
Nobody’s going to steal your idea - octopus
http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2012/11/02/nobody-will-steal-your-idea/
======
robomartin
This is pure nonsense. Please, please, please stop talking about ideas. What
people steal --and the only thing with huge value-- are MARKET OPPORTUNITIES.
Ideas are easy to generate. Everyone has loads of them. When an idea is
combined with the work necessary to identify if a market opportunity exists it
can become invaluable.

Ideas are not stolen because an idea, all by itself, does not identify whether
or not anyone wants the thing or the service. If I told you that I had an idea
to make a dish-washing sponge in the shape of a smiley face you, more than
likely, would walk away laughing. So would I if someone came to me with that
idea. How would you react if I actually manufactured them, sold a bunch and
showed you that people want them? Right. You'd pay attention. You wouldn't
laugh. And you certainly wouldn't walk away. Well, I saw exactly that happen
at the Shark Tank show recently. I think the guy got a $300K investment.

$300K for the idea for a friggin smiley-face sponge? Nope. $300K for the
market opportunity he uncovered.

If you present someone with an idea and that idea is so good that it
identifies the market opportunity without further work, well, it might get
stolen. With most other ideas they'll listen and nod and possibly even think
you are a moron and completely forget what you told them.

If, on the other hand, you show them an idea coupled with your work confirming
that a good scalable market exists, hold on! The market opportunity will
either be stolen or you'll have someone all over you wanting to become an
investor or participate in some manner in the opportunity you identified.

~~~
fragsworth
"Ideas" and "market opportunities" sort of go hand in hand, don't you think?
The market opportunity is assumed when someone talks about an idea for a
business.

~~~
robomartin
> "Ideas" and "market opportunities" sort of go hand in hand

Only when the idea precedes the exploration of the opportunity space.

Have an idea -> Build a prototype -> Show it around -> Close some sales.

Here the idea is related to the market opportunity. It triggered a search for
the opportunity when someone was interested or puzzled enough to do the work.
Few will invest in an idea unless there's some kind of "sugar on top" that
reveals really good potential for a market opportunity. Many will invest in a
reasonably tested market opportunity.

When are an idea and a market opportunity not connected? When the idea does
not precede the market opportunity.

I'll give you a couple of concrete examples from my own life.

A friend of mine came over one day many years ago and said that his contact at
one of the local film studios told him that they were looking for a carpenter
that would make them 100 sets of this specially designed piece of furniture
for an expansion project. My friend knew that I, when not coding or designing
products, liked to, among other things, do woodworking projects. I also had a
pretty niche setup in my garage at the time.

So, here's an opportunity presented to me which had not originated with an
idea.

What did we do? We spent that weekend making an unsolicited sample of the
piece the studio needed. He delivered it on Monday to his contact along with
pricing. By Wednesday we got the deal. By Saturday I had a pile of furniture-
grade plywood in front of my house that was eight feet tall. We setup an
assembly line and spent a week (with some help) cranking out the pieces. My
neighbors were puzzled and probably somewhat concerned. A couple of them came
over to help for a few bucks. Delivered on time and walked away with $60K
profit. Sweet.

Any able carpenter would have taken that opportunity and run with it. We just
ran faster and put a solution in front of the customer as painlessly and well-
executed as possible.

Another time I had someone call me to tell me that there was a company in need
of a box built to translate a communications protocol in real time. RS422 in
and out. Status display. Power button. The conversations went something like
this:

    
    
        Me:  "How many?"
        Him: "Probably 25 per month"
        
        Me:  "How much are they willing to pay?"
        Him: "They've been trying for months but it's a bunch of
              Optics PhD's and this isn't their thing.  
              They are desperate for a solution".  
        
        Me:  "Why?"
        Him: "They have sold a bunch of these units at about $500K
              a piece and this has been one of the only reasons
              they can't deliver."
    
        Me:  "I can meet with them tomorrow AM"
    

End result: I sold them a protocol converter box for $3,000 a pop for the
first 25 units, $2,000 each for the next 75 and $1,000 each thereafter in lots
of 100 units.

