I’m a very firm believer in the adage of “either put up or shut up”. I often talk with people about their ideas for things and how much better they’d be than what’s currently available. My usual retort is that should then go ahead and try to do that (usually not facetiously) otherwise they should just stop talking about since an idea without action doesn’t do anyone any good. Of course I’m not one to let people say the same thing to me so the vast majority of ideas that I have for a product that I talk about have usually undergone at least some preliminary work to make sure the idea is viable, just so that I don’t feel like I’m talking out my ass.
The problem I’ve often found though is that it’s easy for me to get excited about an idea that I’ve had but it’s 100 times more difficult to get someone else excited about the same idea. I can hear you saying now “well if it was a good idea anyone would be excited about it” but the problem is that since pursuing such ideas is inherently risky people tend to err on the side of caution instead of wanting to get involved. The second you start mentioning dollar figures (whether costs or potential revenues) it gets even worse as people have seen enough seemingly rock solid business go down in recent years to be wary of anyone coming to them with some outrageous idea.
If I’m honest I’m really just generalizing my own personal experiences here and depending on who you are and where you grew up the experience could be quite different. Canberra, and the majority of Australia for that matter, are a risk adverse lot tending towards proven ideas rather than new risky new ventures. This is especially true with the majority of investment in Australia with many choosing the “safe bet” of property rather than investing in new ventures. Thus for any of us wanting to lash out on our own we’re more or less isolated in a community of risk adverse people, and that makes developing a new idea inexorably hard.
I found this a lot when working on many of my previous ideas. Sure there were many times when I’d discuss an idea and its potential with people and receive amazing feedback, but should I ask more than to try it when I finally released and I’d be met with non-committal responses. There’s also not much of a start up scene here in Canberra either since 90% of the people employed here are public servants or working directly for the government. Sure I could probably travel a bit to get involved in say Sydney or Melbourne however the only time I currently have to spare is spent on working on my product, and the potential to find (and convince) someone else to work with me on my ideas seems small enough as to be a waste of my time pursuing it.
Thus for my first couple ideas (and application to Y-Combinator) I decided to go it alone as a single founder. Now the odds are really stacked against you if you go this route, both for start up accelerators like Y-Combinator and the real business world. Many people liken it to raising a child, sure you can do it yourself but its a much greater burden to bear and you’ll need to put in so much more effort to achieve the same results. For someone like me who’s in an environment that’s not conducive to pursuing new ideas sometimes the only option you have is to go it alone, lest you never go at it at all. Of course the simple solution here would be to then put myself in a more conducive environment, which I am looking to do within the next year.
This all being for my 2 most recent projects I have been able to find people who are interested in the idea that I came up with and have been willing to work with me on them. I think I can attribute my success in this regard to finding an area of common interest that we could then expand upon, each of us being able to have meaningful input that will sculpt the end product. I’ll admit it’s a lot easier when you’ve got someone to lean on, even if they’re not technical as that back and forth helps solidify your idea, keeping your eye squarely fixed on the end goal. I’m hopeful that these ideas will turn out a lot better than my last couple ventures, not least of which I’ll hopefully be able to credit to sharing the load with someone.
