“You’re not pretty enough for show business.”
That was Barbra Streisand’s mother. Barbra was a teenager in Brooklyn in the 1950’s — her father had died when she was a baby, a stepfather who barely spoke to her, sleeping on a couch in a cramped apartment.
Not a promising business plan.
She also possessed a once-in-a-generation voice (three octaves ±) and a stubbornness to match. At 19 she landed a small part on Broadway as Miss Marmelstein, a lovesick secretary in I Can Get It for You Wholesale, and stole the show. Two years later she was the show: Fanny Brice in Funny Girl (Broadway + movie/Oscar).
Fast-forward to 1985. At the peak of her pop career, Barbra decides to record an album of Broadway songs. The record company is skeptical. Who buys show tunes? So she asks Stephen Sondheim to rewrite “Putting It Together” — originally about a painter — so it’s about her own fight with the label. He does. (Trivia: Sondheim was once a camper under a counselor named Tom Lehrer. Some summer camp.)
The song is one long argument: art vs. commerce, vision vs. compromise, and the inconvenient truth that a vision that stays in your head is worth exactly nothing. It has to be built, piece by piece, detail by detail, or it dies in there.
Listen to the full song [lyrics] and then enjoy watching the behind-the-scenes footage of her and the band assembling it. It’s also about a software release.
Every founder knows this. I’m on startup number four, Equator.app, and some mornings the gap between what I can imagine and what’s on the screen is huge. The tools may be better than ever. The work is still bit by bit.
TL;DR
Nobody’s vision counts until someone else can see it.
The art is in the assembly, not just the idea.
Don’t give up so fast.