I built it in a weekend: 1 RU enclosure. Off the shelf 8051 board. Small
custom board with RS422 drivers and receivers. LCD display. Power supply.
Connectors. I don't think the total cost exceeded $150. It would have been a
sweet ride except that about six months later they got acquired by a large
multinational and, effectively, shut down.

Again, a market opportunity that did not come from an idea.

Now, what if I said? "Let's build an RS422 protocol converter box and sell it
for $3,000". And I did this in complete isolation of having identified a
market need? Well, it'd be a flop. Sometimes fining opportunities is like
finding a needle in a haystack. Someone almost has to sit on it for you to
become aware it even exists.

~~~
aortega
I'm a "optics" (actually photonics-crypto) PHD candidate that also can build a
RS422 protocol converter. You had luck I wasn't in their team :)

~~~
robomartin
I actually tried to convince them that this stuff was very simple and that
they could do it. No interest whatsoever. I think what was going on behind the
scenes is that they were in talks to be acquired (or planning to be in talks)
and they really wanted their product to work. They probably also had a number
of challenges of their own to deal with. In that context, it may have made
sense to pay whatever was necessary to get going.

------
hemancuso
An obvious counterexample is sittercity/care.com

"On July 20, 2006, Sheila Marcelo and Nick Beim flew from Boston to Chicago to
visit a company called Sittercity. The business, which charged parents to
access an online database of sitters and nannies, had been launched in Boston
five years earlier.

“We took the meeting to talk about an investment,’’ says Genevieve Thiers, the
Boston College alumnae who founded Sittercity. She’d met Beim, a partner at
Waltham-based Matrix Partners, that year at a trade show. “Nick talked about
how Matrix worked with companies and founders,’’ Thiers recalls.

Marcelo was serving as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Matrix, hoping to join
or help start a business that Matrix would back. “I wanted to do family,
health, or education - those areas were my passion,’’ Marcelo says.

Three months after the trip, Marcelo started a website, Care.com, to compete
directly with Sittercity. Matrix Partners and several prominent investors
poured capital into her new company - totaling more than $16 million so far.
It wasn’t until late last year that Sittercity raised its first round of
venture capital."

[http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2009/11/2...](http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2009/11/22/websites_rivalry_provides_lessons_in_sharing_or_not_sharing_strategic_secrets/)

A lot more backstory:
[http://www.boston.com/business/technology/innoeco/2009/11/th...](http://www.boston.com/business/technology/innoeco/2009/11/the_backstory_on_carecom_sitte.html)

~~~
wpietri
Is that a counterexample? Suppose they hadn't taken the meeting. What would
have prevented Marcelo from starting Care.com?

As far as I can tell, nothing. Sittercity had been operating for 5 years in
public view. Obvious idea, proven market, easy to find Sittercity users to
interview.

(However, bringing an EIR to an investment meeting strikes me as incredibly
dubious.)

~~~
ChuckMcM
Completely agree here, this is not a counter example of 'stealing' an idea but
one of 'executing' on an idea.

And not surprisingly this is what folks worry about, that someone with more
resources than them will hear about their idea and be able to execute on it
before they get off the ground. That would be true, if the person who had the
resources didn't have anything else to do, but as a rule that is very rare,
people with the ability to execute and resources do.

The care.com example is an example of an entirely different situation. That
situation is that a business concept is proven out but doesn't have the
capital to scale and the owners aren't doing the scaling. There are a number
of folks who look for this type of business and build it in a different
market. There was even a story linked here about a German company that did
this. Much less risk since the idea is already 'proven'.

