The “stolen” idea of Facebook and eternal legal battle between Zuckerberg and the twins is a well documented worst case scenario as to what happens when you share your idea with the wrong people. But what is the best case scenario?

I was recently on 5By (check them out, amazing video conceirge style curation) and checking out their Venture Cap Channel. 5By served me up a pretty great video on finding a technical co-founder, a question I get all the time from the start-ups I work with that are lacking the Hacker to complete the Hipster, Hacker, Hustler trifecta. In this video, Ian Jeffrey of FounderFuel, says that the best way to attract the Hacker is to tell everyone about your idea, especially at events and meet ups where the Hacker types might hang out (look for neck beards and ironic t-shirts) He also addresses the “what if someone steals the idea” concern.

I’ve thought about this idea of people stealing my ideas before telling folks about projects that I think about on nights and weekends and during the first 10,000 feet of airline flights. When it all boils down to it, I could give someone all the details needed and a really good pitch about why some of my ideas are awesome but if they tried to steal them, they would be missing a very important piece of the reason it is a great idea: Me.

At this point in the innovation and start-up industry’s life cycle, we are beyond the point were people are looking for the needle in the haystack of good ideas. Now people are trying to beat back the good ideas and find the great ones, and, most everyone is partial to their own. People don’t have time to steal your ideas, they’re trying to find enough time to do their own.

A great example of this kind of openness was the subject of my Forbes post this morning. John O’Nolan laid out his game plan for building Ghost last year and didn’t hide much. But, it was because of this openness that he got over 100,000 unique views on that blog post and, in the past 24 hours, has doubled his Kickstarterr goal and is well on his way to blowing the doors off of this opportunity. If someone else had taken this idea and run with it without John, it would have failed. There is no one else that cared about it as much as he did. And because of that caring, he’s attracted a team of rock stars to work with him.

So, get out there and share the big ideas. Get out there and find others they resonate with. Then go do them together. That’s what this wild and crazy world is all about.Tweet

Before I share all of the big ideas that I had the chance to glean from this year’s SXSW, I wanted to post a recent speech I gave for the W20 Social Commerce Summit. It was a honor to speech to such a fantastic group of big thinkers, brand marketers, and digital innovators. I shared some of the initiatives that we’re pursuing with Waze and how our partners are leveraging the Proximity Incentive Graph our platform is being built on. I even snuck in a couple pocket square and breakfast taco references.

What do you think?

(Here are the slides so you can follow along)
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This morning I had the chance to join the morning show on KVUE in Austin to talk about Waze. We launched as their traffic partner less than a month ago and have been seeing a great response from their viewers and our Wazers.  We also dove into the feature on Waze that allows you to find the cheapest gas in the area.

(If you don’t have Waze yet, go get it HERE)

Also, have to say, happy that the camera guy kept my pocket square visible for this segment.

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I have been a Simon Sinek fan for awhile, every since his TED Talk (which I blogged about HERE.) And today during lunch, like I do everyday that I don’t have a lunch meeting, I had a Learning Lunch. I usually go to the TED Talks channel, but this time, YouTube suggested another Simon Sinek talk first.

If you only have three minutes, watch the first three minutes when he discuses his purpose in life. But if you want to hear leadership explained in a way that will be immediately implementable in your life, take the 21 minutes to watch the whole thing.
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Just in time for Valentine’s Day, I shared some thoughts on Forbes about the parallels I see everyday between sales and dating. The one truth that applies in both instances that I didn’t include but perhaps should have is this: If you’re not getting any, it is not their fault. 

Read the whole post here: DATING IS LIKE SALESTweet