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Nobody’s going to steal your idea

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Re: Nobody’s going to steal your idea

#41

Post by enraged_camel »

TomGullen wrote: post #21

I don't agree. Mainly because I don't agree with the premise that ideas are worthless - something that is echoed around all the time. Ideas being worthless is the lazy and easy way to explain to someone why they should get feedback on their idea. The reality is ideas do have value. We've got a great idea for a new product, and we're not telling anyone about it. That's because our idea has value and we don't want anyo…

Here's the thing: if your idea is not a controversial and potentially groundbreaking one, then you are not the only person who has it. Chances are, someone else has already thought of it and is working on it. The example you gave with the SMS service is like this: it's a decent idea, but not exactly difficult to come up with.

On the other hand, if your idea is controversial and potentially groundbreaking, then it will sound so insane that people will think you are crazy. So from the beginning you are firmly insured against people stealing it. This was basically Airbnb. They started out renting inflatable beds to conference attendees. Almost nobody thought they would succeed because the idea on its face sounds crazy. But the Airbnb guys kept going and their idea evolved and today they have a successful business.

That the other thing: ideas by themselves are not worth anything because there isn't a single idea out there that survives the execution phase unscathed. The vast majority of the time what happens is that people start with one idea, realize how shitty it is, and end up executing on something else to become successful. But that's just hindsight: if you had asked their pre-execution self what their idea was worth, they would probably throw out big numbers because they have not yet seen how worthless it is.

Re: Nobody’s going to steal your idea

#42

Post by 18pfsmt »

I think this notion varies depending on whether one is discussing B2C or B2B.

I would love for some smart folks to "steal" my idea, and build a real marketplace for spot-freight, but nobody with talent seems interested. I believe this has to do with a lack of knowledge about the specific industry. As a result, I've been building a solution myself, slowly but surely.

Re: Nobody’s going to steal your idea

#43

Post by wpietri »

hemancuso wrote: post #15

An obvious counterexample is sittercity/care.com "On July 20, 2006, Sheila Marcelo and Nick Beim flew from Boston to Chicago to visit a company called Sittercity. The business, which charged parents to access an online database of sitters and nannies, had been launched in Boston five years earlier. “We took the meeting to talk about an investment,’’ says Genevieve Thiers, the Boston College alumnae who founded Sitter…

Is that a counterexample? Suppose they hadn't taken the meeting. What would have prevented Marcelo from starting Care.com?

As far as I can tell, nothing. Sittercity had been operating for 5 years in public view. Obvious idea, proven market, easy to find Sittercity users to interview.

(However, bringing an EIR to an investment meeting strikes me as incredibly dubious.)

Re: Nobody’s going to steal your idea

#44

Post by abecedarius »

TomGullen wrote: post #21

I don't agree. Mainly because I don't agree with the premise that ideas are worthless - something that is echoed around all the time. Ideas being worthless is the lazy and easy way to explain to someone why they should get feedback on their idea. The reality is ideas do have value. We've got a great idea for a new product, and we're not telling anyone about it. That's because our idea has value and we don't want anyo…

While elephants already chat while miles apart using subsonics, they're smart and I'll bet neat things would happen if you gave a bunch of them mobile phones that they could work. I'll chip in if anyone does a kickstarter.

(I'm not really arguing, ideas have value, I'm just rather tickled by that idea.)

Re: Nobody’s going to steal your idea

#45

Post by npsimons »

TomGullen wrote: post #21

I don't agree. Mainly because I don't agree with the premise that ideas are worthless - something that is echoed around all the time. Ideas being worthless is the lazy and easy way to explain to someone why they should get feedback on their idea. The reality is ideas do have value. We've got a great idea for a new product, and we're not telling anyone about it. That's because our idea has value and we don't want anyo…

Mainly because I don't agree with the premise that ideas are worthless - something that is echoed around all the time.

Really? If there's anything the current IP litigious climate signals to me, it's that people are far overvaluing ideas. Sure, ideas aren't worthless - but they are useless without hard work and luck (what some people like to call "execution"). Ideas are a dime a dozen; good ideas are probably worth about $1.50. But ideas + execution? Now there's the real value proposition.

Re: Nobody’s going to steal your idea

#46

Post by debacle »

wpietri wrote: post #43
hemancuso wrote: post #15

An obvious counterexample is sittercity/care.com "On July 20, 2006, Sheila Marcelo and Nick Beim flew from Boston to Chicago to visit a company called Sittercity. The business, which charged parents to access an online database of sitters and nannies, had been launched in Boston five years earlier. “We took the meeting to talk about an investment,’’ says Genevieve Thiers, the Boston College alumnae who founded Sitter…

Is that a counterexample? Suppose they hadn't taken the meeting. What would have prevented Marcelo from starting Care.com? As far as I can tell, nothing. Sittercity had been operating for 5 years in public view. Obvious idea, proven market, easy to find Sittercity users to interview. (However, bringing an EIR to an investment meeting strikes me as incredibly dubious.)

