Don’t hand your dream to people who’ll judge it in ten seconds between bites of lunch.

Ideas in their early state are fragile, not because they are bad but because they are unfinished, and unfinished things rarely survive casual assessment. A quick opinion from someone with no context is not a real test of anything, and yet it can be enough to make you quietly drop something you had barely started.

Protect the early stage by choosing your audience. Show it to people who have built something themselves, or who at least understand what stage a thing is at. Everyone else can see it later, when a shrug over lunch will not do anything to it.