I am a Web developer (www.byo24.com) I own a web developing and web hosting company called eDuzeNet....

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Stealing someone's Thunder, 'stealing other people's ideas'

Someone once said its not yours till you put it to practice. People hate whiners, they hate people who are confident that they have tons of ideas. And, to be honest, people do not get far by just having ideas. You need to have ideas and be likable. That's almost impossible to do if you worry about whose ideas were whose.

If you're in the tech scene you have most likely seen the theatrical trailer for The Social Network, a movie with a semi-sensational edge on the founding of Facebook. Then you should be familiar to the quote below:

"If you were the inventors of Facebook, you would have invented Facebook" - Mark "Jesse Eisenberg" Zuckerberg.

An idea is just like a small snapshot, even if someone steals your precious idea, they can't steal the more important resources plus skills that aren't apparent in the context of that very small snapshot.

An idea is just like a small snapshot, even if someone steals your precious idea, they can't steal the more important resources plus skills that aren't apparent in the context of that very small snapshot.

They cannot steal your long term vision: Craigslist started in SF, Facebook at harvard, Google with only millions of pages, and Microsoft started as a basic interpreter. Everyone has a minimum viable market. The real question is: ” What is your long term vision?” Your long term vision and the path that gets you there cannot be stolen. When someone tries to steal your idea, they usually just steal the current market you’re going after. Could you have imagined ConnectU having a vision like that of the Facebook platform like Mark did? I doubt it.

They cannot steal your domain expertise: Truly great ideas are organic and usually come through your own experiences. Marc Benioff started salesforce after years of understanding the business software space by working at Oracle. Many other startups are born through founder’s frustrations with processes in areas they have domain expertise in. This deep understanding, especially in vertical and/or very specific engineering cases can only come through first hand experience.

They cannot steal your passion to make this idea a reality: People stealing ideas are often followers. They are a product of the passion and vision you have displayed to them. They may often get passionate about the idea for a few days, but that passion will surely fade almost instantly once they realize the difficulties that lie ahead. Since an idea is just a snapshot, they will often lose passion/energy once they find themselves lost as to what lies beyond that one snapshot.

Then again in tech world an idea is useless if you don't have the skill to execute it.

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