

Ask HN: How do you hire a freelancer without fear they'll steal your idea? - uptown

I've begun to find myself in a place where I have more ideas than time to execute each one of them.  And while I have an idea of which ideas may be more successful than others, I'd like to hire some freelancers to take on the projects that are smaller and stand-alone in nature (browser extensions, iphone apps, etc.).  Furthermore, some of these ideas involve technologies that I'm not up to speed on ... so hiring somebody else to do the development would allow me to bring my product to market faster and determine whether it has legs.<p>My question is this ... How do you go about hiring a freelancer to build these types of things without the fear that they'll take the idea and run?  Obviously, a legal agreement could be put in place as one means of protection, but I belong to the camp of people who believe that once lawyers get involved, nobody ever really wins except the lawyers.<p>What's the best approach to hiring somebody to take on this type of work?
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TallGuyShort
>> once lawyers get involved, nobody ever really wins except the lawyers.

Once you can't trust the people you're hiring, you can't win anyway.

My recommendation would still be the legal agreement, although I do agree with
you that only the lawyers win. At the very least it should act as a deterrent
- at least the freelancer can't win, so why bother stealing the idea? Just
make sure that you verify their real identity and some information first,
otherwise you have no way to enforce a contract.

