Advice needed: "friend" stole my idea...what to do?

If its any consolation, Google announced plans to emulate a lot of the functionality planned for our new email client, Litepost, days after we started announcing and exploring our ideas with the public and users:

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=suggest

I'm not saying they ripped us of course (who could possibly prove that?) but I will say that the timing is awfully coincidental, given that the overall ideas behind our program have been in development for almost a year (and we just started publicizing our ideas recently)!

Personally I take it as a compliment, and am grateful/flattered to have such a large competitor emulating plans we've had in development for a while. (The main thing we heard while pursuing this idea was "How can you possibly improve upon Gmail?" Well now Gmail itself recommends recommendations upon its service.)

All this, however, corresponds directly to what PG says and some of you echo below:

http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html 8. Slowness in Launching

(I'm new to this whole arena, so it's taken us a while to a) find the right developers and b) get up to speed before launch.)

If anyone's interested in weighing in, I wonder if open sourcing our project might help it or be of general interest/utility... is anyone interested in "an Open Source Alternative to Gmail that You Can Install and Run on Your Own Servers"? If so, I could use some help.

I am actually interested in ultimately duplicating _and open sourcing_ a lot of the functionality of Google generally, in order to decentralize it (the operation and its power, which after all is only algorithms + horsepower) and nullify the negative privacy implications of Google. What do you think? Any takers?

I think the only possible contender to Google is an open source alternative. Let's Open Source Google!

PS From another news.YC article: "In Silicon Valley, Google-as-the-giant talk is deafening. As others have noted, startups used to get the question "What are you going to do when Microsoft does this?" and today, it's "What are you going to do about Google?" Source: http://andrewchen.typepad.com/andrew_chens_blog/2007/04/google_a_tale_o.html

Ideas ARE worthless.

"Here's another way to look at it. If merely telling someone your idea means that it can be ripped off, then you hardly have a defensible product. If secrecy is your main weapon, then it will be hard to find investors. By the way, what happens when you ship? Are you going to ask every customer to sign a nondisclosure too?" And what about your first employees?

(quote from an Old Guy Kawasaki Column) http://www.forbes.com/columnists/2005/06/16/entrepreneur-venture-capital-kawasaki-cx_gk_0616artofthestart.html

And if you think the fact that her seed-funded team of 5 developers gives her an indomitable advantage, think again.

It's not what you do, it's HOW YOU DO IT.

So what action should you be taking? I'd say to look real hard at what she's doing. If she nailed it and has built something great, find another idea. They're everywhere. If she hasn't nailed it and you can make a better product, make it.

And, if you're feeling vindictive (I wouldn't bother with this), you could plant a few seeds within your shared network-- tell your mutual friends/contacts what she did.

MySpace definitely executed well, but no one has a monopoly on good execution. In your original comment, you said that if someone else could execute as well as he could, then there's something wrong with the idea. That's not true. There's a good chance that the poster is already screwed, because the person who stole his idea is probably competent. Just because the idea has been marinating in his head longer doesn't mean that he will be more successful. The suggestion that the advantage gained from being the person to come up with the idea in the first place is substantial enough to offset the head start that the person who stole the idea has isn't firmly based in reality.

With that said, I still think he should try to compete with her if he thinks the idea is worthwhile, but he should definitely reevaluate whether or not it's worth it to leave his job/school to do it full time. At this point, anything less than full time isn't going to accomplish anything.

She crashed once - why not help her crash again: Launch.

Most webapps are trivial to implement, and the real value is in the idea. Given the idea, a competent programmer-designer could probably whip out most of the popular webapps out there easily.