
So someone "stole" your idea - kentf
http://kent.io/post/72627254258/the-well-of-lost-ideas?ref=hn
======
jmcqk6
This is a pet peeve of mine. When someone talks about having their idea
stolen, it really bothers me. It especially bothers me if they tell me "now
don't steal my idea, but..."

I don't want your idea. I have too many of my own. Here, take some of mine.
Most likely, I'll think your idea is shit anyway, because almost all ideas are
shit when they are just an idea. For an idea to have value it needs to be
backed by something tangible. As the article says, ideas are a dime a dozen.
Execution is where the [value] lies.

~~~
tobyjsullivan
I seem to get a new great idea every time I drink a beer. That's what I want
to tell friends every time they come to me with a "great idea" I should
implement (as business partners, of course).

That said, I still love hearing people's ideas. Just don't expect me to act on
it.

~~~
junto
I need a new side project. Can you give me 5 of your best ideas that you don't
want to use? :-)

~~~
ezl
@ 1. Craigslist style email obfuscation as a service.

problem: i have a marketplace type website where my users would like to be
contacted but not have their emails be made public.

how it works: i set a subdomain of my site, mail.mysite.com to an ip address
you designate. on demand, i make an api call to your service
(emailobfuscationasaservice.com) with

    
    
        {
        real_address:foo@bar.com,
        expiration_timestamp:2014-01-20T00:00:00.000Z,
        obfuscate_replies: true / false,
        callback_url: (optional)
        }
    

emailobfuscationasaservice.com responds with either a success message and an
anonymized, temporary email address like 239fag72wa@mail.mysite.com (the
subdomain i gave you) or an error message like "no such user at that domain"
or "domain doesn't exist" or something.

the email address lives until the expiration timestamp. if the obfuscated
email receives a message, you forward it to the "real_address".

if "obfuscate_replies" was set to true at email creation time, then if the
person responds, you play middleman for both parties and force all their
emails to go through you (basically you create another obscured email for
person who writes _to_ the obscured email).

if "callback_url" was set, that means that I, the operator of mysite.com, want
to be notified of activity at the obscured email address, so you POST activity
to the specified url. that lets me do things like update activity feeds in my
app for the user.

If you build this, I will pay for it.

@ 2. support page as a service.

copy these: [http://supportdetails.com/](http://supportdetails.com/)
[http://www.browser-details.com/](http://www.browser-details.com/)

Sell more aggressively.

@ 3. Basecamp for travel planning (I imagine this already exists).

I am on a trip with some friends right now. We have ideas for stuff we want to
do but its all poorly organized in email and google spreadsheets. Basically
the things we want to do are: tourist sites, activities, food.

A cool app would let us create a group like in basecamp, state our
destination, then let us start typing things in we want to do. those get
matched to existing review sites or links that contain information about them
and put on a map.

in an unfamiliar place this is useful because it lets me group items/events
geographically and plan my trip better. it would let people plan an itinerary
together, asyncronously and make comments on possible activities for the
group.

(other smart features: places to stay, modes of transportation, notes like
"don't forget to get your visa by date XXX").

Basically a crud app. how to monetize? no idea. affiliate commissions on
airbnb, event tickets, etc? i want it, wouldn't build it. the backend isn't
hard, getting the UI right would be a challenge.

~~~
teleclimber
Regarding 1., I actually had an idea for a complete communication suite
(email, voice, texting) but anonimized.

The realization came when I was exchanging contact info with a stranger on CL
who was selling an iPhone.Why was this person now privy to my G+ profile? my
phone number? etc...

The service would create "channels", each with a temporary telephone number
(that works with texting) and an email. You use these to communicate with the
seller/buyer/whatever and when you're done you disable the channel.

To communicate you would download an app to your phone that allows you to view
messages and reply, or even place calls __.

Anyways I didn't build it because I wasn't passionate enough about the idea,
and I figured it would mostly be used for nefarious purposes. Also, there are
some legal implications if somebody becomes the victim of a crime while
meeting someone using my anonimized communication service.

 __Implementation of this technical problem left as an exercise for the person
who "steals" this idea.

------
onion2k
The complaint that "someone stole my idea" assumes that ideas are unique to
the person who has them first. They're not - most ideas are a more or less
obvious evolution of an existing product, and many people come up the same
things completely independent of each other.

