Sharing your idea
The biggest difference I’ve seen between entrepreneurs in Goa and their counterparts in places that have a stronger ecosystem like Mumbai, Toronto and Vancouver is their willingness to share.
This topic comes to mind now as I just had a chat with Amey Hegde (who is doing wonderful things for entrepreneurship in Goa at the grassroot level through iCreate and the GCCI as well as his behavioral consultancy with top-tier corporations). I also recently spoke to some guys in Goa who’ve been working on a B2B ‘social+mobile+<insert BS here>’ solution that will revolutionize the industry like Google did. It’s been over a year since they’ve been hacking at it and a release isn’t expected anytime within the next year. They could use a little help and funding, but unfortunately ‘cannot disclose details’.
No one is going to steal your idea. The one’s who can actually take your idea and turn it into a successful business are too busy with their own business. Ideas are worthless; execution is everything. I know from experience how tough it is to execute according to plan in a dynamic industry where things can change overnight.
Two years ago, we began work on a app called Vave. It was an assisted serendipity app that connected you with interesting people around you by ambiently tracking your location and events schedule and matching you with people that shared similar interests.
Sound a lot like Hipster, Glancee, SonarMe and the slew of other SoLoMo apps that are gathering steam right now? If everything was about the idea, then Vave should have been big at SXSW since we hit upon it before most of the names you hear now. In fact, another company, UnSocial launched around October of 2010, around when we were building Vave and it still hasn’t seen widespread adoption.
Collaborating and sharing are powerful forces and accelerate your knowledge, learnings and product iterations, specially when they come from people passionate about the same space that you are in. Networking, partnerships and getting the message into the minds of key early adopters that may not be in your immediate network usually happen through connecting and sharing. You don’t need to disclose your secret sauce. Exhibit A; co-working spaces.
Irrespective of how much investment and government support StartUpGoa.org brings into Goa, we aren’t likely to see any major success unless this mindset of secrecy changes.