Steve Poland over at Techquila Shots blog brought up an interesting point. He talks about the advantages of sharing your business ideas with the public.

Break-down the wall of fear that “Someone is going to steal my idea if I talk about it!� — IT’S JUST AN IDEA. Go get people’s PRICELESS feedback on your idea, evolve it, and execute. If someone stole your idea during that process, you’re 49 people ahead of them in finding out how to truly evolve it into something that will work. Execution is the key. Don’t execute until you know from 50 people’s perspectives that you’ll be executing properly.

I definitely agree that getting major feedback your next big money maker idea is a very good thing and can potentially save you lots of money along the way. At the same time, I think the target listener should be kept in mind. After all, sharing a web startup idea with hundreds of other web entrepreneurs is risky, especially if you’re just starting out with no experience under your belt.

Your target focus group should be those same people who would use your service or product. Now, if it so happens that you’re building a service for entrepreneurs, then so be it. Get feedback from potential users! Remember, you’re solving one of their problems, so asking your geeky programmer friends about your big idea for next generation running shoes will get you nowhere (unless they run of course!)