Similar to how companies rarely fail due to competition, ideas are rarely the sole reason for a company's success. "Stealing" an idea doesn't really happen unless someone else has the means and will to execute it.
The idea itself isn't really the hard part of building a company. Otherwise, people would be "selling" ideas, and not businesses[0]!
Also, the same skills required to come up with good ideas are probably the same skills required to make those ideas work. If you're experienced enough to know there's a need in some market, you'll only succeed if you have experience enough to develop and sell a solution. So, if someone successfully takes the market from under you they were probably already ahead of you even when you were first.
But the above quote is also why I'm skeptical of validating ideas in the landing page stage. The walkman was just as good as the iPod until I spent 5 minutes using the iPod, but no landing page would've convinced me.
Here's an idea: Make a pill that cures any viral disease! Don't bother me with questions about how to make it work. I'm an idea guy, not a chemist. Are you interested in the idea or not?
The reason people don't buy ideas is because ideas are worthless without execution. An idea with execution is already a business.
you don't, you never tell anyone your idea or launch it, take it to the grave and keep it a huge secret like all the other amazing imaginary founders who did that. ;)
Totally agree. To add onto this, there are very few ideas that are so inherently new and valuable that simply hearing about them would cause someone else to launch into competition with you.
You'll need to validate at some point! We don't publicly display any of our user's ideas, so your idea can stay as private or be as public as you want. If you just want to validate with a few people, just sent it to a few people!
The idea itself isn't really the hard part of building a company. Otherwise, people would be "selling" ideas, and not businesses[0]!
[0] http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html