But if nobody is doing your idea, many people will think it won't work because
if it did then someone else would already be doing it, so they won't 'steal'
it because obviously its not a viable idea :-)

~~~
btyrad
Ok But I think you are missing the point. They reached out to a firm "Matrix
Partners" to help them execute by financial means and that firms individuals
chose to spin off an exact duplicate of their startup?! Sham! ~That firm
should be frowned upon and ridiculed and avoided by all entrepreneurs.

------
bmelton
The attitude that nobody's going to steal your idea might hold true for a
certain audience, but having worked in environments where not only will people
steal your idea, but often relationships are formed for that very purpose, I
would take that advice with a few grains of salt.

As with everything, context is key -- if you're talking about building a new
widget for platform_x, and you're in a conversation with your grandparents,
you're probably in the clear (for a specific definition of grandparents).

If you're having that same conversation with the world's most prolific
exporter of widgets for platform x, it might be better to listen than to talk.

In contracting environments, specifically in Federal government, the IT
ecosystem is an adversarial one, all the work is bid upon, subsequently
awarded to a Prime contractor who may or may not sub out some of the work to
sub-contractors. It's not impossible for some of the subcontractors to have
their wagons hitched to multiple ponies, on the assumption that they'll work
with whomever wins.

Idea sharing and NDAs are critical in this sort of environment as the novelty
/ uniqueness / effectiveness of your particular solution to the problem being
bid upon is your key differentiator. Otherwise, you likely end up in a price
race, where either the largest contractor or the most ill-adept at bidding
will win.

------
esperluette
I actually did have someone steal my idea. I was interviewing for a technical
co-founder and talked to a guy who seemed really interested. However, after a
couple of conversations I got a weird vibe from him and went with someone
else. (Oh, and I had $1M in funding at this point, & I was looking for a full
partner, not someone to "just build my idea.")

A few months later I find that he has started a similar company, with a
similar name, and is out raising money. He even said that he came up with the
idea when he was 'inspired' by his young daughter. (Dragging your kids into
your lie is always scummy.)

(This was for a very unusual startup idea, btw, not a game or social app, etc.
I am also a recognized expert in this field, 15+ years of experience, national
newspaper/magazine profiles, blah blah blah.)

He ended up getting money in Singapore and launching a pretty sucky site that
got zero traction. It's been a couple years now and I haven't seen anything
else from him (but I've been too busy with my company to really look).

At the time, I was LIVID but after I cooled off I realized that 1) it was
pretty great external validation and 2) someone who would "steal" my idea (and
make up a story about it!) would never be able to execute, and I was proven
right about both things.

My company is now nearly five years old and we're working on our third product
extension off the original idea. :-)

~~~
IgorPartola
So you agree with the OP that there is no danger in sharing your ideas before
you have traction, etc.?

Also, I have seen plenty of posts talking about these types of situations and
the person, just like you did, never explains their business or provides a
link to it. I would be curious to see what the actual idea was to better
understand your situation.

~~~
esperluette
I think the danger is situational. If you're the kind of person who will give
up when you see someone swiping your idea, there is danger. If it makes you
work harder ... then it might be an asset. :-)

You have to have faith that it's not just your idea that's valuable, but your
idea + you and your experience and what you bring to it.

------
TomGullen
I don't agree. Mainly because I don't agree with the premise that ideas are
worthless - something that is echoed around all the time. Ideas being
worthless is the lazy and easy way to explain to someone why they should get
feedback on their idea.

The reality is ideas do have value. We've got a great idea for a new product,
and we're not telling anyone about it. That's because our idea has value and
we don't want anyone else to make it before we do. Come back to us in a year
or two and I'll happily explain our reasoning behind this.

If an idea is worthless it means it literally has zero value. Value doesn't
have to be a positive value, it can be negative as well. Given 2 ideas, which
of these would you rather develop:

\- A mobile phone for elephants

\- A service which sends you an SMS when your website goes offline

If both ideas have zero value, it doesn't matter which one you pick when you
set out. The reality is if you are going to set out and make mobile phones for
elephants you are going to burn through your cash a lot quicker, and have a
much lower chance of ever making money and succeeding (if you measure success
through sustainability and profitability).

These two ideas are not equally worthless, therefore one has more value than
another. Two things with differing value cannot both be worthless unless they
both have negative expected value. Not all ideas have negative expected value
and you easily build a case arguing that the SMS service idea has positive
expected value. "All ideas are worthless" is not true as all ideas have
varying levels of negative/positive expected value.

Sharing your idea is usually the right thing to do, but it does come with some
potential downsides. Just because it's usually the right thing to do doesn't
mean it's always the right thing to do.

Someone might steal/copy your idea. It's probably a lower chance than most
people estimate especially in the very early stages of startups.

