I Would Give My Creativity, For A Bit Of Luck – Abdallah Alaili

November 30, 2023 Abdallah Alaili

Throughout the years i have listened to entrepreneurs, tech stratup founders and investors, and have interacted with a lot of programmers. Something struck me, most tech founders are analytical and lack creativity! I have talked with countless programmers that are just looking for unique ideas to launch. At first i thought it was a coincidence, but with time, the more i talked with tech people and even listened to famous founders, it became clear to me, creativity is not available to everyone, and it is a rare commodity. Most startup founders try to copy, and pivot, because they don’t have great ideas. I have seen tech founders launch the stupidest ideas, and fail. I know even a startup founder that copied a startup idea from a TV show!

Creativity is undervalued for sure, investors are looking for people on the autism spectrum, thinking this is the profile of the ideal founder. Reality is, ideas should come before any profiling. This fallacy is the reason why most startups fail, ideas should make sense, not the founder’s profile.

If we look back to one of the most valuable companies in the history of tech. Apple, can not claim that the tech nerd Steve Wozniak made it really happen, but rather the creative visionary Steve Jobs!

Jumping to me, i, on the other hand have a never ending well of creative ideas, i can easily create another silicon valley if i had the capital needed. What i need however, is luck! You see, you can’t have everything, and i’m not a lucky guy! Worked hard, and creatively, was able to earn descent money, but nothing was handed to me, the way lucky people have it.
A lucky guy, comes up with a semi-decent idea, goes to the end of the street, raises few million dollars, and tries to execute his idea.
For me, knocking on investors doors has not been more successful than dating. As a short guy, i’ll let you guess how successful my dating life is.

My creativity is like my dating prospect, girls love me, i complement, sweettalk, engage, show interest. All the girls with no exception find me interesting and want to be friends. But, just friends, because i am short, i am not the boyfriend they are looking for, if i was few inches taller, for sure. That’s the issue with my creativity, i have the best ideas, but not the luck that can get me the investment needed to make these ideas realities.

To give you an example, recently google announced that they will be experimenting with letting users annotate search results (article). That’s an idea i had 10 years ago, i developed it on paper much better than what is currently proposed, and i even called it “the google killer”. And that’s only one idea i had and developed in my mind!