This is a pet peeve of mine. When someone talks about having their idea stolen, it really bothers me. It especially bothers me if they tell me "now don't steal my idea, but..."
I don't want your idea. I have too many of my own. Here, take some of mine. Most likely, I'll think your idea is shit anyway, because almost all ideas are shit when they are just an idea. For an idea to have value it needs to be backed by something tangible. As the article says, ideas are a dime a dozen. Execution is where the [value] lies.
I seem to get a new great idea every time I drink a beer. That's what I want to tell friends every time they come to me with a "great idea" I should implement (as business partners, of course).
That said, I still love hearing people's ideas. Just don't expect me to act on it.
I'm sure a lot of people here have a lot of ideas. But there is a big difference between "an idea" and "a good idea".
I have a lot of ideas too, but I often find a rather critical flaw somewhere sooner or later, or I fall out of love with the idea because in the end... it wasn't that good.
Finding a truly good idea, one that still stands after weeks of simmering, that looks good under all angles (product is actually buildable, the customers are there and reachable and willing to pay, you're not likely to have to compete with the Googles of the world, etc..) doesn't happen all the time. Discovering a hole in a market, and realizing a lot of people are walking right past a gold mine that you believe is there is something you may want to keep close to your chest. Especially when you're talking to other entrepreneurs.
Few random ideas, rewritten from my ideas.org file in a personal Wiki. Enjoy:
- wireless VGA adapter - one part plugs into a VGA port of your laptop, other into the display, and you can work on a second screen (or a projector) while sitting with a laptop on a couch, and you don't have to care about the display cable.
- multi-way TODO sync - a set of open-source converters of TODO lists and associated service. Open source mostly so that one person don't have to write them all, and could instead crowdsource the project. Converters would most likely have to utilize an intermediate format, e.g. one module would convert from Due Today to the common format, and another from common format to, say, Emacs .org files. Motivation: this way I could use Org Mode on my computer, Due Today on my phone, Outlook at work, etc. etd.
Sorta compared to the vga adapter idea, I'd like to see the pcweasel updated to the now. HDMI, usb (mouse,keyboard,storage) all over HTML5. Make it a hundred bucks and I will buy 10.
TODO sync is good, make is a service on heroku, ec2, etc.
The sims editor should allow you to put your own face on it. have it painted by someone in vietnam.
1. An app for helping freelancers estimate their income taxes. It takes their "estimated" income for the year (ideally a slightly low estimate) and then they record each invoice/payment. It tells them how much to set aside from each for income taxes at the end of the year considering their local tax rules. I'd kill for this if it was super simple to use and erred on the side of caution with amounts (I'd rather have too much set aside then too little). I'd like to actually implement this one myself if I ever get time.
2. Custom ready meals. Design and order customized microwavable/prepackaged meals and have them delivered to your door (logistics issue here). Great for all sorts of situations but mostly targeted at busy people who find themselves eating out too much, especially those with special diets. Could allow limitless variety.
3. An easier/cheaper way to post podcast episodes on a schedule. Try running a regular podcast and you'll get some idea of how limited the options are.
4. I strongly suspect there's room for yet another photo social app that is effectively snap chat (easily send photos to specific people) but where the photos stick around. Instagram has implemented this feature but it's a bit buried under all the other options and I don't think anyone uses it. Simplicity will rule this arena.
5. A daily deal monitoring service that alerts you when a specific product you need goes on sale on one of the many deal sites. For example, I want a robot vacuum (who doesn't?!) but it's not an emergency. I definitely do not subscribe to or watch daily deals. I want to sign up for an alert when someone has a daily deal for cheap robot vacuums.
If any of these exist, let me know. I want all of them.
Please build a project milestone tree site. The idea would be that the users can make a project. Then split that project up in milestones, and then those milestones can be split into more, etc..
I think that fits very well to how the planning for a software project should work. Bonus points if you can make it into a Trello like system where you can assign team members to milestones etc.
And generalize it so the underlying framework can be used in other areas, such as manufacturing, where you need to estimate the time/cost to build an assembly, which is itself composed of other subassemblies. Then have the ability to store those subtrees separately, so if you're estimating a new product with some subassemblies you previously estimated, you can reuse that data.
That's a product you can actually sell to any number of small manufacturing businesses worldwide.
- a Bitcoin exchange which can support fast algorithmic trading
- an encyclopedia of objects that can be combined together (your algorithms are such that you can find from their 3d shapes, specs and connectors which parts / machines can be combined together).
