If you really have novelty that works (makes anything non trivial money wise) then someone with vastly more money than you will clone it and make it vastly better and throw millions at the marketing. It’s indeed better to improve on entrenched competitors as they have different priorities altogether like providing ROI to investors which interferes with feature creation and pesky expensive things like support.

I would say freedom: I have been creating different companies for 35 years now; large ones and small ones and most of them have been because I believed the products we made had to exist. Luckily sometimes others thought so too! But even if they didn’t sell, I never stopped; I believed. Creating things that I believe should exist is not what everyone can do ; I had the luck that my first two products were hits, but very accidentally so; I never did (or do) anything with market research etc; I just built what I thought was needed, popped it into the market and hoped for the best. That is freedom, and it’s so much fun that I hope to do this for at least another 35 years.

Really depends what you have to offer. I’m not very rich but rich enough (and an entrepreneur -> how I got rich) for people to bother me with ideas or plans etc but have nothing in return.

Most obvious and most commoni; ‘I have this plan, but I cannot do anything myself’ and then trying to get ideas, strategies, money etc from me. Thing is ; I have the people, the tech knowledge, the marketing knowledge *and* the money to make things from scratch and make them work. So what do I need you for? The successful collabs I had was, what you said, if some has a great product; my companies can be the first paying users, but i will want something in return. As i’m an entrepreneur, I will bank on your success with me ‘investing’ (being a first mover and having more patient for bugs etc than other paying clients would have) so I will want a % in the company owning the product. Another way which I have done, is if somehow has an idea and indeed can at least build it themselves.

But people doing cold-call sales on me because they know i’m rich and indeed ‘pay more for the same product’ I sniff our quickly and indeed will never waste my time on.