

Re. No NDAs: What Should Idea People Do? - jplarson
http://blog.jpl-consulting.com/2012/04/re-no-ndas-what-should-idea-people-do/

======
damoncali
The "no NDA" thing is getting out of hand. NDA's have a time and a place. That
place is not when you're meeting someone to talk for the first time. Nobody
wants to increase their legal risk for a chance meeting, which will likely not
turn into anything interesting - especially contract developers, investors,
and the like (whose future business may be impacted by NDA's).

The answer is simple: state your idea in terms that don't require an NDA. When
the conversation gets more interesting ad it's time to divulge the secret
sauce, _then_ ask for an NDA. If you've done this right, even the more NDA-
averse among us will sign one. If you don't have secret sauce, you don't need
an NDA - it's that simple.

What is secret sauce? If you can just think it up, it's not secret sauce.
Secret sauce requires lots of tangible work. Innovative, _tested_ algorithm:
secret sauce. Financial resutls: secret sauce. Difficult to acquire dataset:
secret sauce. Unbuilt concept: not secret sauce.

The concept to understand here is that when you ask someone to sign an NDA,
you are asking them to give something to you. To make that work, you have to
give them something in return - hopefully a high confidence that you're not
wasting their time. Or money. _Something._

That said, the surest red flag of them all is a premature NDA ask. In my
experience it is literally a 100% indicator of someone who is not ready to be
talking to people about their ideas.

~~~
dhimes
Unique application of deep domain knowledge: secret sauce, or no?

~~~
damoncali
If it's just the combination of your personal experience and an idea, no. As
an investor, or developer, or competitor, it's still just an idea. You cannot
transfer your deep domain knowledge to me over coffee.

~~~
wpietri
Yes, definitely. If you're talking to an investor, they're not going to be
able to fully appreciate a deep domain insight anyhow. You tell them about
what they can appreciate: the size of the market, the cost of bringing your
product to market, and the problem you are solving for your future customers.

~~~
dhimes
The article implied it was a conversation with a business, rather than an
investor.

~~~
wpietri
In which case, you have a different limited conversation for the initial
meetings. There's even less need to tell a prospective developer about the
secret sauce.

------
sophacles
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.

~~~
davemel37
You should really read Napolean Hill's "Think and Grow Rich." Your comment was
written by him in the 1920's.

He discusses how there are two types of creativity, one comes from applying
your knowledge and experiences to other situations, and the other comes from
what he calls, "infinite knowledge" that is floating out there and can be
tapped into under the right circumstances.

~~~
sophacles
Thanks for the pointer!

------
wpietri
It's very rare that I see the "my idea alone is worth money" thing from people
who have built actual businesses.

I know that I would never pay for an idea alone. That's partly because it's
not like we have a dearth of them. If we didn't have a new idea for the next
year, that wouldn't be a problem; we have a giant backlog of excellent ideas.
But we'll keep having new ideas. We're constantly looking at user experience
and usage data, and ideas keep happening.

More than that, though, I don't think an idea from an inexperienced person
generally has a lot of merit. With a surface understanding, I think their
ideas can have only surface appeal. Once you get into the nitty-gritty of
implementation, you need a lot more depth than an amateur can provide.

Imagine somebody going to a well-known chef and saying, "Hey, I don't know how
to cook and I've never run a restaurant, but I go to them sometimes and I have
this great idea. You should pay me 10% forever!" The would-be genius knows
nothing about food costs or good staff or marketing or how to shmooze a
critic. Nothing about relative real estate costs or buildouts or decorating or
who to pay off to get a permit expedited. Nothing about balance sheets or
seasonality of demand or tax regulations. Nothing about nothing, basically,
except that they think it would be fun to go to a tiki bar/restaurant. They
would be lucky if the chef doesn't answer with knife in hand.

Having ideas is easy when you don't know anything.

~~~
dhimes
pretty much a copy of <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3868084>, but:

The case of having ideas when you don't know anything, I think we all agree,
is silly for having a "secret sauce." The more interesting discussion is what
to do when you have an idea and you know a helluva lot?

This is the case where I think you have to be careful. Yes, ideas without
execution aren't worth much- but if your executable idea lands in the hands of
somebody who can out-execute you, you are sunk unless you protect it. In fact,
you are probably sunk even if you do protect it, but at least you may have a
life raft.

~~~
wpietri
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.

~~~
ScottBurson
I think that last sentence deserves emphasis. There's a lot of "NIH syndrome"
("Not Invented Here") around -- and the deeper someone's domain knowledge, the
more likely they are to suffer from it.