Most of the time the complaint is really "someone implemented the thing I
wasn't ever going to get around to doing and now I'm jealous."

~~~
snarfy
The idea exists outside of your knowledge of it. It is not something you own,
therefore cannot be stolen from you. You can own a table, but the idea of a
table, something flat with legs that stuff can be placed on, exists without
you. This is an old idea, going back to Plato.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Forms](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Forms)

~~~
sliverstorm
If we take the phrase _my idea was stolen!_ literally, then yes, yours is the
conclusion we would reach. But the sentiment behind the phrase is more like,
the other player cheated by cribbing off your notes; they did not have to
invest the labor/time/money you did, and that isn't fair.

------
sergiotapia
Or there are cases when ideas are actually stolen. :P

My brother and I created a very popular website a couple of years ago called
Oracle of Legends. It was a League of Legends fansite with a LOT of features
that are now copied elsewhere.

[https://web.archive.org/web/20120509003942/http://www.oracle...](https://web.archive.org/web/20120509003942/http://www.oracleoflegends.com/)

Loking.net didn't have the skin viewer it now has. They saw our skin viewer
(granted it wasn't "ours") and built one themselves.

Ultimately a large team funded by ZAM Network's limitless supply of money won
over two guys in South America with limited time and money.

My brother and I are now a powerhouse though, and we're building a new website
for a new game we enjoy playing. THIS time, I don't care if the competition
has more money, we'll win through sheer excellence and localization (something
large websites from ZAM don't have).

It was a great experience for me and it landed me a lot of contracting work.
:)

~~~
ivanca
We should probably talk, contact me at ivanca[at]gmail, I'm a Colombian
developer living in the bay area (California) who is also passionate about
videogames.

~~~
beachstartup
obfuscating your email is useless. spam harvesters know all the common
methods. just put your email in your profile if you don't want it showing up
in threads.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expression](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expression)

also, security through obscurity is also a flawed concept to begin with. your
obfuscation efforts do absolutely zilch compared to google's gmail team and
their spam detection techniques.

~~~
frogpelt
But, he didn't put .com. How can they possibly deal with that anomaly?

Seriously, I've wondered what people think they are accomplishing when they
write a phone number like 2five5-3seven6-2one1four on a craigslist ad. Bots
are going to find it just as easily and humans can read it.

------
burpee
To be perfectly honest, people can steal your idea.

Case in point, back before we launched our first startup, I went out to a
trade-fair asking people their opinion about our conceptual product as if it
was something we had already built.

I must have talked to maybe 50+ people that one specific day, but one person
in particular was very interested in it and wanted to keep in touch.

A bunch of years later, that guy turns out to have been part of another
company, in a similar field, with a bigger network, a bigger budget and an
existing infrastructure that matched. Over these past years, they've changed
their entire company to align with our startup's little idea and actually
managed to capture a significant part of the market by launching
simultaneously to us rather than following our lead.

The point is, don't ever assume that your neighbor who is an accountant will
steel your mobile app idea.

On the other hand, when you are talking to the CEO of a company that is
developing mobile experiences about your awesome idea, then don't be surprised
if suddenly that company suddenly _does_ take your idea and execute it better
than you ever could have.

When you are trying to gain _actual_ "first mover advantage", there are
situations where it's not a good idea to tell your idea.

------
taude
Counter point (thought not arguing against what the actual article content
contained, which "was we tried that idea years ago, but failed").

I've been contacted by investors before to look at business plans/technology.
They didn't like the founders/team, or thought the idea was really good, but
missing a couple things, or they had a different direction they'd run it in.
So idea theft does happen. Those with money, power and contacts with the
ability to execute DO take ideas and run with them on their own.

The investors were inspired by the startup/founder idea....and then they go
execute without original team, assembling their own crack team of pros to
execute.

I'm not surprised we don't talk about this sort of thing around here more
often. It's a gigantic, dirty pile of laundry no one wants to touch. No one in
their right mind would defend the practice. The people doing it will deny it.
Those who have suffered from it are often publicaly shamed for suggesting such
(see a lot of the general attitudes of the comments in this thread).

It makes sense that this practice is more prevalent than people wish to think.
Maybe one factor that explains so many "me-too" startups?

Edit: Maybe I could call this phenomenon "Idea inspiration."

