Yeah, I used to be really afraid of sharing my ideas until I finally started my own company.

Ideas are cheap. Building a company is hard work. It takes a good idea and a passionate team to create something great. Sure you run a chance of someone taking your idea. But are they more dedicated and passionate about it than you? If so, you're in the wrong business. Better to find out sooner, tbh.

If you have an idea that someone can read a blog post and then replicate, the idea isn't sophisticated enough or you probably just shouldn't write that blog post.

The idea may be somewhat novel, but not necessarily hard. That doesn't mean it's not worthwhile, but if you are working hard in your spare time to get a MVP ready, and someone else already has a business with the employees and developers in place to run with an idea, it can be hard to compete if they decide to put resources towards that idea. Normally you might actually have a small but happy customer base before you get real competition if your idea is novel enough.

That is't exactly the point I was trying to make originally though. The point I was trying to make is that I doubt most small businesses are special snowflakes that can't be replicated. There are of course details that are specific to that company, but I doubt most of those are required for successful function of the company were someone to try to copy the model.

Doing research on up-and-coming startups is every M&A department's core competency. If you are to believe the rumors - some big players are very sophisticated in figuring out what to copy.

Nobody is going to put up with hyper-stealth NDA paranoias nowadays. But I do think the jury is still out on radical transparency. I don't think Snapchat would still be around without its secrecy.