> In that time, I internalized a simple truth: ideas are cheap, execution is everything.

This has never been true.

To believe this, you would have had to miss the number of functioning apps and games on all the app stores that no one cares about, to just give one example. Or all the excellent but abandoned open source projects.

Rewards follow an exponential distribution ("power law ..."). Ideas and execution are important ingredients. Furthermore, they are not easily separable.