What's an Idea Worth

I have new ideas all the time for new businesses, products, and it turns out so do many other people. So, how much are these "ideas" worth? To me, not very much, and to everyone else, less.

Creative energy has value. The trick is separating the good creative ideas from the bad. One of my favorite activities is to brainstorm an idea to see how quickly we can kill it. If we can't kill it immediately, the value goes up a bit.

Of the thousands of ideas for new stuff I've come up with, I've turned very few of them into reality. The ideas are either being done (someone thought of it first), not viable (bad idea), wrong timing (maybe in the future, but there's no market now), too hard, too easy, or just need to be thought through more to see if they explode. Then there are ideas that pass all the way and even they don't make it to reality.

I've been writing new ideas for years in a spreadsheet. Here are just a few.

1. Marketplace to resell digital goods. I bought this MP3 (really, I did) and now I want to sell it, just like I used to sell my CDs.
2. Remote control jousting cars. I swear, someday I'm going to make these. I actually made a prototype and they were a blast, but then I found out how hard the toy business is today.
3. Blog Kits for real estate agents. If I were an agent, all I'd do is blog each new house that came on the market. What I liked, what I didn't, a comment on the price etc. I think if agents understood how powerful this could be, it would take off.

Well, you get the idea. Anybody want to buy any of these? My guess is "no". The reason is they are mine. The value of the idea is next to nothing, unless it's me doing the work. As a VC recently told me, "We don't come up with ideas, but we do invest in good teams." Think about this one....

So, if your wondering how much your idea is worth you can put it on eBay and see where it sells. My guess again is zero.

However, overtime, with lots of work, ideas become valuable. The value is a reflection of the work that you have put in, the market size, the amount of money it's making, how fast it's growing, but to get to this point where it has value, the idea must be turned into a reality.