Good ideas lose

How yoink has completely changed my model of how to succeed

In the past month, many things have happened that have built up a whole new model of how to make things (software, music, anything) that succeed at reaching an audience:

Merely good ideas executed perfectly almost never win, but truly great ideas win even with mediocre execution.

Let me explain.

By “good” vs “great” ideas, I am referring to “how many people this idea would positively impact if executed perfectly”. Google Chrome is a great idea (because it had the potential to positively impact many, many people, which we know because it did). Justin Bieber’s music is a great idea (same). The many startups that have tried and failed to get people to use their web browsers may have been good ideas, but were not truly great, since no matter how well they executed them, they would not reach many people. Most amateur songs are bad or merely good ideas (because no matter how much they were polished, they would not resonate with very many people).

The model I have recently come to accept is that as long as execution is at least mediocre, the greatness of the idea (its potential) is basically all that matters. This works the opposite way too: even if you execute an idea perfectly, if it was never a truly great idea, it won’t have much success.

Here is my supporting evidence:

• Three weeks ago my friend Sam invited me to help sell a product he made in a day very hastily but was excited about. It’s called yoink and it lets you find random vocal samples by searching by the words people say. We spent a few days polishing it and did some modest organic marketing and were blown away by the results — 200 users within a week. We started selling it and were blown away again by the results — 33 sales in the first four days. In the 2 weeks since we have learned we could raise the price from $5 to $25 and people kept buying. And of the five videos we’ve posted on the yoink YouTube, they have an average of 3870 views, including one super low-effort short that took me 45 minutes start to finish that has gotten over 16k views in 3 days (the most views I’ve ever gotten this early in my whole 17 years making 100+ YouTube videos). That same video also has over 8k views on IG (side note, posting a short-form vid to all of IG Reels/YT Shorts/TikTok is basically a 3x multiplier on your marketing with no extra effort). We are getting many comments every day from people super excited about it. We even get messages from people who have bought the app and it was broken for them, and they’re not even mad, they don’t want a refund, they’re cheering us on (and asking us to please fix it).
  This is the most rapid success any of my projects have ever had. The lesson I’ve learned from yoink and my many failed ventures that I tried much harder to execute well, is that just making a mediocre version of your idea and putting it in front of some of the right people is enough to test whether it’s a truly great idea or not.

• The Weeknd is consistently in the top 4 most streamed artists in history. His music is clearly some of the most successful of any music ever. (I am a massive fan). Here’s a quote from a 2015 interview with his long-time producer/engineer Illangelo where he effectively says he doesn’t care about having the best gear or consistent gear, he just uses what is available:
  "The hardware does not matter. In this day and age and in this music industry it’s all about taste, it’s all about the ideas."
  The Weeknd’s first album (and my fav of his), Trilogy, wasn’t mixed and mastered great, but he released it anyway (actually, he released 1/3 of it at a time, as separate free mixtapes). Once the three mixtapes got a lot of traction, he got pros to make it sound amazing, and re-released it as one mega three-hour album. And in my opinion, the new mixes are far better than the originals. But imagine if Abel’s strategy was to save up money with his modest salary to hire someone to polish every song to perfection before releasing it. He may have been stuck for years on his previous musical project The Noise, which never had nearly as much potential.

• I recently watched this video about one of the greatest songs ever, A Day in the Life by The Beatles. The video goes over the many takes of the song to explain the songwriting process. The Beatles consistently re-recorded sections until the core of the idea was captured well enough, but they didn’t keep going until there was a take with 0 mistakes. Even the iconic final chord that took them days to write and eight takes to get good enough still has people shifting in their chairs and didn’t have everyone playing perfectly in sync.
  The song worked despite not being perfectly polished because of how great the songwriting and production ideas were — the off-key orchestra section that builds tension like nothing else, the contrast between John’s psychedelic and solemn mourning and Paul’s chipper morning, the absurd vocal loop that appears suddenly as an outro. The execution just had to be good enough to get the ideas across. And by not being 100% perfect on the execution, they were able to use more of their limited time on this earth to make other songs.

It should be noted that mediocre execution is not the same as absolutely horrible execution. I’ve made the mistake of releasing a product, doing a few low-effort organic IG photo posts and spending $100 on FB ads and deciding the idea had been proven useless. I released an album in 2024 and never posted anything about it anywhere. It takes more than that — but often not much more. With yoink, it was clear after making 2-3 quick videos, posting them to IG and YT, and posting links to ~7 subreddits that we had a winning idea.

The implication of this for me is that I should release and do modest marketing for more unfinished things: songs without finished lyrics (not my idea: my favorite album of 2025 was officially “unfinished” and was half mumbles), buggy software with low-effort websites, and essays that don’t read perfectly. All else being equal, the song/software/essay being polished would be better than it not being polished. But all else is not equal: we are all racing against the clock before we return to the earth and we only have so many days left. And all that time that you spend perfectly executing an idea that was never truly great to begin with is, truly, time wasted.

By the way, I’ve only given examples of things that can be executed on a small timescale, but I think this applies to bigger ideas too, even as big as starting a car company or putting the first person on the moon. I just didn’t write about ideas at this scale because I am not involved in them — I like making music, videos, and music and video software, all of which can be made in a span of days or weeks without a big team.

In the spirit of this very thesis, I have put a lot less effort into this essay than I typically do (well, typically I don’t even start because I know how long it will take me to get it perfect), but the main idea is there. Good enough is good enough