~~~
wpietri
I am not buying your idea valuation logic. "Worthless" means lacking
significant positive value.

If business ideas had significant value, you'd see people buying them. They
don't, though. They might by a proven opportunity, or they might buy
knowledge. But ideas on their own? As unsaleable as used chewing gum.

I really don't believe people should worry about business ideas being stolen.
If your idea is so simple that J. Random Hustler can steal it from a
description, a) the idea's probably too simple to matter, and b) many other
people will have thought of it.

To successfully execute on a startup idea, you need solid knowledge of the
domain, and the ability to keep having great ideas. There is a ton of
iteration before product/market fit, and I think copycats just don't have the
depth to successfully iterate there.

~~~
graysnorf
It is true that for people to buy ideas they must have value. But the
transaction must also be feasible. The trouble with ideas is that I can't
easily prove to you the idea is valuable without having already given it to
you, thus destroying your incentive to complete your end of the transaction.

It may be that there isn't a market in ideas because they have no value. But
it may also be that there isn't a market in ideas because it's too difficult
to facilitate the transaction.

~~~
wpietri
I suspect that's not particularly difficult to solve. Escrow is one solution.
Profit sharing is another. Independent valuators would be a third. I imagine
any energetic business lawyer could come up with a number of other approaches.

The problem is that nobody wants to buy raw ideas. Any decent entrepreneur has
ideas coming out the wazoo. People who aren't decent entrepreneurs could
probably _use_ ideas, but they'll very rarely recognize that they _need_ them.

There is a great market for _proven_ ideas. That's why a major route for
startup exit is acquisition. Once you've achieved product-market fit, plenty
of people can see the value of your idea.

------
kenjackson
There's lots of reasons for NDAs besides stealing ideas. I doubt Apple is
afraid I'd steal the next design for their new phone (although they may worry
Samsung might), but they still probably don't want me blogging about it.
There's marketing impact.

Also companies often don't like to commit to product before it's committed. I
learned an important lesson at one of my first startups that customers will
try to hold you to your "proposed" roadmap. Even though we say, "We're just
trying to be transparent. This WILL change. We don't know of this we can do."
-- people will tend to find things they like and essentially view what you
showed them as a promise to deliver. You suddenly have customers who claim you
not only didn't deliver a feature, but that you broke a promise. Until I know
I can ship, I really prefer not to talk about it publicly -- even with tons of
caveats.

------
scrrr
Not always true. We were working on a smartphone game with an original concept
and kept blogging about it. Including telling about the idea and showing early
gameplay video. It might have been a coincidence, but a virtually identical
game appeared before we were finished and became quite successful on Android.
So next time I'll be a little bit more careful.

------
thinkingthings
So many times I've had an idea and not long later someone has come out with
that exact product - not because they stole it from me but because they come
up with it themselves. The ability to execute on that idea is much more
important.

~~~
incision
>So many times I've had an idea and not long later someone has come out with
that exact product - not because they stole it from me but because they come
up with it themselves.

Right.

I believe that as we collectively walk toward the horizon of what's possible,
new things become visible to lots of us at roughly the same time.

>The ability to execute on that idea is much more important.

Sort of.

Thing is, patents seem to reward not the ability to execute, so much as the
ability to execute first on what is rapidly being revealed as obvious due to
the advancing horizon.

Executing fastest seems to be equated to the result being non-obvious and
ignores the reality that parallel development towards the same end is likely.

------
patrickg
First of all, one cannot 'steal' your idea. You still have it...

Actually I have taken an idea from the company I was working at. They kicked
me out and I started my own company developing a very similar software, but I
believe it is more successful, not because of technical superiority or so, but
more due to customer empathy. Most people love to work with me, because I
deliver quality and on time, in contrast to my former company. So I have a
slightly bad feeling, but a) hey, they kicked me out and b) I treat customers
much better than they did.

------
antiterra
Ideas are indeed cheap and not particularly scarce.

Yet, when you're implementing that idea or talking to a business about buying
your implementation of an idea, it is no longer a run of the mill idea. If
your or your client's competitor gets wind of what you're doing, they may try
to use that knowledge in their role as competitive antagonist. After all,
business is war.

Further, ideas can eventually become methods honed by experience. I worked for
a company that discovered attempts to sell their system had the unintended
consequence of providing valuable consultation to the prospective client. The
prospective client could then use hard-won information on how to roll an in-
house implementation. They would do this even if the costs were higher, to
avoid relying on an external service. In the end, the company ended up
charging for consultation, for some reason, bit their tongue when national
news credited the client for the innovation.

