The Founder Paradox - should you share your idea? | Hacker News Reader

The Founder Paradox - should you share your idea?

ycreject.com

3 pointsallanscu5 comments

This was one of the earliest things I was taught about entrepreneurship, and it's been beat into my head over time: share your bloody idea. With damn near everyone who'll listen. Your idea is worthless; it's the execution that matters (we already know that here, of course). However, there are two reasons the idea is worthless. We're all used to the "if you aren't executing you have nothing with which to make money" reason, but the other reason is that somebody else already has your idea, almost certainly. The less earth-shattering it is, the more likely somebody else has the same idea, of course, but even some of the earth shattering ideas are floating around other peoples' heads. Thus, the goal isn't to keep a secret, but rather to get the information out to whoever can help you with the resources you need to ship, whether it's connecting you with developers, designers, investors, whatever, or simply providing you with essential feedback.

I'd be willing to wager that more projects have been killed from this sort of paranoia-fueled secret keeping than by people stealing ideas.

This isn't necessarily a good idea.

If you share it with someone that has the resources to build it faster than you, it's just going to create headaches for you in the future.

So, it's a good idea to share the generic idea, but not the specifics.

One of the businesses I'm running now (which is profitable) spawned from an idea I saw on a message board about 6 months ago. I knew the original implementation of the idea would never work and I improved on it. It's a direct competitor to the original person that posted it.

I don't think your first sentence really matches the rest of what you're saying.

Obviously I'm not telling you to pull out your full spec and implementation roadmap to discuss with everyone on the street. But you should be willing to share the core idea in a way that anyone can understand. The "what", not the "how", essentially.

You can always divulge more if someone shows interest in helping you out, but you have to garner that interest by being willing to tell them something.

No paradox: Yes.

Your network will start working for you only if you share your idea. You will be surprised how many people come of the woodwork to say, "Oh, I heard you are interested in this space - I have this person you should talk to; I read this report on your market; I have this angel you should meet..."

You are afraid someone will steal your idea? Don't flatter yourself so much. You can be sure there are 5 other people other there at the same time who have a very similar idea. Ideas are cheap; it is only execution that matters. And there is no way you can best execute on your idea without getting all the feedback you can get and finding all the resources your network can provide you.

I don't necessarily share every little detail of my future plans, or what I'm thinking... but in general I fall into the bucket of people who believe in being very open and transparent. And since the stuff I'm building is open source anyway, there are few - if any - secrets from a technical perspective.

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