Tell Everyone About Your Business Idea - Don't Keep It A Secret
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Tell Everyone About Your Business Idea - Don't Keep It A Secret
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Re: Tell Everyone About Your Business Idea - Don't Keep It A Secret
#2When faced with this frequent question, I give a simple answer: "people copy success, they don't copy ideas".
By the idea your [lousy] idea becomes a success, copycats are far behind. So go ahead and spread your idea now, you'll get more feedback and iterate faster toward something that actually might succeed.
(*) by now I probably have heard close to 1,000 pitches
Re: Tell Everyone About Your Business Idea - Don't Keep It A Secret
#3There are business segments where this flies. In most other areas you'll be robbed blind and left for dead on the side of the street.
Re: Tell Everyone About Your Business Idea - Don't Keep It A Secret
#4Number 5 is the one that took me the longest to figure out but it is so true. There is basically no chance someone hasn't thought of what you are thinking of.
Re: Tell Everyone About Your Business Idea - Don't Keep It A Secret
#5There are business segments where this flies. In most other areas you'll be robbed blind and left for dead on the side of the street.
I disagree actually, though for reasons other than in the article.
The big danger is not in being robbed, really, but in bigger established companies coming out with a clone to compete against you and then, after they drive you out of business, dropping the clone as not profitable enough.
Re: Tell Everyone About Your Business Idea - Don't Keep It A Secret
#6Agreed. Times when I was afraid to tell other people about something I was working on/wanted to achieve were the same times as when it/I wasn't good enough.
Re: Tell Everyone About Your Business Idea - Don't Keep It A Secret
#7Ideas are worthless. Opportunities could have a lot of value. Or not. With tech ideas it's mostly not, but not always. This "ideas are worthless" -- which I firmly believe, by the way -- is just a rule of thumb. It's not one of the Ten Commandments.
Share ideas. Think a bit about sharing opportunities before you do.
I have an idea to sell apples. So what? Everybody does. Share it.
I have an opportunity to buy apples down the street at one dollar and sell them in a nearby town. In this town apples are already selling for ten dollars each and the vendors are constantly running out of stock.
In that case, I'd keep my mouth shut and go sell some apples.
Ideas are just little blurbs. Opportunities are descriptions of value.
The reason your "I'm making the next E-bay for Twitter Reputations" idea is worthless is because it's a blurb, like selling apples, it's not an opportunity.
Re: Tell Everyone About Your Business Idea - Don't Keep It A Secret
#8Zynga is a counter example to this. They regularly copy ideas and change them a little bit.
While it's not bad to get some feedback, blabbing about your great new idea to the world might not be wise. A bigger company could easily come along and beat you to the market because they have more resources.
The idea from one of my first startups came from another startup. They had a private beta and I was able to get to market first. It didn't work out in the end (this was 10 years ago), but I would have never even had the idea if I didn't see them talking about their idea months before it was even ready for beta.
Why bring on that competition before you can even get off the ground?
Re: Tell Everyone About Your Business Idea - Don't Keep It A Secret
#9There are business segments where this flies. In most other areas you'll be robbed blind and left for dead on the side of the street.
I disagree actually, though for reasons other than in the article. The big danger is not in being robbed, really, but in bigger established companies coming out with a clone to compete against you and then, after they drive you out of business, dropping the clone as not profitable enough.
Which could happen regardless of if you tell people your ideas or not.
Re: Tell Everyone About Your Business Idea - Don't Keep It A Secret
#10The only reason I'll ever keep quiet about some ideas I have is to prevent that feeling you get after telling someone about an idea. You know the one: the one where talking about what you're going to do emotionally equates to having already done it. So I may keep quiet until I either have something (anything) to show, or effectively abandon the project due to lack of interest or realizing it's a terrible idea anyway (anyone want instantrummage.com? ha!)
But in general, the article is completely correct. There's not really a good reason to keep an idea secret.