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Is it safe to share your startup secrets in your blog?

I want to pivot and start working on new things, so I decided to start building 1-2 week prototypes until I find the one that is promising and gets a lot of attention from users.
I decided to not only build startup from scratch, but also start blogging about all my journey in order to build my personal brand. I would really like to help other entrepreneurs to show all my knowledge I gained working on previous startups and build my brand.
But I was wondering if is it really safe to share all your startup secrets publicly with other entrepreneurs by being single founder? If target customers of my startup were entrepreneurs, blogging for them would really help my startup succeed. However my potential target customers are far from real entrepreneurs.
What is your opinion about doing a startup and constantly blogging about it in public? Is it safe? Does it bring more advantages than disadvantages? Did it bring you new partners, investors and etc.?

  1. 3

    My plan is to share most of my "secrets" freely, because:

    [a] more knowledge spread = more innovation = world is better
    [b] I don't need to hoard all of my knowledge
    [c] you learn faster when you share -- i.e. your secrets change over time
    [d] the connections you make by sharing your insights is worth way more than the insights themselves, long term

    Some things I need to keep more private, because it's client work or something that is directly making me money. But if I didn't share that stuff, the quality of my sharing would be much lower. So I'll share most of that too.

    Remember, you're competing against tons of other people who are sharing information; so if you don't share your best info, you are at a disadvantage to start.

  2. 3

    I think everyone is going thru the same thing, the reality is that ideas cost absolutely nothing, execution is everything, if it was the other way around the endless clones of Flappy Bird were going to make a lot of milliners.

    Do you like blogging ? if it's a chore to you, you are going to be wasting more then getting.

    1. 2

      Yes, you are right. Ideas are hard to transfer. When someone else who is very passionate about his idea comes to me and shares his passion, I usually don't start feeling the same. It takes time to understand someone's vision.

  3. 2

    Are any of your ideas winner-take-all (or most) markets? Are they very straight-forward but patent-able?

    If not then, I wouldn't worry too much. As long as you have a distribution channel, you can sell basically the same thing.

    Look at the ridiculous number of landing page generators, podcast hosts and email service providers. Transistor doesn't have to lose for Pinecast to win and the same is true for ConvertKit and Email Octopus!

  4. 2

    Execution is everything! If you're truly passionate about solving a problem, you'll be the best suited person to bring a product into fruition.

    There's also so many benefits to building a personal brand. I think that a personal brand should actually be the MVP of any product. By building an engaged audience, it's possible to indetify unique insights and user problems.

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