How Far Would You Go To Succeed?
I have a question for you all today…
How far would you go to succeed and make money?
This all came about when I heard from a friend the other day that he has a friend at the same university as me, who has a brilliant business idea which he is making and getting investment for as we speak. I wasn’t only told that the idea was great, but I was told what the idea was as well, so I was able to make my own mind up about it and I loved the idea.
Ever since then I have been thinking of ways to make that business, as it is mainly run online, I have been thinking about how it would be coded, marketed and in turn how it would make money and make investors their money back.
The problem is though that it is my idea, and this is where your mind plays a very important role. Your moral conscience. Would you steal the idea? Make it your own and then take all the credit?
I certainly couldn’t.
As much as I’ve been thinking about the idea, I have never once started to do anything about, never once tried to copy the idea, because I just couldn’t. I want to succeed on my own, and stealing someone else’s idea is not doing that.
But just how far can be taking this? How long into the cycle of things can we say that this was someone else’s idea?
When I was told about the person’s idea, I was also told that he didn’t know how to code it himself and had brought in a professional to do it. Now I’m no expert, but I know I could try and make this website and get all my ideas on it. By outsourcing it, you’re going to be going backwards and forwards having meetings and changing the site daily to make sure it is exactly what you want. The process is so much longer when you have to make sure communication is always happening.
So I could do it quicker than him, but in my opinion that is still very dodgy. If anyone has seen The Social Network this is quite a similar situation.
I’m not trying to teach anything in this article. I’m just interested in how far you would go to succeed. What do you think about people having ideas, and people being able to bring those ideas to life?
Image: Social Networking by TayHinton2010
Hi Simon,
It sounds like you have integrity my friend which is why you wouldn’t move forward and steal your friends idea. To be honest with you, I wouldn’t either.
I have always tried to live by the code, do unto others as you would have done to you. Not that I’ve lived a perfect life and haven’t pissed a few people off from time to time, but I do have integrity.
If this guy is a good friend of yours, I would definitely offer my help or advice. That I would do and hopefully, you could still be a part of this as it burst onto the scenes.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!
Adrienne
Very true Adrienne.
I will certainly look to help my friend when he needs it, at the moment he has all the help he can get, so I’m on the sidelines!
Luckily today I came up with a great idea (well I think it is great at the moment) something which is in-line with his, but covers completely different ground, so I’m hoping I can build this, he can build that and then we can help each other out with marketing etc. Exciting times!
Thanks for the comment, and again happy 3 months for your blog
Simon Duck.
Hi Simon,
It would be nice if you could work together – it sounds like you would both bring a lot to the table and this thing could be even bigger than it would be for either one of you on your own.
I congratulate you on not stealing your friend’s idea!
Sometimes I think people get so desperate they do things they wouldn’t normally do. Kudos to you for staying on the path!
Yeah I’m hoping we can work together at some point, like I said, either on this project or latter on when we both have our ideas up and running.
Very true, the pressure to succeed can hit people in different ways, causing some to just get desperate.
Thanks for the comment,
Simon
When i was new to all this, i always tried to think of a good business plan, a good idea, something like the next facebook or perhaps a unique service that no one has come up with yet. But as time goes on, you realize that making something new and succeed with it has a lot less chance.
At this stage i don’t worry about ideas, just stick to what works for me.
Very good point, people think the ideas like Facebook etc are so easy that if you think of enough ideas one of them will work. I still think of ideas, but there is no point thinking so big, if something comes along it does, if it doesn’t it doesn’t.
Thanks for the comment,
Simon