Inside Facebook: the Facebook Book

the blog about the book

Look at the Book

Tell people about your Dream

Filed under: From the book.., great ideas to do, Inspiration — by Karel at 12:45 pm on Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Since Inside Facebook launched, I’ve been happily inundated with opportunities to comment on fledgling business ideas. I’ve repeatedly heard hopeful entrepreneurs say (and i’ve said it myself) don’t tell anyone who’d steal the idea, but what do you think?

I answer

1) If the idea is stealable and easily doable without your special passion, it’s probably not that valuable an idea. Guy Kawasaki goes deep on this one in The Art of the Start.
2) The idea is less important than the execution. If you execute very well, no one can catch you. Executing well requires a lot of help and outside participation. You actively prevent yourself from getting this help, if you are excessively secretive and don’t exude passion.
I have a dozen good ideas and able to execute on maybe two of them. And even then, my execution is great, because my focus is split. For example, I’m obviously passionate about my book, but I haven’t posted here in more than a week because I’m intensely pushing for an internal alpha release as CTO at mEgo.com.

So tell people about your ideas, to both get help and hone your own passion.

I’ll start! I want to build a site that helps entrepreneurs share their dreams with other entrepreneurs, and then achieve them within a supportive teamwork focused community. I’m collecting feature requirements, which I plan to post here for comment in a week or so. If you want to be involved, or get your ideas into the mix early, post a comment below, or email me privately to karel@fbbook.com. I’m eager to share this opportunity with serious and talented partners.

4 Comments »

Comment by Kathryn

March 20, 2007 @ 12:41 pm

I enjoyed your book and am very interested in being involved in your entrepreneur community. I am a marketer with a passion for start ups. Thanks for including me.

Comment by philip tadros

May 19, 2007 @ 4:42 pm

sounds interesting.. i have so many ideas i go nuts, i get shit done but it would be cool to document them on a platform that promotes doing so’ well i’ll keep posted=]

Comment by Jessica

May 28, 2007 @ 11:17 pm

Hi! I’m a Stanford student with a strong interest in entrepreneurship and I would love to be involved with this idea. Let’s talk. :)

Comment by Ray

January 29, 2008 @ 2:48 pm

In reference to “2) The idea is less important than the execution. If you execute very well, no one can catch you.”

I understand that it’s all in the execution. But what if you share an idea with the wrong person who has more resources to execute it just as good if not better than you?

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