

No one gets fired for hiring IBM - how our pitch was stolen from us - dabeeeenster
http://www.solidstategroup.com/what-we-think/no-one-gets-fired-for-hiring-ibm

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bdfh42
It happens - indeed it happened to me a few years back. I was part of a
business that was asked to pitch a system specification to solve a particular
business problem. We worked hard on the spec and felt sure we had covered all
the bases - well we must have done because the business we pitched handed the
whole thing over to their "preferred supplier" and asked them to build it -
just as we specified it.

Lessons were learned. No more free consultancy. We got much more cautious
about pitching to new prospective customers and made sure that any
specifications were high level and trod carefully around key technical issues.

~~~
matte8000
Thanks for the comment. These are exactly the learnings I am attempting to get
across by writing this article.

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gaius
The thing to do in the pitch is to demonstrate that you understand the problem
space thoroughly, i.e. rather than pitching the solution, pitch yourselves as
the best people to discover and implement the solution.

I too have worked at a company that learnt this the hard way.

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jlouis
I think the problem is that you sold an idea that can easily be copied rather
than a product. Perhaps an NDA might be the legislative path to take - but
sometimes there is another approach:

There is a story, which may be an urban legend, but it exemplifies this story
nicely: An Optimizations Research (OR) company tries to sell a product that
can do crew scheduling for a airlines company. To show its power, they
presented an optimized schedule where several million dollars could be saved,
compared to their current models. The OR company was declined, but the airline
took the data and implemented it.

What they did not know, was that the data presented were poisoned. Normally,
when optimizing, you also account for the robustness of the model, so
emergencies does not bring the whole system down. Being smart, the OR company
had removed the robustness constraints, which severely hit the airline.

So the bottom line is: Try to poison the sales pitch. Know that you keep out
something which is crucial to the solution, but does not impede the
impressiveness. Make it into a game: If you choose us, you get to see the rest
of the hand, what you don't know is if it is a royal flush or 4 of a kind :)

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andrewvc
That's the last straw, I'm going to make my gilded egg purchases elsewhere.

~~~
limmeau
Fabergé the present-day company has also made sure that an exhibition of
Fabergé eggs in a museum in Baden-Baden may not be called anything with
"Fabergé"[1].

I'll buy my gilded eggs at a local eggsmith instead.

1\. in German: [http://www.badische-zeitung.de/baden-baden/faberg-darf-
nicht...](http://www.badische-zeitung.de/baden-baden/faberg-darf-nicht-
genannt-werden)

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patio11
Burning bridges can be cathartic, but keep in mind that it is virtually
impossible to only burn one bridge at a time.

~~~
JacobAldridge
Yup. This situation must be awful, and Matthew Evans has every reason for
feeling so much more terrible even then he lets on in this post.

But he just pissed off IBM. And Faberge. And in all likelihood scared away a
whole number of potential future customers who suddenly think 'if I talk to
the Solid State Group, and then use someone else, are they going to bad mouth
me to the whole world?'

~~~
dabeeeenster
I'm Matt's business partner.

To be honest we thought long and hard about going public with this, as it all
happened quite some time ago now.

We've built our company on being open, up front and honest with people. I was
sick of working for companies that would be economical with the truth in front
of clients, and say whatever needed to be said in order to win some additional
work. I think that being honest really is the best way of building long-term
relationships with people. Eventually they respect you for it ;)

We know that this goes on all the time, and up to a point we just suck it down
as it's part of the industry that we work in. We absorb the cost, so in the
end people do pay for this sort of work, just not directly.

The reason we decided to write about this was due to the audacity of what had
happened. Our ideas were pretty unique, we felt, and so it was clear to see
what had gone on when the site eventually went live.

