Tito's Blog

Building Things

Chris Dixon adds more thoughts to the idea vs execution debate:

The reality is ideas don’t matter that much. First of all, in almost all startups, the idea changes – often dramatically – over time. Secondly, ideas are relatively abundant. For every decent idea there are very likely other people who’ve also thought of it, and, surprisingly often, are also actively pitching investors. At an early stage, ideas matter less for their own sake and more insofar as they reflect the creativity and thoughtfulness of the team.

Entrepreneurship is about execution, about building things, and that’s what venture capitalists are looking for in a pitch. I couldn’t agree more.

Hence the most important aspect of your backgrounds is not the names of the schools you attended or companies you worked at – it’s what you’ve built. This could mean coding a video game, creating a non-profit organization, designing a website, writing a book, bootstrapping a company – whatever.