Simon Gifford is CEO and co-founder of Mashauri, an online accelerator dedicated to increasing the success rate of startups around the globe. He also runs Genesis Management Consulting, a consultancy focused on strategic decision making and is an adjunct professor of strategy at IE Business School in Madrid. Prior to this he was a global partner at Deloitte Consulting where his roles included heading the financial services practice in Asia-Pacific-Africa and leading the strategy practice in Africa. He has a bachelors degree in statistics and economics, an honours in marketing and an MBA from UCT.

There are many myths floating around the student startup ecosystem which can hinder the progress of some great ideas. Here we destroy some of them ….

Startup myth 1: Someone is going to steal your idea if you tell people about it

You probably could not even pay your top competitor to execute your idea – they have plenty of their own. So get out there and talk and test and validate. Execution is the key, not idea generation.