------
jpwagner
Main takeaway should be this sentence:

"[In addition to the idea, bring to the table] something about how you are the
best person in the world to lead its execution"

Also love the reference to the Aiken quote in the comments: “Don’t worry about
people stealing an idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their
throats.”

~~~
BenoitEssiambre
Completely agree.

And I might add, even if you don't have any rare talent or skills and you feel
you have "just an idea", you might get my attention if you convince me that
you are truly motivated, that you will call people every month, clients and/or
potential partners in order to validate the product and find real world data
points that enable us to determine the direction the project should take or
when we should pivot.

I might be interested if I can trust you are willing to do the important
business and marketing work, the things that distract me from building and
improving the product, and convince me you will do it with as much passion and
dedication which I will put in designing, architecturing, engineering and
coding.

If you bring this to the table and you look like you have good common sense
and at least some curiosity about the technical side and technical constraints
we will be working within (maybe, for example, you are even willing to learn
to edit a few html files and check them in the repository, not to become the
html guy, just so you get a basic understanding of this aspect of _your_
business) , I might just be willing to give you 50% of the business, even more
in some cases!

------
jhspaybar
Great article. I have made some iPhone apps and websites that have been
moderately successful and it seems to pull all the "I have an idea" people out
of the woodwork. Maybe it's a result of still being younger and around
college, or just a bit older than college age people, but I can't even count
how many times an acquaintance has been generous enough to "offer me half" of
something of which they have no concept of the implementation of and expect me
to jump when they bring nothing to the table.

Sorry to say it, but to all the 25 year old business majors out there...unless
you have a big wad of cash or proven skills in another field you really don't
bring much to the table of a startup.

The only idea I ever jumped on was by a talented artist who could create all
sound and art assets for the game, and I accepted just as much to create a
relationship with the person in case I needed them in the future as I did for
their idea. In fact, the final game wasn't the idea they "pitched" me. We
changed it completely, but because they brought a talent it worked out great!

~~~
wpietri
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.

------
bdfh42
Spot on reply to the question.

If the person with a great idea has something (very) substantial to offer a
project based upon it then they are clearly a key component of the idea
execution and should not fear discussing the idea with potential partners.

If the idea is all someone has then - frankly - no-one will want to listen to
the idea in any case.

~~~
roc
Absolutely agreed.

If you concede that it's all in the execution and can't make an argument for
why you're the right person to see it executed -- then you've already admitted
that you have nothing to offer.

Further, the idea of not trying because you're afraid the entrenched interest
would crush you if they tried isn't compelling. As said before: it's all in
the execution. And _what_ they're executing is as-important as how well they
do it. Entrenched interests have resources, but they also have their own
overarching business strategies and goals. And those don't always align with
"what people really want".

Consider: everyone assumed Dropbox had to worry about iCloud and gDrive. But
if neither Apple nor Google are particularly worried about supporting the
platform-agnostic, arbitrary folder sync'ing bit that Dropbox does
wonderfully, they're not even true competitors. [1]

[1] Google would rather you not use your local storage at all. Apple couldn't
care less about clients or API access for Linux/Windows/Android/etc. As it
turns out: Dropbox has little to worry about from them.

~~~
its_so_on
this does not work so well if you're probably about number 500,000 on the list
of people worldwide who could best execute it - but if you do it first, you
still have a solid chance of publicity and a reasonable shot at making
10x-100x the investment, and maybe more, combined with an almost inability not
to at least get bought out by someone more competent for a mild profit (loss
if you consider your personal opportunity cost, which an investor doesn't care
about). This is a common scenario in my humble opinion.

I'm not saying this should change. When it does, and investors are happy to
invest in people who admit they're about #500,000 on the worldwide list of
people who can execute on this idea - well, that is so far into a bubble
you're almost out of it again.

~~~
roc
If you've recognized an opportunity earlier than others, you've had more time
to think through the problem and its solutions. You've had more opportunity to
think about how you can build a business around this solution. And you're
probably more apt to forsee further advatanges and problems in that space.
Lastly, hopefully, you have a unique take or insight into the problem that
sets you apart from a project headed by someone doing a straight-forward
implementation of the most obvious solution.

And if you're championing the idea and the need to execute at a certain level,
you're clearly among the more motivated and dedicated, to say nothing of
everyone else not out trying to make this happen.

These are attributes that _do_ make you compare more-favorably to the 499,999
other people who are perhaps more technically-capable of developing the
solution.

Those other souls are either disinterested, unmotivated, undedicated, starting
from further behind or perhaps running a would-be competitor that your would-
be investor/partner has no ability to profit from.

If you can't sell that as uniquely qualifying you to execute, the problem
isn't the existence of those 499,999 other people. It's either:

a.) your not leveraging the advantages you have. b.) your not actually having
put the energy and thought and dedication into the problem as far as you could
without further investment. c.) your inability to convince would-be investors
and partners of a and b. (Some people _are_ just flat-out bad in the room.)

I'm not saying that a given project won't run into more-capable teams who are
objectively better choices. But if there's anything remotely close to a few
dozen of them actively out there pursuing the same solution space, you
wouldn't even be able to get an investor interested in the first place.

