
Ask HN: Why wouldn't FB “steal” my startup idea? - MrBra
Ok, I am not a native English speaker so please bear with me and try to make sense of what I am typing.<p>Like for all of you, I do have many IT project ideas constantly spinning around my mind and for some of them I am really convinced that they could be made into something profitable. But for a series of reasons including that I am already busy with other things, I never got too serious about them..<p>Even worse, lately there&#x27;s something else which is stopping me from even thinking about it. Which is: looking at how agile and flexible is today&#x27;s development and how this has been embraced by big players too, I&#x27;ve almost convinced myself that no matter how good you gonna be at your new project, giant corporations like FB or Google could jump into the same wagon and make their own ten time better version of it or add hundred more feature in a fraction of time my team would need to do so.<p>This is really discouraging, and I find myself loosing faith in my ideas.<p>Is there a fallacy in my reasoning?<p>Why wouldn&#x27;t a big company like Facebook grab anyone else&#x27;s proven-right concept (i.e. the first iteration of a new sharing-economy app) and make it theirs in no time? By now they have all the resources and flexibility (hundreds of engineers only busy at exploring ideas) to do so, don&#x27;t they?
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cjCamel
This is something that I often wrestle with. I comfort myself by remembering
that this has been the case for a long time though - remember Steve Jobs
saying that Dropbox is a feature, not a product?

Another example: Slack logically should stand no chance against Facebook for
Work, Microsoft Teams etc, but they're doing fine thanks to a laser sharp
focus on enterprise communications, whereas FB and MS just can't do it as
well, even with much larger resources.

If you flip your thinking, you can instead be inspired by the fact that you
DON'T need 1000s of developers developing millions of features to create a
good product, in fact, it's easier if you don't have that baggage, or an
already ingrained culture and business model that may fight against any new
direction.

Also, if the worse that happens is that Facebook validates your idea by
copying it, you've probably done OK:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snap_Inc.#2017_Initial_Public_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snap_Inc.#2017_Initial_Public_Offering)

~~~
MrBra
Slack is a kind of a white fly or an exception if you see the bigger picture
because it's in a segment that targets the devs community, which is very
attentive and careful about the product they choose, because have the skills
to decide about it.

But what would happen with a product targeting a more generic public (non only
tech savvy people), like a new sharing economy app or a new innovative social
network?

What I am trying to say is... the big players are now so big that they are
just going to integrate any IT idea that is cool and profitable, in no time.

This is what saddens me. We are not in early 2000 anymore, got a concept
around manipulating pictures? Yay, make a website and give it a beta badge
icon and there you go, you got popular and people are interested in investing
in you!

Nowadays? Go develop your new picture filters, meanwhile google engineers will
publish a blog post where they talk about how their machine learning libs
powered by 11230021 GPUs has got better result in that aspect and they will
now integrate that capability in all Google pic manipulating products.

Do you get what I am saying?

~~~
cjCamel
Sure I do - Facebook has brazenly added Snapchat features to Messenger and
Whatsapp and have undoubtedly clipped the wings of Snap Inc, at least for now.

But before Facebook did this Snap demonstrated that it's still possible to
ladder up ([https://stratechery.com/2016/snapchats-
ladder/](https://stratechery.com/2016/snapchats-ladder/)) from an initially
seemingly easily copy-able idea into something meaningful - the reason why
Facebook didn't copy Snapchat initially was because they didn't get it, and
didn't see the threat until it was nearly too late.

There are new social network startups being developed every day, but the
reason they don't succeed isn't because Google copy them - it's because they
are trying to copy Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/AirBnB/Uber, not the other way
round. Or because they suck.

