Consider this a confession. I'm pretty sure we all do this, but I still got embarrassed when I realize I was doing it. Last night, our team had a Google Hangout meeting to discuss culture and our next big product release. During the meeting it struck me that I was afraid to tell our users and the world about our next great idea until we finished and polished it. I shared this with the team and my co-founder profoundly said, "It's not about the idea. It's about the execution."
This leads us to the 3 reasons why you should have no fear sharing your best ideas.
1. The challenge isn't coming up with an idea, it's executing an idea.
Millions of ideas are being had right now. People are designing products in their head, sketching out web apps, and making goals. None of that matters if they don't actually create those things. It takes motivation, passion, courage and skill to come out the other side with a product. Millions of people since the beginning of time have dreamed about flying, but The Wright Brothers put in blood (literally,) sweat and tears into actually building a flying machine. The idea is 1 percent of the formula, the execution is the other 99 percent.
2. If you share your idea early, you'll save a ton of time.
When we hide our ideas, we usually do so so we can spend our time building and polishing it before releasing it to the public. But, if you don't get pushback on an idea, you may find out too late that the idea won't work or needs tweaking.
I recently saw this video by the founders of Buffer (watch it.) In there, Joel Gascoigne says that, "There's a lot of risk in creating something completely new. It might not work. I almost take it to the other extreme and I would encourage people to share it as soon as possible."
It sounds opposite, but you can avoid risk by sharing your best ideas with as many people as soon as possible.
3. Sharing ideas attracts like-minded people to help accomplish those ideas.
As we've learned to open up a bit more with the future of Sumry, we've seen people want to partner with us much more. I've personally built connections with talent scouts at Google, Instagram, Facebook, Airbnb and more by simply sharing where we're headed and asking for their thoughts.
It will surprise you how willing people are to help and guide you on your journey. I always remind myself to assume the best about people. Give them a chance to help guide you. Put yourself out there. Trust others and they'll most likely trust you in return.
I'm curious if anyone else has tried sharing their ideas early in the development stage. What have your results been? Does anyone have any more reasons?