Originally Posted by jimmycooper

With 97,683 blogs, I think it's safe to say that Colmike7 is rolling with more than just one single solitary idea. He probably has at least a dozen. All with different levels of effectiveness and many of which are likely contingent upon the successful implementation of some of his other ideas. There are a lot of variables at play here.

Telling Franque 80% of one idea will not hurt Colmike7 in the slightest.

It's probably even likely that there are already a bunch of people out there doing something highly similar but just not scaling at the same level. Or just not mixing it with the right set of other ideas. In the highly, highly unlikely chance there is nobody else out there doing the same thing, it's pretty much guaranteed that there will be at some point regardless of whether or not he tells anyone. In that case, it's probably better for him to tell a few people beforehand, especially someone who's as inquisitive Franque appears to be, because there's a chance that one of Franque's questions about said idea might lead to a new, better, more evolved idea which will leave Colmike7 better equipped to evolve his business.

The drawbacks of the alternative (ie. not sharing) are that his well of ideas might dry up at some point. Just imagine how horrible it would be if an entire industry held that same attitude only to find that the collective idea wells had run dry just before the industry was about to face some real competition for the first time. Of course, that's just purely hypothetical. Something like that would never happen.

Anyway, props to Colmike7 and extra special kudos to Franque!