Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 100 posts

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

#41

Post by juwo »

pissedoff wrote: post #36
litepost wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well then there's no reason Google can't take it.

I'm curious now....How do I get Google to delete my presentation from her email?

why dont you tell us what the idea is?

what is her website url?

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

#42

Post by omouse »

jey wrote: post #39
webwright wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Colum…

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.

Maybe, but they have to come up with the idea first. And then they have to avoid being discouraged from going through with the implementation. And then they need money to put the implementation somewhere on the net. And then they need to market it or hire a PR company to do that. And they need to maintain and support it. And then...you get the point. There's more than just the implementation to web apps.

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

#43

Post by omouse »

litepost wrote: post #34
pissedoff wrote: post #5

Back in Jan I went to a person well respected in the startup community (PG knows her) in BOS. She was a friend of a friend, I've known her for years..she previously had a high profile startup that crashed in the dotcom era. I wanted to bounce the idea off her and get her feedback. So I sent a presentation (marked confidential) and followed up with an hour long chat, which was helpful. She moved to the west coast the…

Trust in karma. "Vengeance is mine, I will repay," saith the Lord. :)

He's better off making his own karma. Launch! For Sparta!

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

#45

Post by jey »

omouse wrote: post #42
jey wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe, but they have to come up with the idea first. And then they have to avoid being discouraged from going through with the implementation. And then they need money to put the implementation somewhere on the net. And then they need to market it or hire a PR company to do that. And they need to maintain and support it. And then...you get the point. There's more than just the implementation to web apps.

Yes, and the idea is the only hard part of all that. Especially if you're already a webapp-guy, not a random joe-schmoe who doesn't know source code from a security code.

These are webapps, not operating systems, not mainframes, not databases. The barrier to entry, cost of operation, and development time are all pretty low. You can hire the PR people when you actually need them (probably sometime after you actually have cash flow). There's plenty of ways to market a webapp for free, and I sure would not hire a marketing firm to promote my new site.

Post reply on HN