An entrepreneur argues that hoarding ideas behind NDAs is pointless because execution matters far more than the idea itself. He shares stories about GoldieBlox and TOMS to show how talking openly about early work led to valuable connections, not stolen concepts.
I have so many NDAs from my early days, and, and, and that I made people sign because I was so worried. And it's so funny, nobody was going to steal that idea. I mean, nobody, no big toy company was ever going to try what I was thinking because it was so against all the things that they had learned over the years that work for girls. Like, no one was ever going to try it. And look, like, I think there are tons of ideas out there every day, and there's probably a lot of people who had had the idea that I'd had before. And the point is like, it all just comes down to who's going to put in the time and who's actually going to execute it. Right. And I have really, like, I have not yet regretted sharing any of my ideas with anybody. Period. I mean, even I've had many meetings now with big other toy companies, media companies who could be competitors. And I've, I've shared proprietary ideas with them as well. And, and, you know, I think worst case scenario, they copy it, and or they try to copy it, or they do it in their way. And then there's something out in the world that's beneficial to girls. So in my mind, that's a win. I mean, maybe that's a stupid business thing, you know, maybe that's a stupid thing to say for my business, but nobody's done that yet, really. People have tried to knock us off after we've launched something. That will happen with any business. But nobody has copied just an idea before it has actually gained traction in the marketplace because everybody's too afraid. So my advice is You know, now I'm not saying like go and give away some like proprietary algorithm or something that you come up with that's really novel. Like you don't want to do something like that. But if you have, you know, if you have a big idea or something that you're excited about, like, I mean, I remember reading this book by Blake Mycoskie, who was the founder of TOMS Shoes. And I loved this thing that he said, where he would wear two different colored shoes, like around, and because he wanted to talk about what he was doing with everybody, like even a stranger on an airplane. And so by wearing two different colored Tom's shoes, like everybody would come talk to him about it, and then he could talk about his idea. And it's so true. Like, I would start to talk about GoldieBlox, or I'd have some of my prototype pieces that I'd be holding, or I'd have a draft of a book that I was working on. And literally in the early days, I mean, waiters at restaurants, I would talk to about it. And they would be like, oh, like my aunt is a writer at The Atlantic. Like, I'll hook you up with her. And I'm like, really? And they're like, yeah. Like, I'm not exaggerating. Like talking to, when you're genuinely passionate about something and you start sharing that and talking to people, it's amazing. It's like, this interesting exploration into human nature of people want to help. They almost like, they want to show off like who they know, right? And how they could be helpful to you. And so I think that a lot of my early wins came from just sharing, sharing the ideas around with everybody who would listen. And I couldn't believe how many people would just open up their Rolodexes. Like, I mean, people would give me amazing connections. And, um, and I, I don't think it's ever really too early to start sharing even just a rough idea or a sketch on paper. I really don't. I have not yet had an experience where a half-baked idea of mine got stolen by somebody else or executed any better than I would have.
O processo de reconhecer limites, mesmo quando a vida parece exigir sempre mais.
Depois de tantas histórias, aprendizados e pausas necessárias, o @interior_iza está de volta
