Ask HN: Releasing your business plan into the public?

Many entrepreneurs have a fear of sharing their new venture ideas with others and I think this is a big mistake. First, it's very unlikely that someone will take your idea and implement. Other people rarely share the same passion for the idea as the originator of the idea. Second, even if someone does take the idea and runs with it (which is very unlikely) they will implement the concept in a fundamentally different way, given all the changes that usually take place from formulating a venture idea to commercializing. Third, the more people you share the venture idea with (a) the more constructive feedback you will get to make improvements to your idea, (b) the more you can practice and tweak your pitch, (c) the greater chance you will find great people to work with, etc.

In short, I suggest sharing your venture idea with as many people as possible. Build a quick prototype and get it into the hands of users for user feedback. If you do have a secret sauce, which affords you a competitive advantage (e.g., Google's PageRank algorithm before it was patented), then you might want to keep this small piece of the plan secret until you can erect other barriers to imitation.

Good luck with your venture!

Thanks. That makes a lot of sense. And I knew about that fear but didn't know I still have it. Apparently jury and friends are only the first step towards getting rid of it.

Let me tell you an interesting true story.

Last weekend I was at a friends place, and there were a few people there. One of them asked me what I did, and I told him about an idea I had for a new way of doing business online. It's pretty revolutionary, I've thought long and hard about it for a long time, and it can probably be easily copied by someone else. I told him about it anyway. Pretty detailed too.

It just happened that he was finishing up a PHD thesis on a subject very close to what I was thinking about, and we started talking. This conversation gave me some great insights I didn't have before, access to his large network, a serious ambassador and maybe a friend.

Will he steal the idea? I don't think so. Empirically it is very very rare. Did I gain something from it? Absolutely.

Answer enough?

Definitely. That's pretty reassuring story. Encouraging me even more to act differently from now on. Thanks.

And good luck with the realization of your idea!

Thanks :-)

If I described Google to you before they launched, could you have built it? Would you have? How about Digg? The iPhone? WordPress? Facebook? Amazon? Name 10 amazing startups and try to imagine how it could have hurt them if their biz plans were public.

Almost anyone who could possibly be a threat to you if they had your idea ALREADY HAS THEIR OWN IDEAS. Even if they don't, presumably you have dozens of competitors-- 1 or 2 more isn't going to change your shot at success. If you don't think you have ANY competitors, you are either stupid about your market or you truly have an invention on your hands and you should keep quiet.

Talking about your idea a LOT will make you smarter about your market and increase you shot at success. Do it, and do it a lot.

Thanks for your input. Actually, reading http://www.userscape.com/blog/index.php/site/comments/starti... made me decide to start blogging again, and to blog mainly about my project, even before I startup.

If anything, exposing your business plan will allow others to give you feedback on it. You'll get to hear wonderful things like "your plan sucks, you need to x and y or you'll never succeed, etc...". Hope you have a tough skin and can take criticism.

Seriously though, unless it is a really innovative idea that will revolutionize the world, then it's probably best to let others in on it. Who knows, maybe you'll get some positive feedback too. It may also prevent you from wasting time on something that won't work or just isn't feasible or may have already been done exactly how you want to do it.

Thanks for your input. I know one should expose a business plan for feedback from others and I was about to do that, mainly to friends who I trust could give me as objective opinion as possible. It's just that I never thought of releasing it to the whole public, nor have I heard anyone do that before but then again, I don't have any experience with that kind of stuff, so it might as well be an ordinary thing.

You honestly think friends would give you an objective opinion? Giving it to friends is a pretty much guaranteed way to get biased results

Not completely objective, no. Some I think would try really hard but I wouldn't expect them to be completely objective. I will definitely choose carefully the ones who I believe can give me the most objective opinion. And I said friends but these wouldn't necessarily have to be the closest friends, even mere acquaintances could suffice.

Can you suggest to whom I should then give my plan for an objective opinion, prior to talking with investors? Would giving it to someone who isn't a 'friend' guarantee a non-biased opinion? I'm not so sure. I'm thinking even complete strangers could have a biased opinion. That just depends from a person to person. I was thus hoping I could be able to choose the right people from the ones I know. And let me assure you, I'm not looking for somebody to tell me how good my plan is. Thank you for you input.

I don't think you should participate in a business plan contest if you are really serious about that start up.

The whole process is a distraction and doesn't bring any value. The downside is that you'll waste a lot of time filling templates and doing stuff that doesn't matter at this stage. You may also get demoralized if jury/public doesn't get it and thinks its trash. For all you know, they might not be the segment you plan to target..

If you are serious - Move forward and build the product and show it to real customers that you plan to target. That's probably the only way to know if it'll work or not.

I actually thought about that before. I mean, if you're really serious about a project, do you really need some jury that, as you say, may just distract you? If you're really serious you'll find a way. BTW, same goes for that talent reality shows: if you really have talent and really want to sing for example, it's pretty sad that you waited until a show appeared. If it's really something you always wanted to do, how come you weren't actually doing it seriously?

But I applied for different reasons. Not only was I awaken from my no-idea-where-I'm-going state but I benefited also from various people coming to workshops to talk about different business subjects and how to write a business plan for investors. Some of this stuff was very beneficial to me at this point.

Now I know I will continue pursuing my plan no matter what happens on this contest (although the prize would be nice to get me started on my plan so I have something more than an idea to show to the investors).

At this stage - building the first version of the product is more important than writing a business plan. You don't want to change priorities because of some contest. Successful start up is more important than wining a beauty contest.

If you can build something that a few people find valuable then you can start thinking about business plan to scale it further... Without the basic product, there is no business and there is no need for a plan.

Of course, all this is based on the assumption that the first version can be built very fast without incurring any significant cost.

Don't worry about it. Most #s in the business plan are usually made up so noone really takes them that seriously.

The business plan is mostly there for you, to think through things

Yea, from a talk with a local business angel I found out the business plan intended for investors does not have to be as detailed as I would think it should. For example, you don't really have to write how you'd solve a problem, just acknowledge you know it exists and you know how to deal with it. I have to be honest and say I was a bit surprised and somewhat relieved with that realization.