humbledMBA

That's a dangerous thing, because it will actually trigger the same endorphins in your brain that achieving the goal would, so you're less inclined to actually work on it. A small change in the way you tell people about your ideas can fix it though "kick me if I don't finish this in three weeks".

I did not come up with this wisdom: http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_keep_your_goals_to_yourself.html

You're a naive-bullshiter."

Ok, you had a bad start-up experience. It's often interesting and informative to read about other peoples' bad experiences. However, please ditch the relentlessly negative and sensationalist rhetoric. It's unnecessary and subverts from what you're trying to convey.

It is indeed pompous of you to assert that anyone in disagreement isn't ready to start a business by themselves.

You're rejecting a whole category of wisdom (evidently) because it didn't work for you. It would help your case if you yourself could rationalise more than a third of your examples.

I ordinarily wouldn't comment at all, but you should know that you are patronising the community which you submitted this to.

You could consider instead some advice that will ring in their ears on the day they realize they've been floundering for some time. Perhaps something that would be encouraging through that lull.

Based on my personal experiences involving several of my original ideas over the last decade or so, I totally agree with the above statement, except for the use of the word 'foolishly' though ;-)

Let me cite one example here:

Back in year 2002 or thereabouts, I came up with this (brilliant) set of ideas which could potentially eliminate at least 70% of the e-mail spam. I did a lot of paper-work (and some coding) to evolve this further. Next, I filed a provisional patent application for this.

Some days later, while digging through the USPTO site, I came across an already granted patent that was almost 80% similar to what I had cooked up.

Further research revealed that the patent holder company was not only in the market already, but it had also progressed to a series B funding round (from top tier VCs). It was called BrightMail. The reason I had not heard of them before was that they were targeting only ISPs as customers and as such, were maintaining / had acquired very low public visibility.

[As an aside, I also found out that they were not fully deploying the method they had patented!! Also, to the best of my knowledge, some of my ideas that are not covered by their patent remain unimplemented even today.]

Over the years since then, I have gone through similar experiences on several occasions and today, I'm a firm believer of what the OP has stated:

>> One of the reasons you're foolishly in stealth mode is probably because you haven't done enough market research to realize that people are already working on this. <<

Seriously, I've been telling people the same thing for years. Forget people stealing your idea, it's the least of your worries. "Just do it!"

No, I'm just being facetious. I agree with you to a degree. There should be some amount of precaution when approaching an idea that you believe is original. Keeping your secret from investors that haven't signed an NDA is already foolish, because they stake their reputation on the matter. If you have documented well your ideas, then you have the counter ability to de-ligitimize that investor. Not telling your family is foolish; sure they will brag, but it becomes common knowledge that you created a great idea. You can stake your life on product or reputation.

Thank you very much for your candid post. More than anything it is key to take feedback early in the shaping and forming and while I wasn't certain, I'm now positive that the more talking-shaping, questioning-forming I do, the less likely we'll miss our mark.

Yours,

Erik

David Martin

I especially like 1.) Execution is more important than the idea.

I am sending a link to my son in college, who is pondering a start-up of his own.

Thanks!

The original guys that proved "first mover advantage" actually done research on their own theory and disproved it

Two economists are walking down the sidewalk, and one says, "Look, there's a $100 bill." The second replies, "Impossible. If there was a $100 bill on the sidewalk, someone would have already picked it up."

I thought up a great idea 20 years ago, but there was no technology to make it work. I turned it into a real service a year ago. There are 10+ vendors selling what we need, and not one has ever heard of anyone using the technology the way we do. I cold call VPs of multi-billion dollar firms and they talk for 30 minutes about something they've never heard of either. A year later, we're still alone.

We shared the idea on a need-to-know basis AFTER we were set-up to deliver to clients who wanted to buy immediately. Potential clients do provide valuable feedback for product development, but having worked in the field for years, we didn't need much feedback to start.

Execution is indeed much more important than the idea, but that's the problem. This is a valuable service for major clients, the barriers to entry are rather low, and firms with pockets 100 times deeper than ours would quickly execute it better than we can. It is critical that we get a head start up the learning curve and gain credibility and clients before anyone big decides they want to do this too.

Sharing your idea is about pros and cons, risks and rewards.

By coincidence today I posted a page on my blog to give away a DIY modification. It seems very freeing to just give this away while I pursue investor channels for a bicycle handlebar awaiting patent. The first advice I got when I came up with the design was apply for a patent. It's taken about six months to ditch the stealth mode. Thanks for inspiration

I think the whole NDA thing is common among new entrepreneurs because they just don't understand that that 1 idea is not going to likely be your big success.

Sure people might copy you if you tell everyone and don't require an NDA - but if you are fast enough it won't matter.

I completely agree that saying nothing to anybody about anything is foolish, but surely saying everything to everybody about everything is just as foolish? Communication is a nuanced business, so don't oversimply it to polar extremes just to make a point - being very open about some things but stealthy about others is common sense.

But yes, if you can't even _begin_ to describe what you're doing without giving the whole game, your startup using GPS collars to help dogs remember where they buried their bones probably is valueless slideware at best. ;-)

Finally, it's so easy to knock patents too, but sometimes (particularly outside the rarified air of spurious software / mobile / Internet patents) you really do need them to get seats at the top table. Not every patent is trolled, and many big industries do get built on top of a single decent foundational patent.

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