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Justifiably Paranoid
I was once told that you are “paranoid” if you think someone will come along and steal your business idea. I bought into that for a long time. Then I had a business idea stolen right out from underneath me. That was one of those belief changing moments in my life.Â
Here’s the story.Â
I had secured a deal with a major private university to distribute some intellectual property they had struggled to commercialize. My plan was to act as a reseller for the school. It was a great opportunity. The university pointed me to another company (we’ll call them xyz) that was doing something very similar. I met with xyz company to see if there were any synergies we could capitalize on together. We compared notes on the service. They were offering something very similar but expressed no interest in the model I was pursing, however; they were very persistent in wanting to know what companies I had been working with inside our industry. They pushed and pushed and finally I told them some of the companies I had been working with. Not too long after that I started to get calls from perspective customers asking me if I had heard of xyz company. xyz wasted no time adopting my model for their service and started out by going after my prospects.  Talk about no class. It was really disappointing and very annoying.
Be careful about “spilling the beans”. Be very selective about who you tell your ideas to. Use NDA’s so that people know you are serious about confidentiality.
This may sound a little “paranoid” to you but the first time you have an idea stolen from you, you’ll be thinking about this blog post.