From Gym Rat to Startup Founder: Why Sharing Your Ideas Build Empires
Remember the first time you stepped into a crowded gym as a teenager, biceps barely bigger than spaghetti noodles? Towering weights, iron-pumping giants, and a gnawing sense of “where do I even start?” That, my friends, is a near-perfect metaphor for entering the tech startup world.
But here’s the good news: unlike mastering the perfect bicep curl, becoming a startup founder isn’t about flexing isolated muscles. It’s about building skin thicker than a Elon Musk’s wallet. No matter how seasoned you are in the world of services or bricks-and-mortar businesses, building a product that scales is like transitioning from dumbbells to barbells — intense, humbling, and infinitely more rewarding.
So, ditch the isolation chamber. Forget skipping user interviews or market testing. Boldly share your idea, even if it feels like exposing your brainchild to the digital wolves. Why? Because ideas are a dime a dozen. It’s the vision you build around them, the roadmap that fuels their potential for global domination, that matters.
I still encounter founders whispering their ideas in dark corners, terrified someone will snatch their precious gem. To them, I say:
1. If nobody’s interested in stealing your idea, maybe it’s not the gold mine you think it is. Perhaps it lacks profitability, or the entry barrier is so high only you’d dare to climb it. Are you really the hero in this story?
2. If someone who steals your idea executes it better, you’re likely going to fail whether or not they stole it anyway. In the startup arena, execution trumps ingenuity. So focus on building a rocket ship, not fearing copycats.
3. NDAs are nice, but they’re paper armor against a dragon’s breath. IP protection is a complex battlefield, where defending your idea often costs more than it’s worth. Invest your energy in making your vision bulletproof, not in legal fortresses.
4. Stop obsessing over “having” an idea and start crafting a vision. Ideas are a dime a dozen; visions are the blueprints for empires.
5. Registering IPs are expensive, defending them are even more expensive. Suing someone that steals your intellectual property takes millions, whilst registering would probably cost 10K.
If you need to scale fast, you need a community, and sharing your ideas with people would help you build loyal customers, users, and a community of supporters if they believe in your vision.
It’s really a new phenomenon in the tech world that everybody thinks they have a life changing idea that nobody has ever thought about. Take a step back, there are 8.1 BILLION people on planet earth, what do you think the probability of someone not having the same / similar idea to yours — almost 0.
Best analogy is, in traditional businesses, those that are listed companies or multi-billion conglomerates, a lot of them are old fashioned companies providing traditional services or products, nothing ground breaking. What makes them successful is how they run the company, how they expand the business, having an edge, instead of an idea that nobody has ever had.
A lot of scientists/engineers had the dreams of building rockets when they were kids, doesn’t mean that they are all Elon Musk or can build SpaceX right?
The world needs your vision, founders. Share it, refine it, obsess over it. Then, go forth and build your colossus.
What are your thoughts? We’d love to hear more! Feel free to reach out to me via LinkedIn or Twitter for shorter tips on how to craft the next viral product.
Moon is Founder & CEO of DigitSense, a digital product studio that design, develop, and market digital products like a tech startup on its own, where we blend cutting-edge tech with user-centric magic to transform your vision into reality.