~~~
dmfdmf
> After all, business is war.

Not true, not even metaphorically as with team sports. War is about literal
destruction whereas business is a competition in production and creativity.

~~~
antiterra
War is about much more than literal destruction, even aside from the easy
example of a cold war. War has long been a concern of the appropriation of
wealth and power and the destructiveness varies. Sometimes a city was sacked
with all its men killed and women taken as property. Sometimes a city would be
left largely intact but held under a different banner. Sometimes cities or
countries are blockaded and sieged in order to starve them into submission.
Then there are sneakier and more covert operations intended to destabilize
from within.

Creativity, ingenuity and perseverance can provide success in either war and
business, but it's never a guarantee. Consider Edwin Howard Armstrong, who
experienced the destruction of his life after he invented FM radio.

Those who wage wars are not necessarily those who actually fight in them.
Though it would be distasteful and wrong to equate the plight of an embattled
soldier with that of a corporate employee, their metaphorical role as chess
pieces to occasionally sacrifice is not without convention.

------
mrharrison
There is definitely a great divide on whether to keep an idea secret or not.
Locations and the social circles you are apart of matter quite a bit; I live
in SF and work in PA and I'm surrounded by very capable people. I have had
ideas stolen that I was in mid process of building, particularly by an EIR's
(entrepreneur in residence) who had better resources than I and were able to
execute much faster. And it turned out to be a success in the app store.<br/>
For those who say its ridiculous to keep things secret--I think they aren't
surrounded by very capable people who are willing to do anything to be
successful. Apple, (a pretty successful company), is highly known for keeping
their ideas secret. You know why? Because they have burned in the past, just
like I have and others around me. Product test as secretly as you can, build a
capable product, not an MVP, and hit the market hard!

~~~
wpietri
I'm not sure Apple's a great example. They keep their ideas secret for
marketing reasons: they get immense amounts of free advertising by being
dramatic about new product launches. And because they burnish their brand by
maximizing their number of public hit products. (They also keep some details
of incremental improvements secret because it's a highly competitive market,
but that's different than stealing ideas for new products.)

In fact, I'm having trouble thinking of a "big new idea" product they did
recently. They were years late to the MP3 player and smartphone markets, for
example.

Since the idea's out, would you mind saying more about the idea that was
stolen?

------
brackin
I deal with this every day when I meet founders. They tell me that they're
keeping their idea under-wraps because they don't want anyone to steal it or
pass it on to someone who could.

Not once has any of these people succeeded with this approach. On the other
hand, Joel at Bufferapp who I've been watching since the early days was very
public. Got out there to find out if people wanted the product pre-MVP and
when there was an MVP he let people use it. Today they're based in SF, have
strong revenue, a team, venture funding and hundreds of thousands of users.

The people with "stealth companies" that succeed are serial founders with
money behind them. Most of the time they don't keep it under-wraps, they just
don't share it online. If you ask them what they're doing they'll tell you and
they're constantly getting out there talking to partners, investors, etc. Many
of these companies fail such as Color.

Unless you're starting a new national airline that could be stopped if a
competitor found out what you are doing and went to congress or partners to
block you from entering the market.

