Get over yourself

I was recently speaking at BarCamp Sydney (with Mike) about start-up lessons. Whilst it was pretty ad hoc (in the true BarCamp spirit) there were a few points I thought would be worthwhile covering here.

Since I’m as busy as Mick though, I’ll just cover them one at a time.

First one: In all the start-ups I see there seems to be a continuing unhealthy belief in two things that are best corrected right out of the gate:

1. Yes, somebody else has thought of your idea.
2. No, your idea is not special.

Trust me. Get over it.

Whilst it’s a bad idea to shout about your idea too early (I’ll talk about this more soon), you should have no fear that someone will steal it. The people who can help you are too busy doing something else, and the people who can’t really help you will try and steal it and fail miserably.

Trust me. Get over it.

The risk of actually losing something is far outweighed by the value you will get by just talking to people about your concept and pushing really hard for feedback.  And here’s the rub: the people who talk honestly and realistically about their products are the ones who succeed with it. The ones who keep it a secret whilst beavering away in the dark are almost certain to fail.

Trust me. Get over it.

Here’s an excellent quote which I saw posted in the Tangler Entrepreneurs group.

“Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats.”

-Howard Aiken