One of the tell-tale signs of a first-time entrepreneur is that they run around forcing everyone to sign an NDA, afraid that someone will "steal" their idea. Peter Rojas, one of the founders of Engadget and the co-founder of recently acquired gdgt, recently wrote about some of his mistakes he made with his newest company. One of his biggest regrets? He was too paranoid about people "stealing" his idea."
Instead of having our ideas copied, we should have worried a lot more about how good our ideas were in the first place. The gdgt we envisioned when we started isn't all that far off from what it's become.
...
But no matter how strong your concepts are, there's no substitute for getting people to use your product and so they can let you know what works and what doesn't. By keeping the site under wraps until launch (apart from a private beta just before launch), we missed out on the opportunity to find out what parts of what we were doing connected with users and what parts didn't.
And what's worse, says Rojas, is that many other companies ended up copying him anyway, and "it ended up not making much of a difference."
Luckily, everything worked out for Rojas, but for many entrepreneurs this secrecy can turn away potential partners and collaborators who would rather work with a less paranoid partner. Share your ideas liberally, and focus on the "how" more than the "what." The unfiltered feedback from customers will go much further than any attempts at secrecy.
Sean Blanda is the associate editor and producer of 99u.com.
Photo: iStockphoto