What if someone steals my idea?

During the first phase of customer development, the focus is validated learning: test our initial hypothesis "out there": talking, on one hand, with peers and advisors, and on the other, with customers and users.

While your idea might seem brilliant to you, until you validate it/show traction/make money, it’s just another idea.

But the first question that pops on the mind of the entrepreneur is "what if someone steals my idea"?

Well think about it this way: the Lean Start-Up methodology allows you not only to test your business idea but also to test yourself. If your idea is easily stolen, then it is best to find about it right away, at the beginning, before you have wasted time and money: yours and what is worse, others.

If by just talking about the idea, someone else can go ahead and fully implement it, that idea is probably not worthy pursuing anyway.

Trying to stay in "stealth mode" (because you think you have the next Google or Facebook) will only make you waste lots of time on useless features and loose focus because you didn't talk enough about your idea.

Eric Ries provides a very clear answer to this in his book The Lean Startup:

 

"The most common objection I have heard over the years to building a minimum viable product is fear of competitors - especially large established companies - stealing a startup's idea.

 

If only it were so easy to have a good idea stolen! 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 ideas, find the name of the relevant product manager at an established company who has responsibility for that area, and try to get them to steal your idea. Call them up, write them a memo, send them a press release - go ahead, try it! T

 

he 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 gives a startup hope of surviving. If a competitor can outexecute a startup once the idea is known, the startup is doomed anyway..."

 

 

So basically, if someone can steal your idea based on a 30 minute conversation,

your idea is not defensible.

 

Best to find it now than later.