The danger of your idea being stolen

I've had ideas I never built and ideas I've shared with friends and they built. But startup ideas don't matter at all. What matters is the way they are built and delivered to the customers.

Execution > idea

Personally I wouldn’t disclose a project before it’s launched. But don’t see a problem to share and build in public as soon as it’s launched.

Ideas are worth nothing, the secret is how they are executed.

I too have massive fear that ideas are stolen if I am too specific. However, if your idea can be easily copied, was it such a good idea in the first place? If anybody can copy your idea, do you really think you could have built a sustainable business? Probably not, right?

The only way to protect yourself is by having a moat, e.g. patents, specific data, unfair advantages.

I even open-sourced my project.. 😃

Most people say execution > idea but forget that there is no execution without an idea. Yes, building in public/sharing the idea carries the risk of someone stealing your idea and executing it better.

Personally, I think it's worse to have your idea die just because you're afraid of it getting stolen.

Plus, there's sooo many things and ideas anyone could do at any time, why they would steal that particular idea is really unlikely.

Whatever can be made will be made. Almost all great products today are an iteration over existing less famous implementations of the same basic idea.

Insignificant.
Execution is key.

If you want to see if your idea has any chance on the market you have to take that risk. Competitors can copy execution, but by then you'd already be in front.

Take Clubhouse for eg. Twitter copied it with Spaces. If they worried Twitter would take them out of the market they would have never gotten this far. Now they've uncovered a market, even if they're sharing it with others.

I think this is a case of execution being worth much more than the idea itself. If you put in the effort, the chance that someone takes your idea and executes on it better is pretty low.

By building in public, you're already at an advantage in terms on marketing and making it known that you've been working on it first anyways. If people want to copy, then that's just another form of validation :)

Most people won’t dedicate the sacrifice to build and scale a startup, and even more, are terrible at execution.

Ideas are cheap you can have dozens of ideas everyday. Execution of the idea is much harder and this is where profits come from. Even if someone may “steal” the idea the execution being the same is doubtful. So I would suggest to worry less about someone taking your idea and implementing it better than you just to implement your idea in the best way possible.

I agree execution is king. Be faster, better and TALK about it!

A couple of different ways to look at it

1. If it is being stolen it should give you validation that this is indeed a worthwhile thing to pursue. At least one other person or group of individuals believe in this

2. If you have not launched and the idea is stolen yes it could set you back a little bit but if you do launch your idea is then public and out there for anyone too copy unless it is in novel invention protected by some form of secrecy or has a secret sauce to it.

Either way is I would think of it as a positive

Common, it's not rocket science idea nor theory of relativity. After a few products I made, I don't really think that an idea matters any, but how you execute it and make it happen.

Whatever you could think of, people already thought about it, the reason why you don't see them around is probably that they didn't make it through or they fail someway.

If you find yourself sharing ideas, to people who steal them and then execute faster than you, I think you're building in the wrong public.

Your idea probably isn’t as great or unique as you think it is. Execution is everything.

There are so many indie products that do essentially the same thing as a multimillion dollar competitor. Yet they still make money because they focus on a few things that are important to them and their customers.

Ha ha, ideas are not worth anything.

I just shared a thread on this, actually!

Currently building an open-source hardware product. People stealing ideas has rarely been an issue. We had two organizations try this over our ~8-year history (we're MIT licensed, so this is legally OK). Ultimately people who re-sell open-source hardware can really only compete on price. They simply do not know the product or the market as well as someone that had a first-mover advantage. Both of these competitors have since vanished.

Your job as an entrepreneur is to sell your product. If you're operating in stealth mode, then you're not selling anything. If you have a good idea, people will always try to steal it. It's best to focus on things you have control over.

Additionally, there are many benefits to working in public that is not so obvious. By exposing your ideas to the public:

1. You might get feedback from experts that helps you in ways you didn't expect. Example: people on your social media feed that you don't engage with often, people who can connect you to industries you didn't know about, but who need your product, etc...
2. You might get pre-orders. Again, the goal is to sell, right?
3. You will get feedback much faster, thereby preventing the risk of working on the wrong things and losing critical time.

Working publicly as quickly as possible is the best way to go.

It's not clear to me what do you mean with "in public" but...

Going from an idea to a profitable business is not easy. Actually, most ideas to business fail. My point here is that the idea per se, has no value at all. The value lays on the process of making a good product and building a profitable business.

Indeed, you need to "go public" to talk with potential customers, investors and co-creators to validate and improve your idea, and make your product succeed.

if you don't go public your idea will be always just "an idea", until someone else has the same idea and does something about it.

It's always difficult to work on ideas; unless you totally believe in its potential. There are too many ideas out there worth executing. Even if someone copies your idea - take it as a validation of your idea. The markets are usually big enough to accommodate multiple players.

I'd be concerned if no one stole my idea!