I came across stikkit today and quickly spiraled into an angry depression within seconds of looking at the site. Why? Because about eight months ago, I had an identical idea–to the T. I was so convinced of its usefulness as a tool, and knowing my tendency to procrastinate, that I even registered a domain name to motivate myself to build it (notefilter.com). I pondered building it, I thought of how I could go about it, and I even made a few attempts to write some code. But alas, I never really gave it the effort it deserved.
Eight months after I registered notefilter.com, it was built, by someone else, with a different name, stikkit. Now I think I know a little of how Elisha Gray felt on March 7, 1876, except that he actually worked on his idea and was a couple of hours late getting to the patent office. I just did more dreaming than doing.
Ara’s life lesson #1: “Act on your ideas right away, before someone else does.”
Anyway, any good counsellor would tell me about now that the most constructive thing I could do is learn something positive from this situation. And that of course would be to act on my ideas right away. The sad part is, this isn’t the first time this has happened to me. Thankfully I can’t remember off the top of my head what the other idea I had was–probably my mind repressing bad memories.
P.S. Great job on the app guys. Really.★
I’m happy to hear, that even after your heartache, you still think we’ve done a great job. It means a lot to us.
I’ve had similar things happen to me, and I can appreciate the feeling. I’ve learned over the years that unless I can immediately execute an idea, that I should probably blog about it and share the idea, so that in the very least I can blog about it later and say “See! I was right!”
All opportunity isn’t lost though – we have a simple and useful API that people are starting to embrace and make clever apps with, and we’re constantly coming up with ideas for what we’re able to do with the core of what we’ve built so far. Anyone with access to the API has this same opportunity, and we’d fully encourage you to think of where you’d have gone next, given you had the notefilter app.
Hey Ara, I can completely relate. I’ve come to learn the truth in the saying “An opportunity is never lost – if you don’t act on it, someone else will.” Although I will advise that one shouldn’t be discouraged by a little friendly competition. :)
BTW, I do like Mr. Buffington’s philosophy of sharing ideas on the web to try and make things a win-win situation for all. Kudos on stikkit.
The same thing has happened to me. I’ve had an idea for years now, but never really put much effort into developing it. I just got lazy, distracted, and unmotivated. The idea was to make it “Web 2.0″ and stuff and jump on the bandwagon. So far I’ve only seen one site do it. But now, I’m just too apathetic about where the Web is going right now.