I recommend talking to competitors if you're put in a situation with one. This
is something I've done and they've been very helpful, on one occasion one
helped me out without intending to by talking about why one feature probably
wouldn't work without a tweak because they found out it doesn't work without
X.

In the end it's about execution. Get as much as you can out of the door as you
can and learn as much about the market as you can.

I actually wrote an article about this a new months ago:
<http://brack.in/post/32461803751/stealth-is-bullshit>

~~~
bovik
"one helped me out without intending to by talking about why one feature
probably wouldn't work without a tweak because they found out it doesn't work
without X."

Didn't you just disprove your whole point there. Your competitor revealed
his/her ideas about how to solve a problem (that you hadn't even foreseen yet
going by your description) and in the process hurt him/herself in the
marketplace. Your advice of meeting and talking openly with your competitors
didn't really work out for that person.

~~~
brackin
No because they also received value from me explaining what we're building and
he was very interested by it. They are a much bigger market-leading competitor
so it's not a case that people will deal with every day.

I can understand why someone wouldn't want to talk to a competitor but not
when dealing with normal founders, users, etc. As you pointed out it can be
risky but overall being open usually leads to a net positive.

------
shuzchen
I feel like one point that is missing in this conversation is that sometimes
when you don't talk to people about your ideas you miss out on a lot!

I frequent a lot of technical mixers in the region and I talk to a lot of
people about their ideas (and sometimes about my ideas). Not to mention
validation (how many people get excited about your idea), but there are a lot
of helpful criticism or leads to be found by telling people your idea.

There were a ton of folks that, after having heard what they were doing, I was
able to point them to similar entries in the field ("your idea sounds really
similar to this existing site, but they're different because of X") or to
tools that could help them ("hey, have you heard of twilio/stripe/etc, because
that could help you bootstrapped quickly", or "hey, you should talk to X, he's
actually working on related topic and could give you some insight").

If you're some huge company (Apple, Facebook, Google) you already have a huge
pool of internal brains to pick. If you're one lone entrepreneur on a mission,
I'd say you benefit a lot more from telling good people about your idea than
it is to stay mum about it.

------
arbuge
If the person you're talking to is really capable of executing your idea
(chances of that are small to begin with), he/she is probably also smart
enough that they have their own ideas they're more interested in than yours.

~~~
Scene_Cast2
That depends. I know that HN is more focused on ideas that boil down to making
a website, the concept isn't true in the general case. For example, if you're
doing ASIC/FPGA optimization, coming up with an idea is hard, and implementing
one is (relatively) easy.

~~~
arbuge
I used to be an IC designer - ICs are an exception. There are some exceptions
of course - medical drugs are another that come to mind.

Most business ideas are pretty simple though, even outside the internet world.
Eg. Sam Walton -> just wanted to build a better retail store, turned into
Walmart. Howard Schulz -> better coffee shop -> Starbucks. Warren Buffett ->
stockpicking -> BRK. And so on. Execution on these was the hard part.

------
bryans
I really wish we could stop having this semantics debate over the word
"worthless." When one side says "ideas are worthless," they're saying that
they have no quantifiable monetary value until executed. When the other side
responds with "ideas aren't worthless," they're arguing against the notion
that ideas are of no use at all.

We've been arguing over two definitions of the same word for years, and both
sides have been correct all along.

------
moens
I had an idea stolen. It was pure philosophy... a means to help a woman
understand how her man is motivated. Not a male / female thing, but that was a
very marketable aspect, and (thus) the way I communicated the idea. It was
butchered, but still sold $4m in books. The butchery got worse over two
sequels. I seriously doubt that I will ever be able to communicate said idea
(much less sell it) unless I can completely reconstruct its presentation.

Not saying that I disagree with the idea vs execution rhetoric here in the
comments, I do agree... execution is more important. Execution in plant
growing is more important than the seeds themselves... unless you lack the
seeds.

Some here have said that at the right moment any arbitrary number of people
will discover idea X. I would agree if the subtlety of the idea is not
arbitrary, however the best ideas are unexpectedly early, and therefore
subtle.