At the end of the day, if we lose business because of this, then it's probably
the sort of business we would have no interest working on in the first place.

~~~
sokoloff
If the key element that you're upset about was telephone guided co-browsing, I
call "not unique".

You may very well have been the ones to introduce the idea/term to Faberge,
but if you were the first ones to pitch AJAX or Flash to them, should they be
barred from using that in their eventual solution, too?

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aaronz3
AJAX and Flash is a generic technology, telephone guided co-browsing is a
specific implementation, most likely using that technology. There's a big
difference there, especially when Flash and AJAX are ubiquitous on the web and
the phone guided browsing is more innovative.

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ajju
Co-incidentally a very good friend of mine actually worked on the Faberge
project at IBM, I saw a sneak preview about a month ago and it was very well
implemented. I have sent him a link to your post.

It is unlikely that he will be able to share any significant details of IBM's
side of the story with me because of client confidentiality, especially
anything he would be willing to say publicly, but if he does I'll post here.

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swombat
I have friends who work in the advertising industry, and they tell me that
this is the situation with most clients.

One friend told me Google did this exact thing to them a few months back. Now,
if Google's not above this sort of behaviour (and whatever you think about
them, you must admit they tend to have a higher standard of behaviour than
most other companies) you can imagine that others will also be willing to
stoop to this.

~~~
qeorge
That's quite a claim to levy with no details. I'd be curious to hear which of
your friend's unique ideas Google stole.

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mattmcknight
And since when does Google contract out for development work?

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param
I think swombat is talking about advertising, not development

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byrneseyeview
It sucks that someone used your idea.

If it's any comfort, I pitched exactly the same concept to a purse designer a
few months ago. (We didn't get that one, either -- no word on whether or not
it was IBM.)

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ShabbyDoo
I am reminded of the perhaps slightly less practice of soliciting RFPs from
companies with whom you have no intention of doing business. A buyer who wants
to use a particular vendor but must convince upper management that his
decision was made objectively often solicits RFPs from companies whose pitches
easily can be discredited.

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forensic
Isn't this the majority of RFPs? Most are just there for props as part of an
attempt for some guy to sell his favourite company to the boss.

~~~
khaless
Unfortunately... I have seen this happen more than once, and even the big fish
can get taken for this ride.

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giardini
In posts here, I read of others independently coming up with the same
scenario. You cannot be certain that your "pitch was stolen". In general, my
belief is that if I can think of an idea then someone else can too. But I
don't tell others about it unless I'm willing to let the idea go.

~~~
spokey
This seems plausible.

How could we be sure IBM didn't pitch a similiar idea in isolation? I don't
know what the RFP looked like, but it doesn't seem crazy that two teams would
come up with similiar solutions to the design constraints, even with.a
relatively unusual idea such as this one.

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sireat
I have a number of friends who work in creative sphere and this is extremely
common in the industry.

Probably clients get away with this so much is because many creators shy away
from describing these "misappropriations".

Why do clients do it so much?

IANAL, but pure ideas can have little legal protection, so legally(not morally
mind you) they are in the clear.

You going in the open about this is actually healthy.

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wglb
I am wondering how potential clients would look at an NDA in that industry. If
they are not used to that, it might scare them away.

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rgrieselhuber
Is this article gone now? It would be a shame to see this story go away.

Edit: Looks like it's back now.

~~~
matte8000
Yeah sorry, our site suffered from traffic overload and we quickly implemented
some caching. :)

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lt
_Document fully your pitch work and if possible, put in place NDAs_

this.

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rbanffy
I won't listen to a sales pitch that is under NDAs. But I also won't ask the
seller to specify the solution for free.

~~~
lt
They didn't approach Fabergé with a sales pitch out of the blue. I wouldn't
expect a NDA for that. But Fabergé did ask them to come up with a pitch to
relaunch their brand - I wouldn't come up with it and present it without some
kind of document saying that they can't take the idea and run with it with
someone else.

~~~
rbanffy
The pitch is a product. I would bill them for it.

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ajju
It may not be that simple to pull it off. If you are the smaller fish in
competition with IBM and IBM offers to do a pitch without charging for it
(which they can afford), it's unlikely you would get paid for it.

Having some sort of agreement about IP, on the other hand, is possible but
enforcing it would be costly any way. There's no easy solution.

~~~
rbanffy
I agree there is no easy solution, but, still, you have to set your limits
somewhere.

When you are a small outfit, you cannot afford to work for free and you must
make it perfectly clear to your prospects. If they can't respect that, you
shouldn't try to serve them.

It's very easy to win a contract and then be completely crushed by your
client. Believe me: I have seen it happen a couple times.

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themanual
Thats it. i am not buying from Fabergé.

Although it's not like I could :)

