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Nobody’s going to steal your idea

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Re: Nobody’s going to steal your idea

#51

Post by wpietri »

debacle wrote: post #46
wpietri wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's not true. If the business has been running 5 years, that tells you quite a bit. You can mine all sorts of activity information from the site, and you can get more through user interviews.

Moreover, startup investors are completely happy to invest based on estimations of total available market. It's pretty easy math to look at the number of kids, the average cost of sitters and nannies, and typical consumption of caregiving services. If you can also say, "And these guys have been running for 5 years despite [flaws A-M]," that's just gravy, even if you don't know any of their internal numbers.

Re: Nobody’s going to steal your idea

#52

Post by IgorPartola »

esperluette wrote: post #38

I actually did have someone steal my idea. I was interviewing for a technical co-founder and talked to a guy who seemed really interested. However, after a couple of conversations I got a weird vibe from him and went with someone else. (Oh, and I had $1M in funding at this point, & I was looking for a full partner, not someone to "just build my idea.") A few months later I find that he has started a similar company,…

So you agree with the OP that there is no danger in sharing your ideas before you have traction, etc.?

Also, I have seen plenty of posts talking about these types of situations and the person, just like you did, never explains their business or provides a link to it. I would be curious to see what the actual idea was to better understand your situation.

Re: Nobody’s going to steal your idea

#53

Post by robomartin »

This is pure nonsense. Please, please, please stop talking about ideas. What people steal --and the only thing with huge value-- are MARKET OPPORTUNITIES. Ideas are easy to generate. Everyone has loads of them. When an idea is combined with the work necessary to identify if a market opportunity exists it can become invaluable.

Ideas are not stolen because an idea, all by itself, does not identify whether or not anyone wants the thing or the service. If I told you that I had an idea to make a dish-washing sponge in the shape of a smiley face you, more than likely, would walk away laughing. So would I if someone came to me with that idea. How would you react if I actually manufactured them, sold a bunch and showed you that people want them? Right. You'd pay attention. You wouldn't laugh. And you certainly wouldn't walk away. Well, I saw exactly that happen at the Shark Tank show recently. I think the guy got a $300K investment.

$300K for the idea for a friggin smiley-face sponge? Nope. $300K for the market opportunity he uncovered.

If you present someone with an idea and that idea is so good that it identifies the market opportunity without further work, well, it might get stolen. With most other ideas they'll listen and nod and possibly even think you are a moron and completely forget what you told them.

If, on the other hand, you show them an idea coupled with your work confirming that a good scalable market exists, hold on! The market opportunity will either be stolen or you'll have someone all over you wanting to become an investor or participate in some manner in the opportunity you identified.

Re: Nobody’s going to steal your idea

#54

Post by daliusd »

paulhauggis wrote: post #16

The problem is that there are companies and people with way more resources than you out there. They could take your idea and execute it faster and maybe even better than you. Look at Zynga: They continue to rip-off smaller developers because they have a much bigger pool of resources.

There are ideas that big companies will never execute - because throwing 5000-20000$ per month might be simply not worth that.

Recommended reading: The Bootstrapper's Bibles

Re: Nobody’s going to steal your idea

#55

Post by jseims »

If you're just at the "idea stage", then no one is going to steal your idea.

If you've progressed further and have some traction, some lessons learned in customer acquisition channels, etc., then you should be cautious about what you share because your information has real value.

Re: Nobody’s going to steal your idea

#56

Post by wpietri »

esperluette wrote: post #38

I actually did have someone steal my idea. I was interviewing for a technical co-founder and talked to a guy who seemed really interested. However, after a couple of conversations I got a weird vibe from him and went with someone else. (Oh, and I had $1M in funding at this point, & I was looking for a full partner, not someone to "just build my idea.") A few months later I find that he has started a similar company,…

Great example! Thanks for talking so frankly about your experience.

I think of that guy as the business equivalent of the "I could code that in a weekend" scoffers. A novice looks at something like Quora or AirBnB or Etsy, imagines the database tables, and says, "That's easy!"

In reality, they just have failed to appreciate all the subtleties that make the product work. It's the same sort of mindset that looks at a beautiful woman and says, "An inflatable vinyl blow-up doll is basically as good!"

Re: Nobody’s going to steal your idea

#57

Post by grayc »

davidkatz wrote: post #50
unreal37 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pa…

From what I can remember of the Steve Jobs biography (and assuming it's accurate) yes, many people at Xerox understood that they had developed something revolutionary.

Re: Nobody’s going to steal your idea

#58

Post by mrharrison »

There is definitely a great divide on whether to keep an idea secret or not. Locations and the social circles you are apart of matter quite a bit; I live in SF and work in PA and I'm surrounded by very capable people. I have had ideas stolen that I was in mid process of building, particularly by an EIR's (entrepreneur in residence) who had better resources than I and were able to execute much faster. And it turned out to be a success in the app store.
For those who say its ridiculous to keep things secret--I think they aren't surrounded by very capable people who are willing to do anything to be successful. Apple, (a pretty successful company), is highly known for keeping their ideas secret. You know why? Because they have burned in the past, just like I have and others around me. Product test as secretly as you can, build a capable product, not an MVP, and hit the market hard!

Re: Nobody’s going to steal your idea

#59

Post by wpietri »

paulhauggis wrote: post #16

The problem is that there are companies and people with way more resources than you out there. They could take your idea and execute it faster and maybe even better than you. Look at Zynga: They continue to rip-off smaller developers because they have a much bigger pool of resources.

Does Zynga rip off ideas? I thought they ripped off finished games with proven profit potential. And then used their superior marketing power.

Gaming strikes me as one of those areas where it's most clear that ideas are worthless. Gaming is all about the experience. Which, from the creator side, means it's all about the execution. There are so many popular and fun games that aren't particularly novel ideas. And novel ideas aren't enough to carry a game that is otherwise meh.

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