You should constantly move from idea to idea when you’re working on a new startup… until you get to something that is scalable.  Then stop the ideation and focus on execution.

Rarely will the first idea be the one that should be scaled.  My friend Scott Clark (BuzzMaven) talks a lot about adjacent possibilities as a way of exploring new ideas which I think applies here.  You need to find a good solid idea to start the process and then riff on it.  This takes time so you should make sure you have the runway to go through this process.

I’ve been “riffing” on my new startup Punndit for about a year and a half now.  The original idea has matured and we now have a much more solid understanding of where we can create real value and build a business.  That was unclear 18 months ago.  We went from what would have been solving a local maximum to what we now think could be a global maximum.  Not sure you can get there without going through that process.

Your original idea is rarely the best answer so being comfortable with an iterative design process is critical to solving the right problem.

If you’re into startups you probably already watch This Week In Startups hosted by Jason Calacanis.  I watched one of the latest episodes yesterday morning features Steve Blank as a guest and lo and behold they were discussing several of the same things I posted about last week regarding Netflix’ pricing changes.

I put the video up here on Punndit and made a couple of video comments.  Try it out and see what you think.  Punndit is the software platform I’ve been working on over the past year.  If you’re interested in the Netflix discussion go to 23:20 in the video.

On Monday I wrote a post about the importance of story telling.  Jason Calacanis nailed it at min 33:00.  That is the story that Reid Hoffman should have told which would have alleviated a lot of last week’s backlash.

I’ve been doing a lot of research on the advertising market, particularly television and online video spending. My newest project (Punndit) will be influenced heavily by the trends in video advertising.

I ran across the infographic below which helped give me a better perspective on the size of the advertising market. We tend to throw the word “billion” around quite easily nowadays. The govt now has us using the “T” word making billions seem like pocket change. I’ll claim a billion $ is still a lot of money! Each bill in the infographic below represents $50M in advertising spending. Remember that as you scroll down this graphic.