Do not mistake any of this as an argument for patents, or even fairness in a
general sense. I know business is war. One's only recourse is carefulness,
caution, the sacred texts called it wisdom.

------
ahc506
The author has little to no idea how many trade secret cases are brought each
year in the U.S., and the conviction rate stemming from thos cases. The
staggering number is simply too overwhelming to simply write such an igonrant
article.

The fact is that ideas are stolen at a rate more common than anyone's guess.
Most companies have a NDA/non-compete agreement for a reason. While the know-
hows might not be readily apparent, reverse engineering is not far from
outcry. While a good idea requires flawless execution to make a successful
business, the majority of the population fails to understand that the idea, or
the conception, is all that is needed to take that freedom of operation from
you...just ask any patent attorney.

------
jahansafd
Ideas don't succeed by themselves. Different people will build differently and
therefor succeed accordingly. Hire talented people so that you can reduce the
risk of failure by solving your problem better than anyone else. If you can
execute better than anyone then you shouldn't be worried about people chasing
your idea.

You only realize how much commitment is required when you get around working
on a project. People don't really have the time to build your dream. even If
someone steals your idea, they will only get to the first version of your
product, you have the vision for the later versions and updates (you'll always
be ahead of the game).

------
HCIdivision17
Note that there is a difference between trade secret and a cool idea you have.
If you have an idea that has been implemented, it's a really smart plan to
keep it secret: if the idea's found out, your competition will also likely
know how valuable it is. They'll know it's worth implementing. But
unimplemented ideas are only as useful as their implementation. And getting
people to go along with your ideas? Well, that's where ramming it down their
throats comes in. And if your idea is obvious, well, it's not really a trade
secret either.

And a trade secret's valuable because it has at least some protection legally.

------
engrocer
Immitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

A local startup raised over $300k after stealing my work and trying to pass it
off as their own but they had no idea how to execute on it after they raised.
They're now grasping at how to find product-market fit and they've pivoted
thrice because they can't pull-off what they ripped-off. We've found companies
in Europe that came up with the same idea because the verticals we work in are
more evolved there. Seeing others conjuring similar ideas validates that we're
on the right track in a new market ripe with opportunity.

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OldSchool
Since we don't manufacture much in the US anymore it's becoming unpatriotic to
not worship intellectual "property." It's almost all we've got. But still,
some very successful people have chimed in to the contrary:

Napolean Hill (Think and Grow Rich): Ideas without action are impotent

Thomas Edison: Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent
perspiration (he became a litigious bastard anyway)

If you're in business to make money, almost without exception it's going to be
all about making and keeping people happy. That takes ongoing work, it only
starts with an idea.

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PaulHoule
If you have visible success, you have a target on your back. If you don't,
your risk of getting ripped off is small, and as the author puts it, you have
to force your ideas down people's throats.

Look at what happens when something like Twitter or Ebay takes off. The idea
isn't difficult to clone at all, and quickly you see competitors of all sorts
show up -- often very experienced and well capitalized.

Those two companies got protection not from patents and other paperwork, but
from network effects and the first mover advantage.

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jfc
It's quite conceivable that someone will steal your idea, if it's a good one.
The question is the degree to which they can impact your ultimate execution of
the idea--and that depends on a range of factors, from market dynamics to your
own ingenuity.

Whenever I hear a common refrain in an industry that something doesn't happen,
I know immediately that it absolutely does happen, but that acknowledging it
doesn't fit with the existing culture for some reason.

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18pfsmt
I think this notion varies depending on whether one is discussing B2C or B2B.

I would love for some smart folks to "steal" my idea, and build a real
marketplace for spot-freight, but nobody with talent seems interested. I
believe this has to do with a lack of knowledge about the specific industry.
As a result, I've been building a solution myself, slowly but surely.

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jseims
If you're just at the "idea stage", then no one is going to steal your idea.

