Why You Should Believe in Your Friends Before the World Does

An email just dropped and I couldn’t help thinking about something…

You know, sometimes the best investment you can make is not in the brilliance of an idea, but in the grit of a friend.

Ideas sound shiny at first pitch, but the truth is they cannot execute themselves. What separates a fleeting dream from a thriving enterprise is the person holding the idea. Their resilience and ability to learn on the move often matter far more than the originality of the concept.

Iyin Aboyeji once admitted that one of his biggest startup regrets was dismissing Moniepoint when it was pitched to him. To him, it looked unoriginal, a tired imitation of existing fintech models. Today, Moniepoint is a giant. What changed? Not the core idea, but the relentless people behind it.

When you back your friends, you give them more than capital or connections. You give them belief. That belief is oxygen in the suffocating early days of any venture. Because businesses are hard. Ideas get mocked, plans fall apart, and markets resist. But when a friend hears you say, “I see you. I believe you can pull this off,” it changes the story. It means they are not walking alone.

Think of the friends who wrote checks to two scrappy guys with a half-built search engine called Google, not because the idea was flawless but because they trusted the people. Think of the family member who gave money to Ren Zhengfei, an orphan, to start Huawei. Even in our personal circles, we can recall times when someone’s encouragement made us take the next step we were afraid of.

Believing in a friend does not always mean handing over cash. Sometimes it is standing in their corner when everyone else shrugs. Sometimes it’s introducing them to a potential partner. Sometimes it is the simple gift of words: “You’re onto something. Keep going.”

Every empire started as someone’s shaky idea. Every world-changer once needed a friend to believe before the world did.

So when your friend comes to you with what seems like a half-baked dream, pause before dismissing it. Look at them. Ask yourself, do I trust this person’s capacity to figure things out? If the answer is yes, then your belief may be the bridge between their idea and its future.

Because in the end, it’s not the idea you’re investing in. It’s the person.