«Someone stole my Startup idea!» and other legendary monsters

What is a Startup (for those who don't yet know)

Freely taken from the amazing knowledge base of Wikipedia, to which you should consider donating from time to time, a Startup is a company or project that a person or group of people want to validate, develop and bring to life into a scalable business to make a shitload of money.

Alright, that's not exactly what Wikipedia says, but c'mon. It is what it is. A money machine.

Being a startupper isn't always as easy and fun as Internet shows (but it can be) and today we're going to talk about the worst fears of Startuppers.

No, Richard, I'm not talking about the fact that Starbucks moved two blocks away from our building, I'm talking about lesser fears, like somebody developing your same ideas and projects and getting funded before you do. Lesser things.

But don't worry too much. This blog post actually wants to help you out so that you can be a conscious hustler and a very proud startupper.

Can someone steal your idea?

Now, on with the real deal. Can someone steal your startup idea?

Yes, end of this blog post.

The good thing is that I'm joking about one part of the aforewritten phrase. This blog post is definitely not ending right now. I wasn't joking about the first part, I'm afraid. People can surely steal your ideas.

So how would you deal with that?

Is it worth keeping it a secret?

It's probably worth mentioning that keeping your startup ideas a secret can be good for some time but that's not what you want to be secretive about, and I'm going to tell you exactly why.

Startups, no matter the subject, need market validation. You might want to keep as a secret whatever makes your idea better than the rest but you shouldn't keep the idea itself a secret.

For example, say you have a restaurant which serves omelettes that are unheard of. The flavor of these omelettes is sang in every city and people just want to give it a bite. Is the restaurant chef giving away the secret to the omelettes? Probably not. So how are those omelettes safe?

Well, they both are and are not safe.

The recipe is safe because it was not given out but the omelettes are still doing great with people coming from everywhere to take a bite but one day a very amazing chef might come to the restaurant and figure out the recipe.

So, the question is, should the chef just keep the recipe a secret by actually not opening the restaurant to the public?

Sounds stupid? It kinda does and that's exactly the point.

The only way to value your Startup and validate your ideas and projects is to be out there and actually collect proof that whatever it is you are doing is working as you expected to.

Can someone derive a solution from seeing what your idea produces? Yes, but should that worry you to the point of not getting it out there? Nop.

So, how can you protect your ideas?

How to protect your Startup

It may sound dumb at first but I'll let you in on a secret: people are lazy as fuck.

You could throw a basket of multi-billion dollars startup ideas and you can rest almost assured of 2 things:

1. Someone already had the idea
2. No one wanted to invest their time on it because they didn't believe in it enough

Because that's the whole point: belief in the project does not come free and it has costs that are sometimes beyond imagination.

Belief is the core value of your project and the entire world will not give a fuck until they actually see that it's working and it might be a good bet.

Some CEOs failed with good ideas, others succeeded with shitty ideas. Someone created billion dollars companies from garages while others who had VCs failed after two years of Startupping around.

Should you go out there and just sing about your project ideas and secrets to anyone? That's not what I'm telling you.

What I'm trying to convey is: don't be afraid and let your ideas breathe. Your startup will probably be nothing without a userbase, right? So it's better to start your marketing journey and let people know of the one true thing: your startup is there to solve one of their problems and that will be more than enough for you to have a headstart!

The goodbye

I hope you found this article useful and to your liking and if you have any requests, drop a message on one of my social media accounts or open an issue/start a discussion on github, on this repository!

As always you can find me on Twitter, listen to my Podcast on Spotify and add me on LinkedIn to talk professionally (yeah, right)