Someone Stole my Startup Idea
Let me set the scene for you:
A few weeks ago I was out for dinner with friends. I knew everyone except one guy, somebody's plus one.
We all chatted about travel plans, what everyone is working on and eventually someone asked me about how Journee is going.
I was conscious of including the new guy, so I briefly explained that I quit my job and moved to Vietnam to work on my journaling app full time.
👨🏻 Him: “Ah I love journaling, do it every day. What does it do?”
👩🏼 Me: “It analyses what you write in your journal to give you personalised writing prompts!”
👨🏻 Him: “Cool! I've been thinking about creating an AI journaling app myself.”
👩🏼 Me: “Ohh nice, what would your app do?”
👨🏻 Him: “I'm not really sure, it's just an idea right now. But personalised prompts would be a great USP!”
The table went silent and my face went bright red.
What the f*ck do I even say to that!?!?
I try and keep smiling, and my friend interrupts to cut the tension by telling him to “just use Journee - wink, wink” before moving the conversation along quickly.
The rest of the evening I fixated on that exchange. Each time it replayed in my head, I'd get hot flushes of anger.
When I got home that night I had to really think about why that conversation affected me so much.
I was reminded of two very important things that every startup founder should know:
💗 Your advantage as a founder is that YOU are your USP. Your personality, passion and drive is what is going to set you apart and make you successful, even among competition.
💗 Lots of people have ideas. In fact, lots of people probably have the same idea as you. But ideas mean nothing if you don't act on them, and you're already ahead because you took action and made it reality.
So this is just a reminder to anyone doing their own thing that there will be copycats out there, but they don't have your most important asset, YOU! Don't let them stop you from creating something special.✨