@ 1. Craigslist style email obfuscation as a service.
problem: i have a marketplace type website where my users would like to be contacted but not have their emails be made public.
how it works: i set a subdomain of my site, mail.mysite.com to an ip address you designate. on demand, i make an api call to your service (emailobfuscationasaservice.com) with
emailobfuscationasaservice.com responds with either a success message and an anonymized, temporary email address like 239fag72wa@mail.mysite.com (the subdomain i gave you) or an error message like "no such user at that domain" or "domain doesn't exist" or something.
the email address lives until the expiration timestamp. if the obfuscated email receives a message, you forward it to the "real_address".
if "obfuscate_replies" was set to true at email creation time, then if the person responds, you play middleman for both parties and force all their emails to go through you (basically you create another obscured email for person who writes to the obscured email).
if "callback_url" was set, that means that I, the operator of mysite.com, want to be notified of activity at the obscured email address, so you POST activity to the specified url. that lets me do things like update activity feeds in my app for the user.
@ 3. Basecamp for travel planning (I imagine this already exists).
I am on a trip with some friends right now. We have ideas for stuff we want to do but its all poorly organized in email and google spreadsheets. Basically the things we want to do are: tourist sites, activities, food.
A cool app would let us create a group like in basecamp, state our destination, then let us start typing things in we want to do. those get matched to existing review sites or links that contain information about them and put on a map.
in an unfamiliar place this is useful because it lets me group items/events geographically and plan my trip better. it would let people plan an itinerary together, asyncronously and make comments on possible activities for the group.
(other smart features: places to stay, modes of transportation, notes like "don't forget to get your visa by date XXX").
Basically a crud app. how to monetize? no idea. affiliate commissions on airbnb, event tickets, etc? i want it, wouldn't build it. the backend isn't hard, getting the UI right would be a challenge.
Regarding 1., I actually had an idea for a complete communication suite (email, voice, texting) but anonimized.
The realization came when I was exchanging contact info with a stranger on CL who was selling an iPhone.Why was this person now privy to my G+ profile? my phone number? etc...
The service would create "channels", each with a temporary telephone number (that works with texting) and an email. You use these to communicate with the seller/buyer/whatever and when you're done you disable the channel.
To communicate you would download an app to your phone that allows you to view messages and reply, or even place calls.
Anyways I didn't build it because I wasn't passionate enough about the idea, and I figured it would mostly be used for nefarious purposes. Also, there are some legal implications if somebody becomes the victim of a crime while meeting someone using my anonimized communication service.
Implementation of this technical problem left as an exercise for the person who "steals" this idea.
For 3 you can check out TripIt: you can just forward your bookings or notes to them, and they'll either parse it properly (if they recognise the provider/airline etc) or just file it for your review later. It's not exactly what you said, but close.
I'm pretty sure 1 exists as well, but I can't remember the name.
>> "It especially bothers me if they tell me "now don't steal my idea, but..."
I don't want your idea."
I take another stance on this. If you don't want me to steal your idea, don't tell me it. If you tell me it and I think I can execute on it better or quicker or I think I have a better take on it I'll build it.
I agree. I almost wonder if when people say that it's as if it's their only idea they've ever had. From my experience and some friends, we constantly get new ideas and talk about them. I wish I could build them all. Take some from me and go build it!
The complaint that "someone stole my idea" assumes that ideas are unique to the person who has them first. They're not - most ideas are a more or less obvious evolution of an existing product, and many people come up the same things completely independent of each other.
Most of the time the complaint is really "someone implemented the thing I wasn't ever going to get around to doing and now I'm jealous."
And usually those people call themselves "idea guys" (yes they're usually male), and they're looking for a "tech guy" to implement it for them for free, in exchange the promise of a small cut of the profits.
I was at a tech get-together and a typical one of those guys approached me and asked "Are you a tech guy or an idea guy?" And I was like, "Well, I'm a tech guy, but I like to think that I'm capable of coming up with ideas, too." It only seems like a dichotomy to people who can't program, believe that coming up with ideas is hard, programming is easy, programmers can't think, and need "idea guys" to tell them what to do.
The idea exists outside of your knowledge of it. It is not something you own, therefore cannot be stolen from you. You can own a table, but the idea of a table, something flat with legs that stuff can be placed on, exists without you. This is an old idea, going back to Plato.
If we take the phrase my idea was stolen! literally, then yes, yours is the conclusion we would reach. But the sentiment behind the phrase is more like, the other player cheated by cribbing off your notes; they did not have to invest the labor/time/money you did, and that isn't fair.
Intellectual property is permission to prevent other people from doing something.
In the case of trademarks, you are allowed to prevent people from using a particular name (in order to keep that name unique and meaningful).
In the case of patents, you are allowed to prevent people from "using your idea" (even if it's also their idea). Supposedly this encourages people to develop ideas to the point where they're actually useful (and patentable), but looking at history they don't actually help.
In the case of copyright, you are allowed to prevent people from duplicating or building on your ideas (but in theory not from doing the same thing independently). Similar to patents, this doesn't appear to provide the benefits it's meant to (but it isn't quite as clear).
In no case is an idea a piece of intellectual property. Instead, the property is the right to prevent certain actions. The two cases of (attempted) intellectual property theft that I've heard of are the lawsuits by SCO around the Unix copyrights, and some guy in Florida (I think) who sued the author of some open-source Java model railroad software (I think this had to do with patents rather than copyright).