~~~
grannyg00se
"They didn't like the founders/team, or thought the idea was really good, but
missing a couple things, or they had a different direction they'd run it in.
So idea theft does happen. "

My two cents:

You can't steal what isn't owned. If you think my idea is really good and then
you act on it, you haven't stolen anything from me. I never owned that idea
because ideas can't be owned. What if someone else three thousand miles away
has the same idea? Do we both _own_ it? Did you steal it from both of us?

On the other hand if, in your scenario, there was an established business
plan, and other proprietary details that were taken, that's theft.

I guess it comes down to the details.

~~~
taude
There's a line somewhere, just not sure where it is...

------
mpeg
There is a Japanese animation from 2009 called Eden of the East, in which the
main character funds a software startup that has a product which is very
similar to that: take pictures on your phone and tap onto a network of users
to identify objects in the picture, while at the same time training its AI
capabilities based on the responses people give

I'm not really trying to make any particular point, it's a pretty clever
series that touches on japanese social issues though. And I guess I'm agreeing
with the OP in that ideas can come from anywhere.

------
jelmerdejong
Something I noticed a while back: many people have the same idea at the same
time since the timing is just right and things come together.

A few years back I had the idea for Dashboardy (and still have to domain
name): a simple tool that just consumed multiple saas apps and their
statistics in one beautiful looking dashboard. No one could offer me that. I
did not built it, but a few months later Geckoboard and others where there and
deliver exactly what I was looking for at the time.

Earlier a few friends launched Avertize, a simple app to get overlays on your
Twitter picture: no one doing it when they started building it. But on the
other end of the world a day before our launch someone launched the exact same
app.

And more examples like this. People, completely unknowingly of each other have
the same idea at roughly the same time. Strange? No: the timing and trends are
right and the market is just asking for these things.

The uniqueness therefor is not in the idea. The win is in the execution.

~~~
mmahemoff
Exactly, even Leibniz and Newton had this argument in the 17th century, after
coming up with Calculus concepts independently.

There's a name for this phenomenon: "the adjacent possible". Covered in this
book -
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence:_The_Connected_Lives_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence:_The_Connected_Lives_of_Ants,_Brains,_Cities,_and_Software)

------
singold
It happened to me (more than once... ugh) that some "cool idea" gets
implemented by someone else.

I really never feel they "stole my idea", for me it is more like a validation
that my ideas don't suck that much :P

~~~
personlurking
Agreed, especially when it happens to you a dozen times in 5-7 years. I have
ideas that I've had to wait 2 years for them to be implemented (by others,
usually the big names) and I've had a few that took 6-7 years. Members of my
family have startups so I have a sense of what it takes to make it work
(operate), let alone make it successful. Part of the equation, though, is
implementing in the right environment and/or point in time, like the article
says.

------
lingoberry
What is an idea really? If it's a one-liner like "a social network for college
students" then sure, it's has little value. Give the same one-liner idea to
different people and the outcome will be completely different. But there is
more to an idea than that, the founder usually has a much more refined
understanding for how to make it work.

For example, today most techies have a fairly good understanding of why
Facebook took off, meaning we have as good or even better understanding than
Zuckerberg had when he started out. So with this understanding, would we be
able to recreate the success of Facebook if we were to rewind time? It would
be a lot more likely. So ideas in the sense that you have an understanding for
what to build and why, and how to make it work is far from worthless.

------
newsum
if someone stole your idea. it wasn't a good idea. not to say you couldn't
make you alot of money off of it, but really you came up with a predictable
idea any analytical or entrepreneurial individual would derive given the
context/problem. now it's a "lottery". who executes/implements the best
increases the odds of winning. that'a crapshoot (oversimplification
obviously...you get the point).

on the other-hand, truly good ideas are nearly irreproducible, because there
is a probably a very small chance someone will see the vision in your way.

ideas are art. decent art is reproducible. good art is not.

------
didgeoridoo
Seems a little premature to call Jelly "successful"...

~~~
npsimons
FTFA: "Time will tell."

