I've heard some people play the "obvious" game. A startup launches something remarkable, and armchair critics emerge to lament how they had the same idea. As though the very idea was enough to discount the ingenuity required to bring that product to life.

The Keyboard That Almost Killed the iPhone

Let's talk about something that seems laughably simple today: typing on glass. Before 2007, the idea of abandoning physical keyboards was considered product suicide. BlackBerry executives dismissed it, and Steve Balmer - then Microsoft CEO - literally laughed at the iPhone's virtual keyboard, claiming "it doesn’t appeal to business customers because it doesn’t have a keyboard."

What those execs and users never saw was the brutal reality behind making that keyboard work. The iPhone team spent years solving thousands of interconnected problems. They had to create dynamic hit targets that secretly expanded and contracted based on predicted letter patterns. They needed sub-millisecond response times to feel "instant." They had to solve multi-touch detection when the technology barely existed. Each solution created new problems to solve. Ultimately, Apple's competitors would struggle to catch up for years to come.

The Execution Tax

It's the hidden cost of turning obvious ideas into working products. It's the difference between saying "we should let people type on glass" and actually making it feel magical.

Why Execution Eats Ideas for Breakfast

The dirty secret of product development is that ideas are cheap precisely because they don't have to deal with reality. Reality is messy. It's filled with edge cases, technical limitations, and human behavior that refuses to fit into our perfect plans.

The Hidden Complexity Curve

Here's what really happens when we build products:

1. The idea seems clear and straightforward
2. Initial prototypes reveal unexpected challenges
3. Solving those challenges exposes new problems
4. Each solution affects other parts of the product
5. Complexity grows exponentially, not linearly

This is why great execution looks like magic from the outside. You're not just solving one big problem - you're solving thousands of tiny problems that only become visible when you're in the trenches.

The Builder's Paradox

The most successful products often appear inevitable in retrospect. Of course we type on glass now. Of course we stream movies. Of course we order rides from our phones. But this perceived inevitability is actually the ultimate compliment to the execution - it means the teams solved so many problems that users never have to think about them.

The Real Innovation

True innovation isn't just having the idea - it's in the thousands of decisions made during execution:

• When to compromise and when to hold firm
• Which problems to solve and which to defer
• How to maintain clarity of vision through chaos
• When to persist and when to pivot

A Call to Builders

So the next time you hear someone say "they took my idea," remember: obvious ideas are like uncut diamonds. They might hold potential, but it's the cutting, shaping, and polishing - the execution - that creates true value.

We know ideas spark innovation, but it's execution in making an idea a reality that changes the world. Embrace the complexity, do the thousand things, make the tradeoffs.

And to those dismissing products as obvious: the door to execution is always open to you too. Go build.