Your Startup Idea is Worthless

You have an idea. You’ve dreamed of the next Google. You are the only one who thought of it (so you think) and you don’t want anyone to steal it. It is a billion dollar idea, after all. Well, no. Your idea is worthless! Sorry, but it’s true. I don’t advice giving out your trade secrets or how your algorithms work but as far as ideas go you have a lot more to gain by sharing.

Google is not an idea. Google went from 0 to billion dollar company because of

1.They had a great algorithm that was 100 times better than anything else that was out there

2.Lot of hard work, strategy, great execution and a little luck.


So get over it. What you think is a unique idea has been thought by many people before you. What’s more chances are that someone has already implemented your idea. If you found nobody that has done anything similar you haven’t looked hard enough. Scrap that, you haven’t done any research at all! Trust me, they were social networks before Facebook and search engines before Google. 

And yes the myth / history is that Mark Zuckerberg stole the idea for social networking. But it doesn’t matter if he stole the idea or not. What matters is that he managed to make Facebook, Facebook. He wasn’t the first to try and in fact there was a king in town (remember myspace?) before he even got started. 

A few years ago I met a guy, let’s call him Naggy. He was running a startup and as soon as he started pitching I had only one thing to say: I was thinking to create exactly the same startup. I even bought a domain. Today Naggys' startup is doing extremely well. Me, on the other hand, I never went beyond buying a domain. What’s the difference between me and Naggy? He made it happen and I didn’t! He executed and I didn’t. 

As Derek Sivers puts it: “ ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.

Hard work Unique idea Startup

About the author

Alok Tamhankar

Founder at Think StartUp /Enabler/Entrepreneur/Speaker

India,Mumbai

10 years of experience in Finance and Team handling.

Read my other blogs


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