Your ego can kill your idea before anything else

You’re a creator, you have been working on your idea for few months. The MVP is ready, it’s time to launch your product. You tell about it on ProductHunt, HackerNews, Reddit, Facebook etc.

Not everyone who sees your product on these platforms are going to be your users. Some may be creators just like you, investors, people who want to learn from you, people who are filling to give some feedback about the idea, or even willing to share their experience with you.

Having a good network can go a long way in launching a successful product. Having a good network is not the only factor, but it is one reason that can help you in your success. Some of these people who reach out maybe even wanting to expand their own network as well.

When I see potentially good product, I get excited and I want to learn from them on how they intend on growing their product, and how they intend on building the audience.

However, whenever I put this question “How are you going to market your product? and what’s your plan on gathering your first 100 users?” I have been noticing this repetitive pattern in most founders that I came across.

The response has been hostile. Why are you requesting such information? or something similar or no response at all.

I respect their right to not to tell me information. But since you have released your it’s public and everyone can see it.

• If I want to copy your idea it’s already there for everyone to see.
• I’m not asking any technical details about your product, such as IP information or the stack.
• Basically I don’t want to know anything important about your product that you would not like to share with anyone else.

All I wanted to do is,

• I’m more of a creator than a marketer myself. Even though I can create something, I find it different to build an audience around it because I’m bad at marketing.
• I can learn a lot from founders who can share their growth strategies.
• Maybe if you are someone bad at marketing like myself, I can also tell something that I learned from people who did share their growth strategies with me. So you can learn something new as well.
• I wanted to give some feedback on your product and help you to improve it by providing unbiased feedback as an outsider.

However, the ego of the founders can close all those opportunities. And it will be a loss for both you and me.

I know maybe they are first time founders, and have no experience about sharing ideas. But even though I was naive to think that ideas are valuable 10 years back, I never turned down any opportunity to network and share experiences. Now I don’t hold my ideas back and I continue to network with anyone who contacts me after seeing my posts on HN, PH or Reddit etc.

I join slack communities, discord communities, Facebook groups etc. As long as the group respects each other and provides value in return.

So please don’t be the person with the ego. Your idea is already out there. Help each other, and connect with each other.

Your ego might kill your idea before anyone else.