Many people visit my sites. Some come with good intentions. Others come to copy my ideas.
I see them send bots to steal my work and scrape my pages. Some have even started brands called AFROFEAST, to ride on the good name we have built for over 13 years. They come from all directions — from the USA to Brazil to Eastern Europe. Most are Africans in the diaspora.
One American sister, supposedly starting a festival called AFROFEAST, scraped my pages word for word and pasted them onto her website, hoping to make millions.
My message to you
Learn to be creative. There are a billion ideas out there. Be a prolific researcher. Be observant. Do not wait to scrape and copy other people’s ideas and brands. You will never prosper that way. I have seen them try, and I have seen them fail.
How to get a business idea
There are different ways. This is just one of them.
One day I was travelling with Amen in Southeast Asia. She told me she used to write a diary. One day a family member stumbled on her little secrets and scolded her.
Angry, Amen burned the diary. Everything she had worked so hard to record was gone.
I felt sorry for her. But I also sensed an opportunity: a voice diary, with privacy first, where parents and others cannot get in.
A few weeks after she went back to Ethiopia, I started to research. I found many people with the same problem as Amen, on Reddit and on YouTube. I realised the idea could be big.
But there were already several operators. The market was crowded. So I dropped the idea.
The Midnight Alchemist came to me while I was travelling in China. Ideas often come when you take time away — at least they do for me. They also come when I am in the shower.
How I test an idea
I do not copy other people’s ideas or names. This is what I do instead:
- I find a problem, usually from my environment.
- I research whether the market is viable, and whether people really want it.
- I build it and test it.
- If it does not work, I drop it. No emotions.
It is the riskier way, because you must test the idea first. But I do not lose much. I learn something each time.
Today’s message
Stop using AI to copy other people’s ideas. Be original. Solve real-world problems.
The Midnight Alchemist. Where It Stands. — what came out of one of these ideas.
Why I Build Here — the instinct behind everything I make.
The Founder’s Passport — how I build the door before anyone needs it.
Five Reasons I Like Amen — the person in the diary story.