------
mbrzuzy
A big part of the success of a project is the marketing and the names behind
it. Someone linked me to Jelly a few days ago and I brushed it off not
thinking it was that great of an idea. Then today I saw a post title "Twitter
Co-Founder Biz Stone Explains The Surprising Goal Of His New Company" and
thought, "oh Twitter Co-Founder? Maybe I should take a second look at this
app".

------
vcherubini
I wrote about this a while ago: [http://growingsoftware.org/how-little-your-
idea-matters/](http://growingsoftware.org/how-little-your-idea-matters/)

I even had a small MVP, but gave up on it. Gumroad came along and built a
great product. Your idea matters very little. And Gumroad didn't steal
anything.

~~~
kentf
Nice post! At least you built it! Did you learn something?

------
wise_young_man
My thought on this is that, I think up "my" idea so that way it benefits
people in some way and because I feel the market is not satisfying a need as
well as for my own use. So if someone else comes in and does it and I can use
it, I actually see that as a good thing as I would rather see software solve
problems than never exist.

One example I keep getting stuck on is a Craigslist competitor I've worked off
and on as a side project for the past 3 or so years. Every time I get
frustrated or stuck on some aspect I think of another way to get past it. I
still haven't seen anything really competitive emerge in the space that users
have wanted. If it isn't my idea that executes the vision and it is someone
else, I will still be happy that it happened at all as I think eBay/Craigslist
duopoly is not enough or sufficient for C2C/B2C local and shipping
transactions.

------
User8712
I hate the _you stole my idea_ logic, because it's insulting to the people
that actually succeeded. For example, let's take the Oculus Rift. VR headsets
have been around for a long time, and all sorts of companies have tried to
implement them and failed. New attempts show up on the radar all the time, and
disappear even quicker. If the Oculus Rift proves to be successful, you'll
have other companies complaining they stole the idea of VR, or your
grandmother is going to say she thought of VR when she was a child, and she'd
be a millionaire if it wasn't for the Oculus Rift stealing her thunder.

Meanwhile in reality, the idea is not what made the platform successful, but
the countless hours and minds invested in nailing the execution. As I said,
it's an insult to say otherwise.

------
ChuckMcM
I really appreciate the author's attitude, and I suppose it helps that it
aligns well with my philosophy of execution over ideation :-)

One of the things to keep in mind is that ideas are rarely successful in a
vacuum. That is to say that an idea that is an accelerent on other things
around it, is often more successful than a standalone idea. When an idea makes
other things 'better' people invested in those other parts of the system
encourage its adoption.

I often point people at comparisons of open hardware vs closed hardware. When
you have open hardware you get a bunch of different people who are invested in
it succeeding and that builds a stronger product base and a bigger area of
effect. People with proprietary hardware solutions just don't get the extra
lift.

------
grannyg00se
I'm not really concerned about my ideas. I'm concerned about someone taking
advantage of all my time and effort validating a potential market with an mvp,
then swooping in with a slight tweak and crushing me with a new viewpoint and
excellent, well funded execution.

I think that's just plain market competition :)

I'd like some way to say ..."hey...I'm going to try something out....I'd like
for nobody on the planet to compete for at least 5 years while I give it my
best. After that feel free, but in the meantime leave the potential market all
to me."

I think that's how some people expect to (ab)use the patent system to their
advantage.

------
chany2
I think its okay, isn't it the ultimate LITMUS TEST. If you instantly gave up
after you googled that the idea has be done or "stolen". Then you were never
passion enough to tackle it in the first place - in the first sign of
'competition'.

We are naturally go through this - and yes those people need to suck it up and
should be actually EXCITED their idea was implemented - and if you are truly
passionate about the idea, you should consider on joining the new team rather
than scorn them.

They brag about their idea was "stolen" because they just desire the riches
the successful implementation founders have received.

------
tluyben2
Someone showed me an online service yesterday which does location based
notifications and peddles it as an original idea. Now in the past 20 years,
and with growing frequency (due to smartphones), I have heard this idea
explained; I helped a company pitch it to investors in 1999. Yet still people
think this is a) original b) worth asking me to sign a NDA for.

A lot of people seem to 'steal' my ideas; the ones I executed and didn't
execute. Except they stole nothing nor did they necessarily get the idea from
me :) I'm not a big fan of 'ideas'. Execute them and work hard to make them
into a success.

------
guiomie
I usually forward this to people whose idea was "stolen" :

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDfVZgtl2zM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDfVZgtl2zM)

(The go daddy airplane ad)

------
at-fates-hands
Is there a difference between having your idea stolen and being to far ahead
of your time? It would seem OP inferred that was part of the problem:

"In 2009, Charoo and I built Viewpointr. It was ahead of its time and today,
Biz Stone and co, launched Jelly.co. They seem to have got it right… time will
tell."

Sometimes I guess you just have to wait until the market is ready for your
product? As opposed to arguing someone stole your idea?