Like I said before - if you develop your idea and the worst that happens is
that Facebook copies it, then that's actually a really cool outcome, as by
then you've probably done extremely well. The more likely outcome, as I
suspect you well know, is that it is ignored by everyone apart from your
closest friends.

p.s. Here's another Ben Thompson article about the Facebook monopoly. The real
reason FB is a problem is because they own the digital representation of our
real relationships, and no startup is going to be able to compete with that
[https://stratechery.com/2017/facebook-and-the-cost-of-
monopo...](https://stratechery.com/2017/facebook-and-the-cost-of-monopoly/)

Btw, I know plenty of non technical people and teams that use Slack.

~~~
MrBra
> if you develop your idea and the worst that happens is that Facebook copies
> it, then that's actually a really cool outcome, as by then you've probably
> done extremely well.

So you don't think that the amount of time before big players copy you has
shortened, nowadays? Don't you think they are more flexible, agile, open,
nowadays? Of course they are...

I agree with you that by the time that this happens it means that you have
done a lot well already... but yeah... one time you could actually dream about
"making the next new big thing", now you can only hope about being
copied/acquired as late as possible...

Am I wrong?

------
ploggingdev
Ideas themselves are not worth much. I can sit down and list at least a 100
plausible sounding ideas.

You also underestimate the difficulty of turning an idea into a product.
Writing code to build an app or a website is only the first step, getting
engaged users and growing is far more difficult.

> By now they have all the resources and flexibility (hundreds of engineers
> only busy at exploring ideas)

FB employees are certainly not "only busy exploring ideas", I don't know where
you got that idea from.

In case FB were to do this, it would attract the US Government's attention for
monopolistic practices.

As opposed to "stealing" your idea, FB (and other large companies) would be
more interested in aqui-hiring a successful startup.

So yeah, you certainly don't need to be worried about FB stealing your idea.

Not convinced yet? Look at the startup ecosystem, how often do you come across
one of the large companies stealing a startup's idea? I can't think of many.

~~~
narrowrail
>In case FB were to do this, it would attract the US Government's attention
for monopolistic practices.

I think this is a bit naive. Private companies are allowed to compete in the
marketplace no matter how big they are. Have you noticed that FB has been
systematically implementing most of Snap's features over the last year?

~~~
MrBra
Exactly.

------
haburka
This happened in the popular tv show silicon valley but it's much more likely
that your idea wouldn't result in something worth stealing. For example, I
know of a successful start-up that migrates cemetary data into a modern
database and then sets up a site with it that allows users to view plots of
land as well as buy them.

Is Google going to hear about this and take over the funeral management
business? It's extremely unlikely. Instead, what could happen is that the
start-up one day grows very large and is acquired by a company, which then may
have competition from Google or FB, if it turns out the market is so large
that it's worth competing over.

I would recommend that you pursue your ideas because generally you won't make
the next Instagram. And even then, you'll probably be acquired before you have
to compete with Google.

~~~
narrowrail
Sorry for the tangent, but could you link the burial plot startup? I have 6
plots in Chicago, and when I looked at marketplaces for them ~5 years ago it
was a bunch of crappy sites from the 90's.

------
sharemywin
Someone has to prove the market. Why would they care if you take all the risk
of getting initial traction and they can just buy you for 30M-1B. As fast as
facebook is they usually offered to by people out. if your not already on
their road map you've got a long way to go before you have to worry about it.

[http://mashable.com/2014/01/06/snapchat-facebook-
acquisition...](http://mashable.com/2014/01/06/snapchat-facebook-
acquisition-2/#opwxpSmAZiqW)

~~~
MrBra
Agreed. Basically we could grow up upto a value of $3 billion, and then
Facebook would show interest. Ok.

But I think this is true for products that are somewhat orthogonal to their
base product and not in direct competition, like a radically new innovative
full-blown social network could be.

What if mine was such a ground breaking idea?

What if, at stage 1 of funding, FB takes over the idea and improves with the
same resources that I would only have at "stage 100" funding?

Oh and guys, please, I am just reasoning by making hypothesis, no need to
remember me how hard is to build such a thing. :)

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itamarst
Even if it is a good idea, it may not be relevant to a large company. For
example, a business that makes $5 million/revenue a year is far too small for
Facebook to care about, it's just a blip for them.

Empirically Facebook is not starting 100s of tiny businesses a year, even
though they have the personnel for it.

------
narrowrail
FB relies on advertising, so I would say the strategy would be to use that to
your advantage. As mentioned elsewhere, Slack is competing very well and
relies on freemium without any advertising.

