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Re. No NDAs: What Should Idea People Do?

blog.jpl-consulting.com

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Re: Re. No NDAs: What Should Idea People Do?

#11

Post by wpietri »

TomGullen wrote: post #3

Quick question and I'm prepared to be shot down here, don't patents show that ideas are actually worth something? Have a great idea? Patent it. Not all ideas are patentable but I'm sure some are. If you get the patent you have something you can sell and once you do you've effectively made money from your idea.

A patent is a lot more than an idea. Patents cover inventions. Originally, they required you to hand over a working model to get a patent.

Take the idea "a good pocket lighter". That's not patentable. Now take a look at the patent for the Zippo lighter:

http://www.google.com/patents/US2032695

Note the detailed diagrams and the careful description of the purposes of the various bits. You don't get that kind of detail by sitting around in your pajamas and saying between tokes, "Wouldn't it be cool if we had a good pocket lighter?" You get it by making things and trying them out.

Re: Re. No NDAs: What Should Idea People Do?

#12

Post by damoncali »

The "no NDA" thing is getting out of hand. NDA's have a time and a place. That place is not when you're meeting someone to talk for the first time. Nobody wants to increase their legal risk for a chance meeting, which will likely not turn into anything interesting - especially contract developers, investors, and the like (whose future business may be impacted by NDA's).

The answer is simple: state your idea in terms that don't require an NDA. When the conversation gets more interesting ad it's time to divulge the secret sauce, then ask for an NDA. If you've done this right, even the more NDA-averse among us will sign one. If you don't have secret sauce, you don't need an NDA - it's that simple.

What is secret sauce? If you can just think it up, it's not secret sauce. Secret sauce requires lots of tangible work. Innovative, tested algorithm: secret sauce. Financial resutls: secret sauce. Difficult to acquire dataset: secret sauce. Unbuilt concept: not secret sauce.

The concept to understand here is that when you ask someone to sign an NDA, you are asking them to give something to you. To make that work, you have to give them something in return - hopefully a high confidence that you're not wasting their time. Or money. Something.

That said, the surest red flag of them all is a premature NDA ask. In my experience it is literally a 100% indicator of someone who is not ready to be talking to people about their ideas.

Re: Re. No NDAs: What Should Idea People Do?

#13

Post by ktizo »

TomGullen wrote: post #3

Quick question and I'm prepared to be shot down here, don't patents show that ideas are actually worth something? Have a great idea? Patent it. Not all ideas are patentable but I'm sure some are. If you get the patent you have something you can sell and once you do you've effectively made money from your idea.

Is more the other way round with most patents turning ideas into expensive legal costs with no way of recouping the money, often due to having spent all the development money on the patent.

Only a few patents add monetary value to an invention, most of them are just a cost.

Re: Re. No NDAs: What Should Idea People Do?

#14

Post by jhspaybar »

Great article. I have made some iPhone apps and websites that have been moderately successful and it seems to pull all the "I have an idea" people out of the woodwork. Maybe it's a result of still being younger and around college, or just a bit older than college age people, but I can't even count how many times an acquaintance has been generous enough to "offer me half" of something of which they have no concept of the implementation of and expect me to jump when they bring nothing to the table.

Sorry to say it, but to all the 25 year old business majors out there...unless you have a big wad of cash or proven skills in another field you really don't bring much to the table of a startup.

The only idea I ever jumped on was by a talented artist who could create all sound and art assets for the game, and I accepted just as much to create a relationship with the person in case I needed them in the future as I did for their idea. In fact, the final game wasn't the idea they "pitched" me. We changed it completely, but because they brought a talent it worked out great!

Re: Re. No NDAs: What Should Idea People Do?

#16

Post by dhimes »

damoncali wrote: post #12

The "no NDA" thing is getting out of hand. NDA's have a time and a place. That place is not when you're meeting someone to talk for the first time. Nobody wants to increase their legal risk for a chance meeting, which will likely not turn into anything interesting - especially contract developers, investors, and the like (whose future business may be impacted by NDA's). The answer is simple: state your idea in terms…

Unique application of deep domain knowledge: secret sauce, or no?

Re: Re. No NDAs: What Should Idea People Do?

#17

Post by jplarson »

TomGullen wrote: post #3

Quick question and I'm prepared to be shot down here, don't patents show that ideas are actually worth something? Have a great idea? Patent it. Not all ideas are patentable but I'm sure some are. If you get the patent you have something you can sell and once you do you've effectively made money from your idea.

I like many others in the HN community don't have a lot of respect for patents, at least in the software world (my take on this can be found here: http://blog.jpl-consulting.com/2010/11/a-nerds-perspective-o...).

But even setting aside ideologies, I think the patent route would be a WAY tougher route (from a resource perspective) than what one savvy commenter on the article suggested: "Cold. Hard. Cash."

To file and then successfully defend a patent from infringers would, I suspect, cost substantially more and take far more time than to actually hire someone to build a real prototype of your vision, which then gives you some legs to stand on in approaching the market.

Re: Re. No NDAs: What Should Idea People Do?

#18

Post by babarock »

jpwagner wrote: post #10

Main takeaway should be this sentence: "[In addition to the idea, bring to the table] something about how you are the best person in the world to lead its execution" Also love the reference to the Aiken quote in the comments: “Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats.”

something about how you are the best person in the world to lead its execution

Completely agree. From this point of view, people are not investing in your "idea" as much as in your person. There's real value to be had here. I believe that more than anything else, people believed in Bill Gates more than they believed in any idea he ever had. I'm not an authority on the matter, but it seems clear to me that IBM made Microsoft, and they did so because of how their meeting with Gates went, not just because "a BASIC interpreter would be the future".

I'll add that since your value is tied to the person it is not easily "stealable". It becomes vital to get a prototype up and running as fast as possible. You need to show investors/cofounder/contractors/... what you have in mind. Describing with words won't do your idea justice, a prototype would add a lot of credibility to it.

Re: Re. No NDAs: What Should Idea People Do?

#19

Post by AznHisoka »

wpietri wrote: post #5

It's very rare that I see the "my idea alone is worth money" thing from people who have built actual businesses. I know that I would never pay for an idea alone. That's partly because it's not like we have a dearth of them. If we didn't have a new idea for the next year, that wouldn't be a problem; we have a giant backlog of excellent ideas. But we'll keep having new ideas. We're constantly looking at user experience…

I agree. When you put that much value in an idea it means you don't have enough dots to connect, and don't know the enormous depth of starting a business.

Re: Re. No NDAs: What Should Idea People Do?

#20

Post by dhimes »

wpietri wrote: post #5

It's very rare that I see the "my idea alone is worth money" thing from people who have built actual businesses. I know that I would never pay for an idea alone. That's partly because it's not like we have a dearth of them. If we didn't have a new idea for the next year, that wouldn't be a problem; we have a giant backlog of excellent ideas. But we'll keep having new ideas. We're constantly looking at user experience…

pretty much a copy of http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3868084, but:

The case of having ideas when you don't know anything, I think we all agree, is silly for having a "secret sauce." The more interesting discussion is what to do when you have an idea and you know a helluva lot?

This is the case where I think you have to be careful. Yes, ideas without execution aren't worth much- but if your executable idea lands in the hands of somebody who can out-execute you, you are sunk unless you protect it. In fact, you are probably sunk even if you do protect it, but at least you may have a life raft.

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