Techie Restaurants: Panera Ordering

I was in Panera today with my girlfriend and her brother.  She did the coolest thing. While we were sitting there and talking, she ordered her food on their website and the waiter brought it to the table. He brought the receipt and the meal along with a half smile (I don't think he likes his job very much). 

I have ordered tons of food online. Some orders I have picked up at the register. Some orders were delivered to my home. But I have never ordered from my phone or computer at the table and then had it delivered to me. It's probably not very novel and can happen at many restaurants, but it was actually a pretty cool, frictionless experience.  

Then I started thinking about why iBeacon has the potential to be super help and cool along with how phones will allow for personalized orders for anything while you are in a store or restaurant. Imagine walking into a Starbucks and your phone places your custom order for you. Then the barista brings it to your table. The not so distant future is already occurring in small waves.  

Execution 101: Ideas are ONLY Ideas

People are always sooooo scared to share their ideas with friends, family, and strangers. There is this intrinsic fear that someone is going to steal their "great" idea. I don't want to burst anyone's bubble, but if it's a good idea and in a good space, then someone is probably already doing it and they probably have better funding.  

Mike Lazerowe said it best..."you are more likely to destroy your own company than competition. Between funding issues, founder issues, execution issues, and everything inbetween, there is a good chance you may not end up with a billion dollar company. Unicorns are hard to come by in real life and in businesses. 

The main issue with having paranoia around an idea is that it's just an idea. The process of building a actual company is 1000x harder than pontificating one drunken night in your room. The only people lucky enough to benefit off of an "idea" are the Winklevoss twins from Facebook and the long lost Snapchat founder. Be open to sharing your idea to people. It's okay. Don't give away all of the IP, trade secrets, and secret sauce, but share it enough so that people can help augment your idea and actually help you make it into a business.