

"My new product idea will be stolen" - and a cure - ppolsinelli
http://pietro.open-lab.com/2010/11/30/my-new-product-idea-will-be-stolen-and-a-cure/

======
smoody
I once had an "potential investor" come in to see my top-secret project (I was
much more paranoid in those days). She loved it and called me back two days
later and asked to meet with me for breakfast. When I arrived, she was wearing
a transparent shirt and no undergarments, which freaked me out a bit (not
relavent to story, but weird nonetheless). Instead of discussing money, she
told me, flat out, that unless I hire her to be the president of my company,
she will put me out of business. She claimed to have six people from Sun's
Java team ready to start copying my software. She said she'd go to the Demo
conference that year (where I was going to be presenting on-stage) and would
badmouth me to everyone in the audience to insure that no-one would talk to me
about financing at the conference. Then she stopped and waited for my answer.
I thought about it (<500ms) and told her that I would not be hiring her. She
basically told me I should should shut down my company because she was going
to make it her job to ruin us starting that afternoon. Well, needless to say,
even with complete insight as to what I was doing, a (supposed) team of
engineers on tap, and a plan to ruin me, she never shipped a product. But I
wish she had because we ended-up "pivoting" a few months later and it was the
pivoted product that took us to the finish line.

Generally, copying won't happen until something has momentum in the
marketplace. If, for example, I heard about Groupon before it launched, I
would have reacted by saying "How are you going to get a lot of local
companies to participate? Are you going to hire a team of door-to-door
salespeople? It just can't scale." And I, of course, would have been wrong.

As far as bookmarking+todo lists goes, I was prototyping that idea a few years
ago, but scrapped it because I didn't see it getting the kind of traction
needed to be successful (at that time). Perhaps I will be proven wrong again!

~~~
ppolsinelli
"copying won't happen until something has momentum in the marketplace":
interesting point. Thanks!

------
wccrawford
The cure to prevent people from stealing your idea before you ship... is to
ship? Really?

I certainly hope he's not saying that shipping a product will prevent people
from stealing them afterwards. Because it absolutely will not. We even had a
post on here from a guy that said his success was mainly from NOT having his
own ideas. He'd see something new and good and do the same, but better. And it
worked really well for him.

These vapid posts are a waste of time.

~~~
corp
I don't think he is saying that shipping a product will prevent others from
copying... what he's saying is that shipping is the cure to overcome the fear
of having others copying your idea.

Once you ship, it doesn't matter if others want to copy you, because you are
already out there... there is nothing else to fear. It's your chance to
execute faster and better than the others who were already there and the ones
that join in (new competitors).

