A problem a lot of first-time and yet to succeed entrepreneurs encounter is getting caught up in thinking that their idea is unique and that if they tell people about it, it will get stolen.
The reality is: nobody else cares about your idea, especially not enough to steal it.
An idea is just that, an idea. It isn’t an action, it isn’t a real thing you can hold, it is merely a thought stored away in your head. Even if someone were to steal your idea, unless they worked out a way to clone your brain and view the details, they only have the concept, but not the finer grain details you’ve meticulously thought over in your head.
I will admit, when I first learned to code and started to experiment with little ideas, the ideas tap in my head started running and I would write them down in notebooks and not tell a single person about them. I literally have tens of notebooks with ideas scribbled in them. The reality is, you will be lucky enough to act upon one of your ideas, let alone a notebook’s worth of ideas.
This secretive way of thinking can actually inhibit your ideas. If you don’t want to tell people about your “great idea” how are you going to go out and speak with potential clients/customers who might use your idea? You can forget about an NDA, most people won’t go to the trouble of signing one.
A rather relevant article driving this point home is a post by Indian blogger Hitesh Sahni, entitled Why Ideas Fail? – it is well worth the read and touches upon the subject of idea failure in a similar manner which I encourage you to read.
You need to talk to as many relevant people as possible, get feedback on your idea and refine it before you waste your time. You might think you have a good idea on your hands, the people you are targeting it towards might think otherwise.
It is also important to remember that your idea has probably been done before and isn’t very unique. Ideas are usually inspired by trying to find solutions to existing problems which means others have probably run into the same problems and had the same solution as well. There is no such thing as a unique idea if something influenced it.
These days I have changed my tune a little bit. I have a Github repository where I share my ideas when I find the time to type them out and push them. You can view them here, who knows, you might strike it lucky and execute one of them.
I encourage you to do something similar. Share your ideas on your blog or create a Github repository like I did and get them out there.
