Ideas are a dime a dozen, they've never been the interesting or limiting part of creating a real product.

Knowing what is the right problem to solve, what the right idea (of many) to apply to it, and then being able to execute, delivering to the right audience, refining as necessary are the actual things that separate success from failure.

I used to believe this line of thought strongly. But like any "rule", it has limits and presumptions.

Genuinely good and new ideas do have a lot of value, they are just very hard to capture by its inventor, because others can just take it for free.

If the law protects ideas, practicality aside, ideas will be more valuable; if the law don't protect implementation, as seen in some countries, then good implementation does not naturally create more value than copycats.

To give a more timely example, a software idea was not valuable because others can take it for free, while taking someone's implementation to redistribute is illegal, so implementation was valuable. But with LLM advancement, there is now a legal and increasingly cheap way to copy implementations, which will greatly its value going forward.

Maybe soon the golden rule will change to "ideas and executions are a dime a dozen, <something else that is hard/illegal to steal> is what separates success from failure"

Indeed ideas are a dime a dozen—until "maybe," you blog about one and a month later watch Zuckerberg announce it?

Since fall 2023, I’ve used ChatGPT voice while driving (for varied uses), which led me to blog on August 14th about OpenAI's rumored hardware. We dont need another thing to carry but clipping it on our keychains would make the best sense (the idea i proposed).

Then a month later at Meta Connect 2026 I see Zuckerberg announce the Muse Charm keychain. A coincidence.. im thinking. I did later in August apply to Scale AI & submitted my blog post here.

https://ryanspahn.substack.com/p/openais-rumored-speaker-bel...