~~~
its_so_on
Hi, You misunderstand. I'm not saying there is active competition. I'm saying,
As a programmer, there are close to a million programmers who could execute
this better in two weeks then I'm about to in the next month. But I'm still
going to execute it over the next month. (Because no one else is doing it.)
That means, despite my shitty execution, an idea is enough. No, this attitude
won't get you investors. But it can get you something better: customers.

Above, I wasn't talking about actual competition, but your comment "If you
concede that it's all in the execution and can't make an argument for why
you're the right person to see it executed -- then you've already admitted
that you have nothing to offer"

which you wrote in response to: "If the person with a great idea has something
(very) substantial to offer a project based upon it then they are clearly a
key component of the idea execution and should not fear discussing the idea
with potential partners.

If the idea is all someone has then - frankly - no-one will want to listen to
the idea in any case."

Basically, I "disagree with" the two quotes above (I don't actually disagree,
since it is completely correct: no-one will want to listen to someone who
doesn't say they're the best in the world at it).

I am saying that to ACTUALLY succeed (as opposed to convincing someone that
you will), you don't have to be able to offer something VERY substantial above
the idea. You do NOT have to have ANYTHING that makes you a VERY key player:
it's enough to just have an idea and make it barely work, with a solution that
there are a million people who COULD do it better in two weeks, but who
aren't. I'm saying I don't have to be special or all that good or unique. I
just have to have an idea, and it's okay to execute it at a level where if it
were a competition with a million entrants (top million coders/teams
worldwide) then I would come in 500,000.

Because it's not actually a competition with a million entrants. It's just you
executing your idea. It just has to get some customers, it doesn't have to be
unique or key or anything else. And often an idea is as simple as follows:
There is no one doing x in my geographic area. I will learn PHP over the
weekend and start offering x in my geographic area.

People do it, they make money, and they might even get investment after a
while. All on a simple idea (no one's doing it here) and a shitty execution.
That's the extent to which I disagree with your parent's and your quotes
above. I do agree that investors want to hear chest-beating if the project
doesn't exist yet, they want to hear about your Stanford and MIT credentials
and how you architectured some part of paypal.

But you don't actually need to have that stuff to just do it.

------
drcube
Even if the idea _were_ worth money, how would you know unless you had
experience in the field?

Might as well tell a lawyer your great idea for his client's defense. See how
much he'll pay.

As an electrical engineer, I would not presume to understand architecture
enough to sell an architect on my lucrative new idea for a building. The
architect has probably thought of and dismissed hundreds of ideas like mine.

In the same way, I would never walk up to a web developer and say "Hey, I have
this wild original idea about a website! If you build it, we could make tons
of money, and I'll even give you half! But you have to sign this NDA before I
tell you..."

If you don't know how to implement the idea yourself, chances are it has been
though of and rejected already by those who do.

------
chris_wot
Oh man. You have GOT to have something more than an idea! Twitter is actually
a great idea, but if they didn't have any skills in executing it then it never
would have gotten big.

You have an idea. Great. There's nothing stopping someone else from having
that idea. Execute the darn thing, even in a prototype form. Don't expect
someone else to do the hard yards for you!

------
TomGullen
Quick question and I'm prepared to be shot down here, don't patents show that
ideas are actually worth something?

Have a great idea? Patent it. Not all ideas are patentable but I'm sure some
are.

If you get the patent you have something you can sell and once you do you've
effectively made money from your idea.

~~~
wpietri
A patent is a lot more than an idea. Patents cover inventions. Originally,
they required you to hand over a working model to get a patent.

Take the idea "a good pocket lighter". That's not patentable. Now take a look
at the patent for the Zippo lighter:

<http://www.google.com/patents/US2032695>

Note the detailed diagrams and the careful description of the purposes of the
various bits. You don't get that kind of detail by sitting around in your
pajamas and saying between tokes, "Wouldn't it be cool if we had a good pocket
lighter?" You get it by making things and trying them out.

~~~
TomGullen
So what is the definition of 'an idea' when people say ideas are worthless?

~~~
wpietri
I'm not sure I can define something as slippery as "an idea", but the people
I'm thinking of generally have an elevator pitch. Or worse, more words without
more substance.

As an example, consider this: <http://earthnationlive.org/>

Or the classic X for Y pitch: <http://www.itsthisforthat.com/>

------
ryguytilidie
Does anyone else hate the term "idea people". To me that implies someone
thinks that having an idea and no skill to execute is a legitimate profession
where people should make money. I might be overreacting, but it feels like
people see the VC cash flowing, have no discernible skills and think they
deserve a payoff for a mediocre idea.

