

Ask HN: Who do you trust when it comes to sharing your ideas? - mohsen

When you come up with that idea that YOU think is great, do you take a deep breath and keep the secret in?  Or do you have a few people to share it with?  Who are the people that you can trust with your ideas?
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tjarratt
I have no qualms with sharing my ideas with anyone that will listen. I find
that I solve problems I'm struggling with, and develop new ideas when I force
myself to explain concepts and ideas to people, technical or otherwise.

Ideas are to be shared. Good, quality code (with an appropriate license for
attribution) should be shared as well.

You might ask where I draw the line? I draw the line at whole applications (I
would never give someone the entire source to a webapp I charged money for),
or physical goods that I need/use (servers, hardware, etc).

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lem72
I was just asked this by my girl friend the other night, as I was telling her
I am taking part in the Hackernews November App launch Challenge thing.

I had put on the facebook page my idea and explained that I am doing it to
learn how to program myself, as my day job is creating the best customer
service in the world, and has never really touched on writing code myself.

I was nervous about sharing my idea because of the fact that anyone who has
been learning to program for more than 5 days (I am on day 4) has a huge head
start on me and could launch the idea way quicker than I could.

However, What I got back from the community was more encouragement and
enthusiasm. And I even was politely asked by one of the guys if I wanted to
partner up on the idea as he seemed to really like it, instead of him just
taking it for his own.. as he is studying comp science in university i think.

This being said, I am a huge advocate on the fact that every idea has been
thought of before and people are going to make the product whether I tell them
or not.

So in conclusion, I think telling anyone who will listen about your idea is
the right move. You don't have to tell every detail of course, but the
feedback, encouragement and opinions of the people who would listen to me have
been a big help in this project for me.

~~~
bobf
Do you work for Zappos, or somewhere else that decided to "steal their idea"?
( _Creating the best customer service in the world_ )

~~~
lem72
Our CS has been compared to Zappos by a lot of people, but no we are not
Zappos. We focus on email support right now and I think we are better than
them so far at email :)

That being said, I really look up to them and hope to keep improving and
becoming the best :)

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answerly
I try to share with anyone that will listen. My ideas tend to improve when I
am forced to verbalize them. Also, getting external feedback at the earliest
stages is really valuable to me.

~~~
mohsen
Thank you!

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edge17
Some people worry people are going to steal their ideas. In reality, most
people are far too lazy to do anything.

The only reason I've ever been 'stealth' with an idea wasn't because I didn't
want to share the idea; it was only because I didn't want to talk up an idea
that I only ended up taking half-way.

And I agree with everyone here; almost more important than the idea is your
ability to explain it - your pitch. The best ones are natural and
conversational, and that takes telling and retelling. The only secrets I keep
are the confidences of other people that share their ideas with me in private.
Besides, you telling someone else your idea is a datapoint for yourself in
regard to your own enthusiasm for the idea.

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bobds
I'm quite open with ideas. I don't think they are worth much. I'll share them
with IRL friends, people I work with, online friends, strangers on
IRC/forums/etc.

I'll even email a company, tell them I have this idea for X (that relates with
Y which they already have) and ask them if they'd like to hire me to help them
build X. Sometimes that will get you a nice contract job. Most of the time it
will fall on deaf ears. I haven't had an idea stolen yet this way.

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symkat
I typically run my ideas through a few friends on IRC first. They'll play
devil's advocate on my ideas. If I still like it I'll draw up a little spec or
general overview, and then I'll share it with some co-workers and best
friends. Depending on how excited I am at this point and how much work there
is to do, it might get done or it might be in my queue of things to look at
later.

I have a lot of stuff marked "Later".

With regard to someone stealing the idea, I don't really worry about it. I
regularly give ideas I've had away, especially if I think I'll never make
them.

A few years ago a friend and I were at a restaurant and there guys were trying
to figure out something to build on the iPhone, my friend and I had just come
back from an amusement park in southern California and I suggested a custom
map of amusement parks that has points of interest for all the restaurants and
rides and gets you there within the boundaries of the pathways in the park. I
had the idea earlier that day, but I would never build it myself, so to me it
was fairly useless.

~~~
mohsen
I have a lot of stuff marked "Later". The sad story of my life... But why
wouldn't you make that app? Didn't it seem like a great idea at the time?

~~~
symkat
Mainly because of the amount of time I would have had to devote to it, and the
amount of things I would have had to learn. It was an idea of "That would be
cool to have." It wasn't a project I would be passionate about. I go to
amusement parks about once every other year.

I'd have to have been in the park a lot to map out points where you could
walk, write the algorithms for navigating the park from any random point of
interest to any other random point of interest in a reasonably efficient way
while following the boundaries of the pathways. I'd have to have kept the app
updated when anything changed at the park, including things like "For two
weeks, this one path is blocked off because construction is happening" which
happens fairly regularly at Knott's Berry Farm.

Although those are all challenges I could have overcome given the time and
resources, it wasn't something I would be very passionate about and it would
die out as a result.

I've had a lot of reasonably good ideas, and some of them have worked out
rather well in the past. Most of them I don't pursue more than as an idle
thought. Those I choose to work on I do as a result of how much fun they will
be, how passionately I feel about what I'm building, and how challenging I
think it will be. A few weeks ago How I Met Your Mother inspired the idea for
<http://www.notanewyorker.com/> and that was something I said, "I'll build it
tonight, I have nothing better to do." It's a cute little website, and the
biggest motivating factor was I thought it would be funny, and using Python on
Google AppEngine would be interesting because I've not used it to build
anything like that. I found I hate Google AppEngine now though.

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devmonk
I usually share the idea with my wife, my best friends, and former co-workers
that are friends. It is better to get feedback early.

~~~
mohsen
ever worry about someone just taking your idea?

~~~
kingsidharth
No use. I'd rather worry about executing it - and telling lots of people puts
me into a place where I "must" execute (or fear someone else doing it, as you
said) or let it go.

Works well, saves time.

~~~
mohsen
wouldn't that cause unnecessary pressure?

~~~
kingsidharth
Nope People don't have time for your ideas. They have their own to worry
about. Instead they keep asking you about it - that kind inspires me :P

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codecabin
If you want to share your app ideas with the world and see what everyone
thinks, you can post them on App Garden
(<http://appgarden.ambitiouslemon.com>). I launched it just yesterday. There
are more details about it in this blog post: <http://bit.ly/cdjlV1>

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kingsidharth
I share my ideas on my blog, twitter, co-workers. Trust them with my ideas? I
don't believe they are mind - I believe I just happen to rendezvous with them
and so could anyone else.

Ideas don't matter. Execution does.

~~~
mohsen
I believe that location, interest, and sometimes a random event bring up
ideas. I can't believe that 'anyone' can have my very idea. By that I mean,
that sure, for every idea i have, someone else may have that very idea, but
not everyone does. Agree?

~~~
kingsidharth
yip

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rafamarques
I'd like to say lifetime friends, but I'm not sure about them either

