Did you spend at least some part of this lockdown period binge-watching something on Netflix? (I’m borderline judging you if your answer is a no!)
Now a somewhat orthogonal question – Have you ever had an idea that you thought could change the way things are, or change lives, or maybe even change the world?
Well of course you would’ve had! American businessman Nolan Bushnell once said – “Everyone who has ever taken a shower has had an idea”. True, isn’t it? We’ve all had our share of ideas – ideas we thought are so ingenious that we deserve a pat on the back for even conceiving them.
Let’s go back in time to early 1997 – after their previous startup got acquired, Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings, were discussing ideas for a new business. After days of brainstorming and ruling out a bunch of ideas like personalized shampoo and customized baseball bats, they finally hit upon the idea of selling movie video tapes online. Thanks to an earlier incident where Reed had to shell out forty bucks as late fee for a movie at Blockbuster, they thought this is an idea that’s totally worth considering. Marc who was super enthusiastic about this came home and proposed this brilliant idea to his wife, to which she said –
“That will never work!”
How wonderful it is to hear those reassuring words from your best friend about your best idea, right? But Marc, he was not discouraged. He and Reed continued working on it, their concept gradually evolved – they saw opportunity in a new technology called DVDs, and they shifted to making it an online DVD rental company instead, something that’s both novel and had a potential to become the next Amazon. After doing thorough research on it, this idea became big enough to be putting 2 million dollars on the line; they even built a superstar team for this and then went pitching it to investors for more funding. One particular investor, halfway through their pitch, told them on their face –
“This is shit.”
“… DVDs would soon become obsolete and people will be streaming movies in the future”. Well, in retrospection, that somewhat made sense – DVDs now aren’t as much popular anymore and streaming has become the norm. But back then, when they heard this comment from a potential investor, they were completely taken aback. But they were too invested in this to let go of their idea. They still saw an opportunity and stuck to their concept of DVD rental my mail. They not only had a successful launch but a few years later it also IPO’d as a highly lucrative DVD rental company, much before they ventured into streaming services. And today, that brand Netflix, has become a ubiquitous part of our lives.
Moving from one symbol of pop culture to another – Sometime in the year 1962, after the success of the Fantastic Four comics, Stan Lee was asked to come up with a new superhero by his publisher. One day when he was brainstorming ideas, he saw a fly crawl up on the wall and thought – hey, it would be nice to have a guy climb walls, so he then made that a superpower. He made this hero a teenage boy, someone with real personal problems and gave him a dramatic name – “Spider-man”. He then went to his publisher and explained all these unique new ideas. Hearing this the publisher said –
“That is the worst idea I’ve ever heard! …”
“…First of all, people hate spiders, they don’t want a hero to be associated with that; and teenagers can only be sidekicks not full time heroes, plus you can’t give a superhero personal problems!” he said. Now at that time one of their magazines was tanking and the publishers had decided to kill the magazine. Stan, just to get this idea of out of his head, went ahead and published Spider-man in the final issue of the magazine, because well, nobody cares what you put in the last issue. But surprisingly enough, that issue recorded astounding sales figures. The publisher later called him and said – “that idea that you came up with, Spider-man, let’s make an entire series out of it”. And rest we know is history.
So essentially the idea for one of the most successful comic superheroes and the idea for one of the biggest media services – both were completely ridiculed when they were originally conceived. Think of it – if Marc had given up on his idea based on his wife’s first reaction, of if Stan had dropped his creation after listening to his publisher, we would never have had Netflix or Spider-man today! Yes folks, can you even imagine your childhood without Spider-man or your adulthood without Netflix?!
The point is – sometimes you come up with an amazing idea and it gets shot down by your closest or the most significant people – your spouse, your boss, your professor, your investor. Sometimes they may be right – not every wild idea is a good one. There’s a popular line from Spider-man that says – with great power comes great responsibility. And these two stories tell us that sometimes with great ideas comes great disapproval. But fact of the matter is that nobody knows anything for sure – that if an idea is going to truly succeed or not. The best way to find out if it works is by actually doing it.
Sometimes you have to take your chances, take calculated risks, and sometimes the idea evolves from the original to make it come closer to reality – Marc & Reed’s concept moved from selling video tapes to selling DVDs instead to make the idea more feasible, meanwhile Stan Lee decided to take his chances in a low-risk scenario of the final magazine issue. But the point is, never completely crush your idea just because someone else did, if you genuinely believe in it. You owe it a shot and give it the best shot possible – only time gets to decide if your idea is a good one or not.
I conclude this with the complete quote by Bushnell – “Everyone who’s ever taken a shower has had an idea. But it’s the person who gets out of the shower, dries off and does something about it who makes a difference.”
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