~~~
natrius
I consider it a pejorative.

------
aterris
While this article was more about web, it immediately made me think of the
game industry. So many people would always tell me they wanted to get into the
game industry to be the "idea guy" and come up with games.

What they never seemed to understand is that coming up with ideas is not the
hard part. The real hard part is finding time, skills and actually shipping.
Hell, take a 20 person game dev company, and they could come up with 100 game
ideas before the end of the day, and they will be just as good and original as
the idea guys (probably better actually since they have more context and
experience)

We (atleast I) became developers because we had ideas and we wanted to make
those a reality. I literally have had hundreds of web and game ideas and so
has every other developer.

We are in an "idea bubble"... There are far too many people who cannot create,
and simply have ideas, and we can already see this starting to erode when you
examine how hard it is for "idea founders" to get others to work on their
project.

No developer anywhere has said "If I just had an idea of something to do"

------
vessenes
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.

------
xaa
No one is going to want to pay a percentage just for an idea, but an "idea
person" can also easily become a business cofounder.

Sales, marketing, and raising capital are things that perhaps require less
expertise than motivation and persistence, and they are things that most
programmers HATE to do.

------
OzzyB
Do NDAs usually come with a time limit? i.e. if you sign that NDA it becomes
null & void, in say, 6/12/36 months?

I think one of the main reasons folks are adverse to signing NDAs, especially
the "my idea is so great that I must protect it" kind, is that if I sign _too
many_ of them I effectively put myself outta business.

If I knew that a particular NDA would "time-out" in 12 months, I might be more
inclined to sign; since if it does turn out to be yet another "photo sharing
app, but for dwarfs" type deal -- I'm not going to be legally binded
_forever_.

One last thing, I totally understand the need and desire for NDAs by orgs that
actually _have_ existing IP that they want to protect; but alas alot of these
NDA requests are made in the ideation phase...

~~~
rahim
Most NDAs have such a period stated in the contract. However, every now and
then, you come across one that doesn't. (I just received one earlier this week
that did not explicitly state one.) So, as always, read everything before you
sign!

------
kenrikm
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.

------
HarpuaCom
I truly believe that the only way to put the "NDA or no NDA" question to bed
is to have every single person out there try to execute on an idea. Only until
you've done it once do you realize the infinitesimal odds of having an idea,
telling someone, them executing on it and making it big while the same
experiment carried out with the only variable changed being not telling them
would have resulted in you making it big.

NDAs are meant for investors/strategics who want access to real, sensitive and
actionable data. Not a couple of folks in a bar batting around ideas.

------
debacle
This goes back to the whole Jeff Atwood blog about banking buckets (I wish I
could find the link!).

Chances are, if there's a company in the industry you want to target they've
thought of your idea and realized that it's either not possible to make money
on it or it's not possible to make as much money as they're currently making
doing other things.

~~~
ArtB
You'd never find it since it was Steve Yegge on Credit Card buckets :P :
[http://steve-yegge.blogspot.ca/2009/04/have-you-ever-
legaliz...](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.ca/2009/04/have-you-ever-legalized-
marijuana.html)

~~~
debacle
Thanks! After so long, they all blend together!

------
drewrv
If you're unwilling to code, tell a developer what your idea is, tell him/her
what you bring to the table (other than "ideas"), and offer the dev a generous
share of the revenue and equity(for a two person team, at least 40%).

There is no reason for them to try and compete with you when they could work
with you.

------
NonEUCitizen
[http://peternixey.com/post/21437829768/cook-something-or-
get...](http://peternixey.com/post/21437829768/cook-something-or-get-out-of-
the-kitchen)

------
lucian1900
Wtf is an "idea person", really? If having ideas is someone's defining
quality, they're useless in a business anyway. Everyone has ideas, execution
matters.

------
tommy_m
Learn to code.

~~~
jsmith72
I have given this subject much consideration. I have a good idea how to solve
it. All I need you to do is sign this NDA first.. ...

------
EGreg
Very simple regarding what to do.

A provisional patent application costs you $120 to file. No one even looks at
it, until you file the real one. However, "patent pending" sends the message
that ripping your idea off could cause legal repercussions and might not be
worth it. If the person you're talking to thinks it's obvious, then both the
patent application and NDA would have been ineffective. If it's something not
obvious, then the "patent pending" is a great way to show you think the idea
is soooo special, without requiring the other person to sign anything.

But of course, the best thing to have is execution and traction :)

~~~
kevinpet
That's an excellent idea, since:

1) the other party doesn't need to sign anything. 2) it's only binding if it's
actually a patentable idea.

