The product doesn't need to be great; it just has to basically work. And, the market doesn't care how good the team is, as long as the team can produce that viable product."

The ripe idea doesn't ask for genius. It asks for someone to show up: "customers are knocking down your door to get the product; the main goal is to actually answer the phone and respond to all the emails from people who want to buy."