I always find it a bit amusing when I meet someone from the world of computing & startups and they won’t share with me what their new company is creating. Commonly you hear, “We are in stealth mode… naturally, we don’t want someone stealing our idea.”
When you are in your twenties this makes sense. Every idea someone tells you sounds amazing, easy and will make you rich! Smarter people are lurking around each corner ready to pounce.
However, as you get older, you come to some realizations…
(1) The best ideas no one believes in.
Radical ideas – something that breaks the current paradigm requires a new way of thinking. Most people aren’t good at that. Yeah – you can probably convince them to use Facebook over Friendster AFTER you create it, populate it with friends and make it compelling… but do you think the people who surrounded the Facebook founder were agreeing that YET ANOTHER social network was what the world needed? I’m sure they were working on something completely useful, like a new printer driver for Ubuntu.
(2) Déjà vu.
Why is it that every new idea sounds familiar? For the love of god – someone already has your idea, is implementing it and is about to launch. Telling me is not going to create competition!
(3) Short attention spans.
The world has more computer science projects that computer scientists. Even if you have a great idea; I bet I have six others that are better, equal or worse. I don’t have the time to implement mine – why would I steal yours?
Anyways… with that said, I’m going to share some of my ideas on this blog.
Seems silly to keep them locked up in my head. If you steal it and start raking in the dough, all I ask is your “About Us” page points to my blog entry and you pay for all coffees/drinks/dinners for the rest of time. Fair enough?
[Clarification: A few people have mentioned that while its cool that I’m ready to share my ideas with the world (e.g., the five people reading this,) its not cool to share others ideas with the world. Just to clarify I completely agree. This is my forum to share my ideas, not to share yours.]
Finding Nilay 