~~~
sitkack
Timing is very very very (I could keep going) hard. Mostly it is luck, a few
very perceptive people can see all the network flows that need to come into
place for an idea to take hold in the collective consciousness.

If we operated on a different location in the economic parameter space we
would solve a problem, and if it didn't fit into the current graph, we would
shelve it only to reactivate it later when it could fit.

A dormant prototype can be a very powerful thing.

------
samsquire
Ideas cannot be stolen - it does not disappear once it has been appropriated.
Ideas can however be misattributed; ie, if someone takes credit for what they
knowingly did not invent. Ideas can be formulated independently. Some ideas
are so obvious you think you already had them (but this might just be
confirmation bias/memory bias.)

------
michalu
Years ago I heard so many people say they had an idea for Youtube before
Youtube ... and some of these people can't even code. It's my vice that I'm
not proud of, but whenever I heard it I felt like slapping that person.

~~~
jacquesm
I can do better than that, so feel free to slap me :) My partner Michael had a
working implementation for a youtube like service and we both agreed it would
be better to concentrate on our 'live' business because it was already making
money.

Oh well...

~~~
michalu
Well you had a working service that you actually built, I have respect for
that. Never-mind, you don't know how things would turn out in your case and
you built a business with revenue - that's awesome.

------
fudged71
How about this one: the CEO of the most popular desktop 3D printer company has
been on our waiting list for the first cloud printing software for four months
and they just released 3 products with that feature at CES

Stealth mode has its benefits...

------
RankingMember
I like the uppity conversational style of this one; it fits the subject matter
well.

~~~
kentf
thanks ;)

------
rohanpai
what if your idea is an algorithm that can take a photo of someone and tell
your their age? If you have a detailed understanding of how the algorithm will
work (and what won't) and you have proved it will work, someone can steal
that? Is that OK?

I agree with the "ideas are nothing without execution" but I feel like this
applies largely to the consumer web/apps field. There are a lot of other
'ideas' that have taken years (maybe even a lifetime) of research and work.

------
pmcpinto
Interesting post.

Speaking of Jelly, there is a similar idea:
[http://www.fluther.com/](http://www.fluther.com/), Biz Stone was one of the
advisors

------
btbuildem
My favourite reply to someone who's telling me all about what they're gonna
do: "Don't waste all the steam on the whistle"

------
pcrh
It seems very much like /r/whatisthisthing

~~~
sitkack
Just like every "sharing economy" app steals from craigslist, every "social"
app steals from reddit.

~~~
pcrh
"good artists borrow, great artists steal"

~~Picasso

~~~
sitkack
If I could steal a Picasso I would be set for life.

------
pbreit
Not the best example since there's approximately zero chance the jelly folks
heard of viewpointr. But agree with the sentiment.

~~~
johnpowell
And one of the Jelly guys started fluther.com in 2006. It is a Q&A site that
also has a jellyfish theme.

------
firman
If you have an Idea, there possibility one or more people in 7 billion people
live in the earth that may have same idea

------
kentf
Loving the discussion here. Sounds like everyone has the same opinion. Great
minds right..

------
augbot
Reminds me of the saying: "Ideas only work if you do.."

------
dclowd9901
Look out everyone, we've got a crazy and very original idea here!

I'm sorry for the overwrought sarcasm, but hasn't this been understood around
these parts for, what, years now? Why the hell is this blog post on the front
page?

------
etanazir
So the priest is worthless because you are warrior?