If you've progressed further and have some traction, some lessons learned in
customer acquisition channels, etc., _then_ you should be cautious about what
you share because your information has real value.

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padobson
You may want to avoid sharing your ideas with anyone who has a keen
understanding of the patent system.

If you get out-executed, its your fault for not executing. If someone steals
your execution because they patented your idea, then it might have been better
to keep your mouth shut.

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pratyushmittal
Mohnish Pabrai explains this concept of "cloning" really well:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBXRNH9VfhA&feature=youtu...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBXRNH9VfhA&feature=youtu.be)

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raintrees
I would think there is value in the NDA for the legal side of VC/Funding.
Isn't protecting one's Intellectual Property seen as prudent, and one of the
checkboxes to check in evaluating a business plan?

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jriley
On related note, I let fear of plagiarism be an excuse not to publish content
to blogs. I've since found free tools (i.e. Copyscape) that help protect
content creators.

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SethMurphy
Sharing your ideas with the right people helps make them better. The more
feedback I get on an idea, the better I am able to nurture it and execute it
in a useful way.

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milesli
I disagree what the article is talking about. I believe the ideas matter! but
most of them just don't work, we need to try them out and get the right one.

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level09
ideas that are easy to reproduce and implement can be easily stolen. for
example, you buy a Groupon clone for a few hundred bucks, in some countries
these clones are more dominant than Groupon itself.

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dmritard96
sure - but signing a generic NDA on a cheap piece of copy paper doesn't cost
much...so w/e, if it makes someone feel better then don't worry about it.

~~~
nlh
I'd respectfully disagree -- it depends who you are. Many entrepreneurs,
rightly or wrongly, will treat that NDA as their own provisional
patent/trademark/copyright. What if you sign that NDA and start working on a
related project? (Or an unrelated project that becomes related, or a project
that independently comes up with similar ideas/tech?).

The problem with signing an NDA is that by definition you're not sure what
you're about to see. If you sign one and then the entrepreneur says "so my
idea is to send a rocket to Mars" and you later take a job a SpaceX, get ready
to be pursued (again, rightly or wrongly.)

In general, it's not good advice to take a "whatever" attitude with legal
documents. The fewer you're bound to, the better.

~~~
dmritard96
good point. I guess where I would have a legal objection to that line of
thought is that an NDA != patent/trademark/copyright - and if it does then it
is not strictly an NDA. Certainly maintaining independence of legal bindings
is a nice freedom, but knowing what you sign (or choose not to sign) is
probably the smart thing to do for any legal document.

"The problem with signing an NDA is that by definition you're not sure what
you're about to see." - I am not sure I agree with this (sorry for being
picky). To me an NDA means you won't share some material with another party.
Whether you already know what that material is or not doesn't really have much
to do with what an NDA is. That being said, odds are you won't know
beforehand...

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drp4929
... but somebody can out-execute you on your own idea.

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felixchan
I guess someone has never seen the social network.

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paulhauggis
The problem is that there are companies and people with way more resources
than you out there.

They could take your idea and execute it faster and maybe even better than
you.

Look at Zynga: They continue to rip-off smaller developers because they have a
much bigger pool of resources.

~~~
daliusd
There are ideas that big companies will never execute - because throwing
5000-20000$ per month might be simply not worth that.

Recommended reading: The Bootstrapper's Bibles

~~~
paulhauggis
What if my idea is big? Should I just hope they won't take it from me?

~~~
daliusd
I see several option:

1) double check your idea. I have not come to any unique idea of my own that
is not implemented yet or not in implementation stage. In some cases
implementations are really poor but still they exist.

2) You have some know-how what makes implementation of your idea successful.
They can steal your idea but they will fail to implement it successfully (some
comments in this discussion give example of this).

Let's say your idea is really big and you implement it first. So what? If it
is really good to be copied they will copy it faster than you will get your
first paying customers.

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mattyppants
Except for Zuck, he'll steal the shit outta your Hipster Coffee Shop Wifi app.

~~~
sh_vipin
Ha ha ... Too good as an example. I also agree that it better be safe than
sorry.

