Illustration: Jonathan Towers

I don’t need anybody else, I thought. This idea is so good, when I’m finished it won’t matter. I’m not a biz guy, I don’t need to do those typical loser biz guy things. Who needs networking, or mentors, or business models. This idea is so good, so special, so amazing…

 

So wrong.

 

Stunningly, business-fatally, passion-sappingly wrong.

 

I’d made two critical mistakes and didn’t realise this until fate and luck combined to teach me two great lessons.

 

The first is that an idea, in a vacuum, is never special. You have to get over yourself, and fast. The idea you have, no matter how brilliant you think it might be, is never going to succeed out of the gate. A business ultimately has to exist within an ecosystem. It has to evolve in a million subtle ways to become something. I can’t tell you exactly how; I can only say it’s a consistent part of any successful company. You’ll develop in the dark, muttering over your smoking test tubes, staring down at the passing multitudes and dreaming of the day they finally get it.

 

Sorry, that day won’t come. Get out there now. Find smart people to talk to. Show them what you have. Listen, because they’re mostly right. Don’t give up, just reach out and push for your idea to face reality as fast and as much as you can. Then be ready to evolve without losing sight of the dream.

 

And this leads me to the second great misconception: people are going to steal your idea.

 

Trust me; it’s not going to happen. No really. If the guy who thinks the idea is so amazing – the first person to truly get it – runs off and forms a company to copy you, trust me, they’re going to fail. The people who are actually capable of helping are too busy doing their own things, and the ones who can’t help are not able to successfully execute on your idea anyway.

 

In the end, a great company starts with an average idea and then wins on execution. Read that again. The key is execution – you’re ability to find people, build a business, establish a network, create the product and adapt it to suit your audience and to do it all for years on end until you win. The initial idea is more a focus of your passion than it is a practical concept. Most of the time you’ll end up doing something related, but quite different to what you started with.

 

So don’t get too caught up trying to think up something amazing and don’t spend too long tinkering in the dark. Get started building a company, and ask the opinion of anybody nice enough to actually listen.