Tell Everyone About Your Business Idea - Don't Keep It A Secret • Hacker News Board

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

#21

Post by benatkin » Tue, Mar 20, 2012, 6:51 AM UTC

I think there's a bit of a false dichotomy between sharing what you're doing and keeping it secret. There are many different levels of openness and secrecy. People often err on the side of being too careful by not even talking about the problem space they're passionate about with others. People also err on the side of telling people about ideas they haven't even got around to exploring. Derek Sivers wrote a nice post about erring on the side of being too open, yet he is very talkative.

http://sivers.org/zipit

I'm not very good at picking my battles when it comes to sharing my technical interests but I'm getting better as I get experience.

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

#22

Post by itmag » Tue, Mar 20, 2012, 10:16 AM UTC

eurleif wrote: post #20

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?

I think the problem is that these Silicon Valley types (I'm in Sweden) have a very low barrier for what constitutes a "good idea". What they call ideas I think of as stoner musings. Like, uhm, Facebook for cats, man. Totally.

No one in my part of the world seems to believe in the "ideas are useless, so share them with everyone" meme at all and I think there's a reason for that.

Then again, I do share most of my ideas: http://ideashower.posterous.com

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

#23

Post by itmag » Tue, Mar 20, 2012, 10:21 AM UTC

HN is hypocritical.

On one hand, people here consider ideas to be worthless and put Execution on a pedestal.

On the other hand, pure-execution copycats like the Samwer brothers are lambasted for their unoriginal ways.

Then again, maybe we just need better definitions of "idea" and "execution"...

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

#24

Post by headShrinker » Tue, Mar 20, 2012, 1:51 PM UTC

I do agree with the principals of this article. Talk about your idea to flush it out. I disagree with the article on the basis that there can be some tact applied to who, how and when you talk to different people.

There many pluses to talking to idea people early on in your development, potential private investors mid-way into development, or very network savvy people toward the end of development. Just starting to develop an idea and telling everyone you know doesn't make much sense to me.

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

#25

Post by NameNickHN » Tue, Mar 20, 2012, 3:09 PM UTC

headShrinker wrote: post #24

I do agree with the principals of this article. Talk about your idea to flush it out. I disagree with the article on the basis that there can be some tact applied to who, how and when you talk to different people. There many pluses to talking to idea people early on in your development, potential private investors mid-way into development, or very network savvy people toward the end of development. Just starting to d…

Those were my exact thoughts. There is a difference in running an idea by a couple of people in order to get feedback. Telling the whole world is a completely different thing. There will be times when being ahead of a competitor - even only a couple of months - makes the difference between success and failure.