Fear of idea get stolen - exiang/startup-resources GitHub Wiki

Part of the special challenge of being a startup is the near impossibility of having your idea, company or product be noticed by anyone, let alone a competitor. In fact, I have often given entrepreneurs fearful of this issue the following assignment:

take one of your idea (of yof your lesser insights, perhaps), find the name of the relevant product manager at an established company who has responsibility for that area, and try to get the company to steal your idea. Call them up, write them a memo, send them a press release - go ahead, try it.

The truth is that most managers in most companies are already overwhelmed with good ideas. Their challenge lies in prioritization and execution, and it is those challenges that give a startup hope of surviving.

If a competitor can outexecute a startup once the idea is known, the startup is doomed anyway. The reason to build a new team to pursue an idea is that you believe you can accelerate through the Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop faster than anyone else can. If that's true, it makes no difference what the competition know. If it's not true, a startup has much bigger problems, and secrecy wont fix them. Sooner or later, a successful startup will face competition from fast followers. A head start is rarely large enough to matter, and time spent in stealth mode - away from customers - is unlikely to provide a head start.

The only way to win is to lean faster than anyone else.

• The Lean Startup by Eric Ries