EMBA的小眼睛

The idea is not the (only) hard part

In 1989, I created and launched a new idea: videotapes of people playing video games. It was ridiculed by the hipsters of the day, and my publisher later admitted that they hadn't even bothered to bring it to market beyond a few stores. A copycat product went on to sell a few million copies.

Today, Amazon paid a billion dollars for Twitch, which is precisely the same idea, used by millions of people every day. More than a billion hours have been spent/wasted on Twitch to date, I'm guessing.

I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for a commission check.

No, the hard part isn't merely thinking of an idea. Yes, it's hard to sit with a bunch of pre-teens while they record the underlying video, and hard to get it made and hard to get the first one published, the first time.

But the truly hard part is, 25 years later, sticking with it long enough for it to actually work.