Re. No NDAs: What Should Idea People Do?

An idea on its own is worth little, the key is execution. Any reasonably intelegent person can teach themselves enough code to at least make a demo or mockup. If you think about it the original Twitter demo could have been made from a Wordpress blog by limiting the number of characters in a post to 140, making a theme and alowing users to post. If you can't commit to even building a basic demo how are you going to be useful when the really hard stuff starts? You can't expect to only do what you're good at, there is a certain amount of personal growth that needs to take place along the way.

I'm a pretty big believer in the idea the ideas are emergent phenomena. On creative days, I can average an idea a minute. Most of these are things I've heard already and forgotten (except some small part in the back of my head) or combinations of 2 or 3 comments/blogs or papers or whatever I've read here or elsewhere. Also most of them are crap. An even higher portion of the "original" ones are crap. But the ones that make it through my internal filter are usually not full ideas in themself, no matter how excited I am about them. (and again, most of those are crap too)

I suspect a lot of people work this way, based on conversations etc. Some people just don't realize it. A lot more ideas have already been done/started by someone.

What does this mean to me? It means that a lot of the new things are logical, or semi logical progressions (or at least natural extensions via human thought).

As I see more of this, I've started tracking how bits of thought and idea float through groups/networks of people[1]. I've decided that the basic notion of "my idea" is broken. In my experience ideas are usually the result of bouncing thoughts through a pile of distributed human nodes, getting filtered/modified/improved, until finally someone has "a flash of brilliance". Then finally a good idea emerges.

So I don't worry about people stealing my ideas. They probably aren't mine. The are ours (for a pretty large our). Instead I've decided that unless I am prepared to execute, and can gather the team to do so, the best course of action is to keep my thoughts streaming through the network. They will grow and build, and may help others get to execution of something awesome.

When I do plan to execute, then I will be a bit more careful about talking and spreading the thought, but I still find that until something solid is being produced, an NDA (or social implicit version thereof) really isn't needed. Everyone that can execute is probably already executing their own ideas and doesn't have time/energy to "take" it from you. There are more ideas than doers. (corollary: those who will try to steal probably can't execute...)

Finally, since there are more ideas than doers, even if your idea is taken, there is another one coming down the pipe tomorrow :)

[1] This is an interesting game. It is very hard to figure out how to formalize (probably because I don't care that much) but for example I've tossed some thought out in meetings, then seen it appear later in a another meeting in better/different form a week or two later, no attribution, but thats ok, its just experiment. Similarly, in college when I bartended (and thus was a member of a small core network of college-town bartenders with lots of links to the rest of the campus) I would play the 'rumor game'. I would randomly mention stuff (true or not) about me near known gossips, just to see how it would bounce around the network and see what came back. Highly amusing, and very informative in relation to this too.

Over time, I've come to think of the 'huge idea, but I can't protect it or deliver on it' as a 'not huge idea'.

As entrepreneurs, we (at least I) are constantly coming up with and assessing new business ideas, strategic spins, etc.

This is just one more metric that a bit of wisdom teaches us to apply to our ideas. It is hard, very hard, for people who aren't used to the ideate-evaluate-rubbish-bin cycle, though.

How many thousands of business ideas have I gone through for the launch of the 10-ish businesses I've actually launched? Quite a lot. Even with all that weeding out and continually increasing experience (sigh), it's still a long slog. I constantly have 'great' ideas that on application of my own rules and the wisdom gleaned over the years turn out to be 'meh' to 'really bad idea, avoid!!'

In our line of work, anything that needs an NDA and could only be delivered by a large player, and the only thing stopping them is that they haven't thought of it yet is emphatically not worth pursuing.

If you have that much depth of knowledge, then I think the idea is going to have similar depth. In which case you come up with a short summary that doesn't give away any of the key insights.

But even if you're generous with information, the idea probably isn't at that much risk. The idea would have to end up in the hands of somebody who not only could out-execute you, but also has the time and interest to do so, is smart enough to recognize the value of your idea, and isn't already attached to some idea of their own.

I probably shouldn't mention it so publicly, but once you've built a profitable product, you are allowed to stab one of these "offer you half" business majors per year. You will shortly receive a handy wallet-sized card with the number to call for body disposal.

Remember: use your quota wisely. There are a lot of idiots out there.