You don't know it's a proven market until you sit down with a potential fundee and talk financials.

Re: Nobody’s going to steal your idea

#47

Post by patrickg »

First of all, one cannot 'steal' your idea. You still have it...

Actually I have taken an idea from the company I was working at. They kicked me out and I started my own company developing a very similar software, but I believe it is more successful, not because of technical superiority or so, but more due to customer empathy. Most people love to work with me, because I deliver quality and on time, in contrast to my former company. So I have a slightly bad feeling, but a) hey, they kicked me out and b) I treat customers much better than they did.

Re: Nobody’s going to steal your idea

#48

Post by ChuckMcM »

wpietri wrote: post #43
hemancuso wrote: post #15

An obvious counterexample is sittercity/care.com "On July 20, 2006, Sheila Marcelo and Nick Beim flew from Boston to Chicago to visit a company called Sittercity. The business, which charged parents to access an online database of sitters and nannies, had been launched in Boston five years earlier. “We took the meeting to talk about an investment,’’ says Genevieve Thiers, the Boston College alumnae who founded Sitter…

Is that a counterexample? Suppose they hadn't taken the meeting. What would have prevented Marcelo from starting Care.com? As far as I can tell, nothing. Sittercity had been operating for 5 years in public view. Obvious idea, proven market, easy to find Sittercity users to interview. (However, bringing an EIR to an investment meeting strikes me as incredibly dubious.)

Completely agree here, this is not a counter example of 'stealing' an idea but one of 'executing' on an idea.

And not surprisingly this is what folks worry about, that someone with more resources than them will hear about their idea and be able to execute on it before they get off the ground. That would be true, if the person who had the resources didn't have anything else to do, but as a rule that is very rare, people with the ability to execute and resources do.

The care.com example is an example of an entirely different situation. That situation is that a business concept is proven out but doesn't have the capital to scale and the owners aren't doing the scaling. There are a number of folks who look for this type of business and build it in a different market. There was even a story linked here about a German company that did this. Much less risk since the idea is already 'proven'.

But if nobody is doing your idea, many people will think it won't work because if it did then someone else would already be doing it, so they won't 'steal' it because obviously its not a viable idea :-)

Re: Nobody’s going to steal your idea

#49

Post by wpietri »

TomGullen wrote: post #21

I don't agree. Mainly because I don't agree with the premise that ideas are worthless - something that is echoed around all the time. Ideas being worthless is the lazy and easy way to explain to someone why they should get feedback on their idea. The reality is ideas do have value. We've got a great idea for a new product, and we're not telling anyone about it. That's because our idea has value and we don't want anyo…

I am not buying your idea valuation logic. "Worthless" means lacking significant positive value.

If business ideas had significant value, you'd see people buying them. They don't, though. They might by a proven opportunity, or they might buy knowledge. But ideas on their own? As unsaleable as used chewing gum.

I really don't believe people should worry about business ideas being stolen. If your idea is so simple that J. Random Hustler can steal it from a description, a) the idea's probably too simple to matter, and b) many other people will have thought of it.

To successfully execute on a startup idea, you need solid knowledge of the domain, and the ability to keep having great ideas. There is a ton of iteration before product/market fit, and I think copycats just don't have the depth to successfully iterate there.

Re: Nobody’s going to steal your idea

#50

Post by davidkatz »

unreal37 wrote: post #39
hemancuso wrote: post #15

An obvious counterexample is sittercity/care.com "On July 20, 2006, Sheila Marcelo and Nick Beim flew from Boston to Chicago to visit a company called Sittercity. The business, which charged parents to access an online database of sitters and nannies, had been launched in Boston five years earlier. “We took the meeting to talk about an investment,’’ says Genevieve Thiers, the Boston College alumnae who founded Sitter…

Heck, go back to when Steve Jobs visited the Xerox PARC labs in late 1979 and saw the mouse and windows-computing for the first time.[1] Not that PARC was doing anything commercial with it, but those ideas definitely got incorporated into Apple's products. Jobs goes to PARC on a Thursday, and on Friday afternoon he is ordering one of his people to create a mouse for him. Now Xerox had invested in Apple and Apple got…

Perhaps it's interesting to think about what the actual 'idea' here was. Did Xerox ever have the understanding that using mouse-windows computing would usher in a new era of computing? If not, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the real idea here was Jobs', and that it was built in part with building blocks created at Xerox, which is true for most progress - it's always built on previous progress by 3rd parties.
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