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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

#11

Post by mwsherman »

Yes, the benefits from sharing your idea greatly outweigh the risks that someone will “take” it and move faster than you.

With Alikewise, my little labor of love, my decision to pursue it (quit my job) was largely driven by the number of people whose eyes lit up when I told them the idea. Keeping it secret, I might not have thought it more than a trifle.

On the other side of it, think of the chain of events that needs to happen for someone to “steal” your idea:

- They need to understand it like you do – the implications, the possibilities, the vision. Even people that “like” your idea don’t see what you see.

- They need to have the skills to execute it.

- They have to make a sacrifice to execute it.

- They need to get the first 30, 50 and 1000 decisions right.

Not to mention, spreading the idea is a great way to find a partner.

Re: Tell Everyone About Your Business Idea - Don't Keep It A Secret

#12

Post by hackinthebochs »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #7

Ideas 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…

Thank you for injecting some much needed nuance into this discussion. The "ideas are worthless" meme always rubbed me the wrong way. It seemed obvious to me of counter examples to this, where an idea at just the right time was the driving force behind success. You explained perfectly what I couldn't quite articulate.

Re: Tell Everyone About Your Business Idea - Don't Keep It A Secret

#13

Post by bobbles »

chops wrote: post #10

The 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…

TED video on this topic: http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_keep_your_goals_to_you...

Re: Tell Everyone About Your Business Idea - Don't Keep It A Secret

#15

Post by dinkumthinkum »

I don't agree. I submit to you the world of knockoffs as a counterexample. I know of an idea out in the wild right now where the founder chose to tell everyone he could as soon as he could. There is a fairly bad MVP close too launch. The only saving it is that he hasn't been very successful in telling everyone he'd like about it. If many of you guys saw it in it's current state, I'm sure wouldn't be a massive undertaking to make a much better version, more directed. For the primary "tech," it's non-minified JS. This is a hotly debated topic but I think there should be some discretion; it's too easy to just flippantly say "ideas are worthless."

Re: Tell Everyone About Your Business Idea - Don't Keep It A Secret

#16

Post by dinkumthinkum »

chops wrote: post #10

The 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…

Yeah, I also think it can give you a negative stigma. We all have lots of ideas. If we tell everyone, every time we have an idea, we can start to look silly or naive or what have you in front of our peers. For some that is a mark a great person. For me, eh, I'll err on the side of caution. :)

Re: Tell Everyone About Your Business Idea - Don't Keep It A Secret

#17

Post by astrofinch »

dinkumthinkum wrote: post #15

I don't agree. I submit to you the world of knockoffs as a counterexample. I know of an idea out in the wild right now where the founder chose to tell everyone he could as soon as he could. There is a fairly bad MVP close too launch. The only saving it is that he hasn't been very successful in telling everyone he'd like about it. If many of you guys saw it in it's current state, I'm sure wouldn't be a massive underta…

I got to say, it's really annoying to read articles about entrepreneurship that present dogmatic perspectives like this one.

Entrepreneurship is something that happens in the real world. The real world is a messy place. Just because you learned one lesson in a big way from your venture doesn't mean applies to everyone.

One of the big reasons I think I can succeed where most fail is that just taking the leap into entrepreneurship seems to make so many people turn their brains off.

Re: Tell Everyone About Your Business Idea - Don't Keep It A Secret

#18

Post by dinkumthinkum »

mwsherman wrote: post #11

Yes, the benefits from sharing your idea greatly outweigh the risks that someone will “take” it and move faster than you. With Alikewise, my little labor of love, my decision to pursue it (quit my job) was largely driven by the number of people whose eyes lit up when I told them the idea. Keeping it secret, I might not have thought it more than a trifle. On the other side of it, think of the chain of events that need…

Yeah but if you tell everyone, there's no reason you won't create 500 knockoffs, successful or not. What are all these benefits? Sure, you could many people to tell you what's wrong with it or how it can be better. Why not get advice from more trusted/private circles? Once it's out there, you can't take it back. My advice is to think this through carefully, don't just blindly accept the "ideas are worthless" and "be complately open" memes.

Re: Tell Everyone About Your Business Idea - Don't Keep It A Secret

#19

Post by dinkumthinkum »

frasertimo wrote: post #6

Agreed. 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.

This made me think of it a little differently. You know, I've never regretted not telling the whole my ideas but I could think of many examples where I would regret it, if I had. In fact, it seems very odd anyone would regret not telling everyone, including all of your potential big name competitors, your ideas. You'd have to be really wrapped in that meme :)

Re: Tell Everyone About Your Business Idea - Don't Keep It A Secret

#20

Post by eurleif »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #7

Ideas 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…

Is there such a thing as a good idea that isn't an opportunity, and never was? Or is the difference between a good idea and an opportunity based solely on chronology?
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