Why I'm not afraid of sharing ideas

My app has been copied at least two times (the two times I know about), but the copies didn’t pick up.

How you internally design your solution is of some importance. No two apps are alike behind the scenes, and good or bad implementation can make or break your churn metrics. This, in turn, means that one team can succeed and another group can fail even with the same idea.

With engineering becoming more commoditized than ever, the only defense you really have is marketing. Web assets, reviews, traffic sources, etc., are also much harder to replicate than your code is to copy. Even when the competition has bigger pockets than you do.

And I think you have to know more than just programming. You have to take the customer on a journey. You need to curate an experience for your customers. It’s not about creating a linear path between points A and B, and you can’t do it by being good at just one skill. You need to know a little bit of marketing, a little bit of programming, a little bit of partnerships, and a little bit of sales. You need to do some support work, some promotional work, and all the other random stuff that happens when you run a business.

So yes, someone can ‘steal’ your idea and create an identical app.

But mobile app stores have proven there’s enough room for everybody if you operate out of a mentality of abundance and not zero-sum.

Competition won’t kill your product. Good or bad execution will.