What if someone steals my startup idea? This is the one of the most frequently asked questions in our pre-accelerator program, JFDI Discover.
We understand it’s only a natural thing to wonder. After all, when someone is on the brink of building something no one has ever done before, the tendency is to hide it until it’s fully ready. Buffer co-founders Joel Gascoigne and Leo Widrich have 2 pieces of advice to calm your worries.
Advice #1: Validate your idea
That’s done by talking to other people and finding if there’s a market for it. If you leave it brewing in your magic closet of ideas or start programming right away to build the product, by the time you ‘release’ it to the world, only then you might find that nobody wants it. Sad – nobody wants that to happen – and that’s why we have JFDI Discover to stop that kind of waste.
Advice #2: What You Truly Own Empowers You
Joel and Leo talked about the rollercoaster ride of being in startup. If you simply copied someone else’s idea, “there are going to be too many lows before you’ll feel motivated to carry on”, says Joel. There is value on completely owning an idea – with your own experiences and pain points – that nobody else can replicate.
In the early days of Buffer, Joel made the mistake of building the product right away until he realized that he might be wasting his time. Instead, he created a landing page without a product. He got in touch with early adopters and from their conversations further iterated his idea. Today Buffer is a software application designed to handle social media with over 2 million users. In fact, this blog came to fruition with the help of one of Buffer’s blogs. In summary, don’t be afraid to share your ideas – it will help you make them better.
Credit: Photo by Realistic Shots
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Crystal Superal is the Social Media and Content Marketer at JFDI, the #1 business accelerator in Asia. She finished her Multimedia Communications degree while playing golf for a San Francisco-based art school. Today she lives in Cebu City, Philippines. For her thoughts about tech and lifehacks, follow her Twitter @crystalsuperal.