Building in Public vs Idea Theft: Your Thoughts?
Jake Harrison
13 replies
I'm building my project in public but concerned about potential copycats.
1. How do you balance transparency and protecting your idea?
2. Have you faced copycat issues? How did you handle it?
3. Any tips for safeguarding your project while still sharing the journey?
Keen to hear your experiences and advice.
Replies
Chris Rickard@chrisrickard
I think like most things, you need to be smart about it.
Plenty of build-in-public folks talk about their ups and downs, but don't give away their secret sauce. Realistically if your product is a simple form or a LLM wrapper, people will have the same idea and be copying anyway.
I'm more on the side of execution > idea, but it's all relative.
Share
Ideas are cheap. Also the people with resources to execute on them, are busy building something else.
Comment Deleted
As Ajinkya mentioned, it's mostly about the execution plan.
Someone may steal your current stage and start building it, but most product owners have a journey in mind. By the time the thief builds what you have, you can launch something even more exciting with a better experience.
At the same time, It's not always the first person who wins. The other person may have a better execution plan or design, increasing their chances of winning.
One more thing I believe is that if your idea is not saturated in the market, a competitor can benefit you in several ways.
Building in public is about fostering transparency, building initial brand recognition, and getting an early temperature check on PMF.
It does not require you to share trade secrets, competitive strategies, or anything proprietary.
However, it does require you to provide others a window into the journey you're taking to create and launch your ideas.
It's a form of interactive storytelling in some ways.
You can take legal steps to protect intellectual property from would be competitors. But the general idea will usually be fair game.
And if someone does attempt to emulate your idea, then you have some confirmation that it's a good one.
Keep your focus on delivering the best possible product to your target audience in as short a time as possible without sacrificing quality.
Keep an eye on competitors, but keep your focus on who you really need to impress - your future and current customers.
Ideas are nothing without execution. You don't need to safeguard anything as if it was so easy to copy, people will copy it once you launch. Your moat could just be you and your founding team - the people who can take this idea, turn it into a clear vision and build company around it
Coursnap
Simple Understanding: On the surface, it appears as limited insights gained by others through static appearances. In essence, it is the dynamic understanding possessed by the creator, shaped by continuous learning and practical experience. This makes it incredibly challenging for imitators to hope for emulation or surpassing.
StartOS: Plug-and-Play Startup System
People can steal your ideas, not your execution- and execution is what matters!
Secondly, I believe a brand helps conversions the most- thieves work in the shadows, and cannot build a brand.
@ajinkya_bhat I agree entirely with your first point. It all comes down to the execution and passion behind it.
Yeah, that's actually a great question that I don't see many of the public builders ask!
You need to be strategic about what you share, you also need to make your value proposition unique!
Finally, don't be afraid to compete!
1. I think worry about this will cause you more stress and problems than not. VERY rarely is an idea so brand new or unique that it will not have a competitor. This is something that people in the tech space seem to forget. Think about the CPG space. There is about 1,000 different companies that make potato chips. It is all about how you execute and grow.
2. Branding. People remember brands. Find a way to be unique or do something slightly different than them. Find your own spin. If there are copy cats then it probably means you are on to something good.
3. Share your journey, but you don't have to give away every single angle of thinking that you are looking to going down from a feature or positioning standpoint.
I think you have to obscure certain things when building in a highly competitive market. Especially your next features.
Regarding the copy cats, if you concept is that "easy" and people can just copy you quickly, maybe that wasn't a good concept at first? In any case, may the best execution win! Creating a business is a very competitive endeavor so that is expected.