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

news.ycombinator.com

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

#81

Post by jey »

mkull wrote: post #73
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.

bullshit. ideas are cheap, implementation is hard. I am very competent web app developer, with several major applications under my belt. While on the surface you might think you will be able to whip out a clone of one of the popular web apps easily (let alone a brand new idea) but you will find the devil is in the details. What makes or breaks those sites are the thousands of minute implementation level decisions whi…

I don't dispute that, but the point is that at that point it's just a matter of doing it. You start writing code, encounter problems, find solutions. If implementation is really so hard and ideas are so cheap, you should be trying to implement dozens of ideas and giving up because of the technical challenges for each site you're actually able to launch. For me it's the converse, I have a harder time finding a good idea worth doing than doing the implementation and refinement. Yes, refining the idea and doing it right are non-trivial, but that's got more to do with how competent you are in general. I personally don't have a glut of good ideas and a shortage of implementation skill. Yes, I can come up with ideas if we just want to measure by volume -- but these have to survive through the "Is this a good idea?" filter before I count it as an actual idea. Generating crap is easy.

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

#82

Post by pg »

sethjohn wrote: post #78
piratechick wrote: post #66

Quoted post unavailable.

Wait, is teenwag.com the actual competition??? (down here at -10 points!) If so, it's interesting to see what the "idea" was in the first place.

no, it's a troll/spammer pretending to be, and lots of gullible users fell for it

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

#83

Post by bootload »

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…

'... You may advance and be absolutely irresistible, if you make for the enemy's weak points; you may retire and be safe from pursuit if your movements are more rapid than those of the enemy ...' ~ http://classics.mit.edu/Tzu/artwar.html

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

#84

Post by Ev »

mkull wrote: post #73
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.

bullshit. ideas are cheap, implementation is hard. I am very competent web app developer, with several major applications under my belt. While on the surface you might think you will be able to whip out a clone of one of the popular web apps easily (let alone a brand new idea) but you will find the devil is in the details. What makes or breaks those sites are the thousands of minute implementation level decisions whi…

Bullshit. Web "development" is a high school skill. Which is why web frameworks are trivial to implement, learn and use. Which is why building web sites takes months, not years. Tenths of thousands of dollars, not millions.

Complex software takes good knowledge of complex algorithms and man-years of development. Well.. since everybody wants to get rich quickly these days, innovation scaled down to web "applications", where the only valuable thing is percisely the idea. And your only advantage is the time to market.

It took years for other big firms to develop search engines as good as google's is. THAT is what I call "implementation is hard". Implementing something as trivial as myspace is less complex than compiler class project in college. (I've done both).

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

#85

Post by sbraford »

Ev wrote: post #84
mkull wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

bullshit. ideas are cheap, implementation is hard. I am very competent web app developer, with several major applications under my belt. While on the surface you might think you will be able to whip out a clone of one of the popular web apps easily (let alone a brand new idea) but you will find the devil is in the details. What makes or breaks those sites are the thousands of minute implementation level decisions whi…

Bullshit. Web "development" is a high school skill. Which is why web frameworks are trivial to implement, learn and use. Which is why building web sites takes months, not years. Tenths of thousands of dollars, not millions. Complex software takes good knowledge of complex algorithms and man-years of development. Well.. since everybody wants to get rich quickly these days, innovation scaled down to web "applications",…

If web development is so easy, why is the poster posting here instead of simply "whipping up" a competing application?

Why do hundreds of kids bother applying to YCombinator?

Can't they just whip up a webapp in a few months?

Yes - web dev is easier than desktop app or complex client/server applications, but Hitting the High Notes (as Joel says) will never be "easy". Simple, yes. Easy, no.

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

#86

Post by sbraford »

litepost wrote: post #31

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…

(warning: sorry, off-topic a bit here...)

hey nathan - glad to find you on here. (it's Shanti)

I've been meaning to tell you... is your model a hosted one?

One space that Google (nor Sprout) will ever dominate is a software model where you allow clients to install your app on their own servers or VPSes. (i.e. a JumpBox)

Clients then get the best of both worlds: 1) Your killer UI 2) Privacy/Security/Control of their companies email data on their own server

Sure you've thought of this, just thought I'd give it a plug.

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

#89

Post by Ev »

sbraford wrote: post #85
Ev wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bullshit. Web "development" is a high school skill. Which is why web frameworks are trivial to implement, learn and use. Which is why building web sites takes months, not years. Tenths of thousands of dollars, not millions. Complex software takes good knowledge of complex algorithms and man-years of development. Well.. since everybody wants to get rich quickly these days, innovation scaled down to web "applications",…

If web development is so easy, why is the poster posting here instead of simply "whipping up" a competing application? Why do hundreds of kids bother applying to YCombinator? Can't they just whip up a webapp in a few months? Yes - web dev is easier than desktop app or complex client/server applications, but Hitting the High Notes (as Joel says) will never be "easy". Simple, yes. Easy, no.

Ok, let it be simple. My point is that Kawasaki is 100% right. If your idea can be so easily stolen, it probalby wasn't a great idea to begin with. Maybe it's that social networking aspect she is adding is actually what will make it successfull.

Hate to sound negative though, having that happen to you surely hurts...

And yes, kids apply to YCombinator exactly because they can whip up a web app in a few months. YCombinator puts them in front of VCs after that.

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

#90

Post by msufianhameed »

pg wrote: post #19
jkush wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't help much, but one thing you can do is feel good that you have good ideas. The second thing you can do is launch a competitor immediately. If she's using an outsourcing firm and isn't actually doing the development herself you've got a huge advantage. Use it. I'd be willing to bet that since it was your idea, you have a much better understanding of the problem and how you're solving it than she does. Use that…

I agree: launch a competitor immediately.

i agree too:do it as fast as you can. wish you all the best.
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