The Great Startup Idea That I Can’t Reveal (Yet)

Finding a great idea for your startup or Fair Project is the first step to a captivating journey.

Sharing your idea with others is the first step to success. Many software developers I meet are so scared to have their idea stolen that they refuse to tell you anything at all.

Reality Check

Do you know how many people are out there, waiting for you to reveal the greatest idea since slice bread, so they can copy and run away with it? None sounds about right.

Let me tell you a story. I have been through enough interviews with journalists to know that when the person you are talking to says that your idea is “interesting”, it really means that they have no clue what you just said.

It’s the same in social interactions. Of 10 people you may talk to, four will politely say “interesting idea”. Three will give you blank stares. At best, two may tell you that it’s pretty good and actually engage in a conversation that shows they know a thing or two about your space.

The Idea Test

Here are four ideas for a product:

  • a better search algorithm for the semantic web
  • a voice conferencing system that allows multiple concurrent discussions
  • a community for software developers to share revenue
  • a home device that offers multi-room MP3 streaming

Now, be honest. How many of these ideas did you think were so insanely great that you want to drop your own plans and jump on it?

None.

Believe it or not, each of these ideas has someone today, obsessing full-time to make it a reality.

You may have noticed that I missed one person in my count of the 10 people you may talk to. Here it is:

You may have a meeting with a VC and maybe that VC invites his entrepreneur-in-residence (EIR) in the room. And maybe the EIR is looking for a cool idea. And maybe his space happens to be pretty much yours. So he might use some of your ideas, morph them into his own, and six months later start something that shares some vague resemblance with the idea you had. Do you notice the number of maybes?

Execution is what turns great ideas into great companies. Most people are pretty decent at seeing where technology is going. Fewer are good at orchestrating all the moving parts so that everything falls in place at the right time.

So next time you chat with me or anyone else, forget the NDA.

FairSoftware is a community of entrepreneurs where you can find co-founders, form your first startup instantly and help each other by exchanging advice on how to start web and iPhone apps.

Posted March 11, 2009 by Alain Raynaud. Comments and trackbacks are open. Follow the comments feed.
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  • k
    “Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If they’re any good, you’ll have to ram them down their throats!” -Howard Aiken
  • Andrej
    "Now, be honest. How many of these ideas did you think were so insanely great that you want to drop your own plans and jump on it?

    None."

    That's right. Meaning, of course, that they don't belong in the category "The Great Startup Idea That I Can’t Reveal (Yet)".

    That could very well be the definition of "The Great Startup Idea That I Can’t Reveal (Yet)": the one that everybody jumps on instantly.
  • We tend to do be over-protective of our code too, which I think hurts it in the end. "OMG! Someone will steal this awesome code I wrote!" :)
  • Of all the possible things one can steal, code is the most difficult. An idea, I can understand, tweak it in my head and go do something similar.

    Code you didn't design is a nightmare to understand. It will have bugs of course, so good luck finding them and fixing them.

    Legally, it's also the most likely to leave a trail. In the Avant! case (http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/01...), English mistakes in comments and error messages were found in both products. That pretty much settled the case right there.
  • But someone did make my idea into a reality. In fairness they asked me first before they did it.

    In response to google's project10tothe100 which sort of fizzled out here:
    http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/update-f...

    The website that was created was:
    http://www.project10tothe100now.org/
  • chistopherlee
    > a home device that offers multi-room MP3 streaming

    Sonos. It's the best. www.sonos.com
  • John
    There was this blog post on 11points.com that listed movies that have come out in pairs. Two similar movies almost at the same time. Do you think those movies could be just a coincidence?
  • b4r3f00t
    Well, your logic is strongly flawed. The chance that maybe someone could steal it, is still a chance. It is small, but it does not need to be big, to create horrible consequences.
    I think you can imagine too, that this means, it *will* happen from time to time. And that this one instance can be yours.
    Which was the point of the whole “I don’t want to reveal it.” in the first place.

    What we want, is an absolute and total physically guaranteed certainty, that nobody can take the idea away.
    Any chance, no matter how small, is still a chance. And therefore completely unacceptable.
  • Hu
    Then don't tell anyone about your idea. And don't try to execute it. And best of all, just forget all of it, so you don't reveal it accidentally to anyone ;)
    In this way you can be absolutely sure that if someone else is able to execute the same idea in a few years or decades, it is an independent discovery and not stolen from you .
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    TRADESKILLSLLC EXTINCTCULTURE Matthew Lane Tripp
  • Great info and stuff. Thanks for the post.
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