Physical property also has the saying "possession is nine tenths of the law". That is, the legal power to exclude others tends to be based on an underlying reality.
> Physical property also has the saying "possession is nine tenths of the law".
Which saying is (a) not accurate of physical property, and (b) insofar as it does relate to real legal principles applicable to physical property, those principles are also applicable to intangible personal property.
Really, its more about a presumption against proprietary rights -- as property is the right to exclude others, if ownership can't be proven, no one can be excluded, and whoever is taking an action which would be excludable by another's ownership is safe, even if they cannot prove that they are the owner who would have the right to exclude others.
> Well, they kinda are, otherwise what is intellectual property?
Intellectual property is a subset of the broader category of intangible personal property, and so does not require its subjects to be tangible things.
Further, the subjects of intellectual property are not generally ideas: e.g., copyright protects particular expressions (not the ideas expressed) while patent protects particular applications (not the ideas applied).
> Some type of property, that can be stolen and thus deprive you of something.
> Further, the subjects of intellectual property are not generally ideas: e.g., copyright protects particular expressions (not the ideas expressed) while patent protects particular applications (not the ideas applied).
I disagree.
If someone write a novel and someone else write the same sort of novel, with the same kind of plot and characters, they are not stealing the expression (which would be the way that person write) but the idea. Plagiary is a well established offense AFAIK.
Or there are cases when ideas are actually stolen. :P
My brother and I created a very popular website a couple of years ago called Oracle of Legends. It was a League of Legends fansite with a LOT of features that are now copied elsewhere.
Loking.net didn't have the skin viewer it now has. They saw our skin viewer (granted it wasn't "ours") and built one themselves.
Ultimately a large team funded by ZAM Network's limitless supply of money won over two guys in South America with limited time and money.
My brother and I are now a powerhouse though, and we're building a new website for a new game we enjoy playing. THIS time, I don't care if the competition has more money, we'll win through sheer excellence and localization (something large websites from ZAM don't have).
It was a great experience for me and it landed me a lot of contracting work. :)
And there are cases where ideas just happen at the same time.
A few years ago, I wrote a puzzle game called Coco Loco. It was an angry birds style "throw the thing at the other thing and collect the things" but with actual puzzles and items you could deform the levels with to solve the puzzles more easily.
I had a free demo out of the first 10 levels, it got good feedback from testers, and I was ready to roll out a version with 50 levels.
Then, another angry birds style "throw the thing at the other thing and collect the things" but with actual puzzles and items you could deform the levels with, called Coco Loco (trademark), got released.
My initial reaction was that they'd taken my name, my level ideas, and put a larger team on it to get the game out.
Of course, they hadn't.
Turns out, we had both come up with very similar ideas, and the exact same name, at the same time.
These things happen. Thankfully, all the puzzle design work I did could be applied to my current project, Spheretic. (http://notnowlewis.com/spheretic/ if anyone's interested!)
There is only one problem when it comes to competition: can you make money without competition?
If you have not figured out how you are going to do this, then moneyed competitors will beat you. If you have figured it out, then my experience shows that you will continue to make money, even if the competition matches you feature-for-feature.
We should probably talk, contact me at ivanca[at]gmail, I'm a Colombian developer living in the bay area (California) who is also passionate about videogames.
obfuscating your email is useless. spam harvesters know all the common methods. just put your email in your profile if you don't want it showing up in threads.
also, security through obscurity is also a flawed concept to begin with. your obfuscation efforts do absolutely zilch compared to google's gmail team and their spam detection techniques.
But, he didn't put .com. How can they possibly deal with that anomaly?
Seriously, I've wondered what people think they are accomplishing when they write a phone number like 2five5-3seven6-2one1four on a craigslist ad. Bots are going to find it just as easily and humans can read it.
Can you claim a skin viewer for a specific game as your idea though? Skin viewers for various games have probably been around longer than I've been alive
To be perfectly honest, people can steal your idea.
Case in point, back before we launched our first startup, I went out to a trade-fair asking people their opinion about our conceptual product as if it was something we had already built.
I must have talked to maybe 50+ people that one specific day, but one person in particular was very interested in it and wanted to keep in touch.
A bunch of years later, that guy turns out to have been part of another company, in a similar field, with a bigger network, a bigger budget and an existing infrastructure that matched. Over these past years, they've changed their entire company to align with our startup's little idea and actually managed to capture a significant part of the market by launching simultaneously to us rather than following our lead.
The point is, don't ever assume that your neighbor who is an accountant will steel your mobile app idea.
On the other hand, when you are talking to the CEO of a company that is developing mobile experiences about your awesome idea, then don't be surprised if suddenly that company suddenly does take your idea and execute it better than you ever could have.
When you are trying to gain actual "first mover advantage", there are situations where it's not a good idea to tell your idea.
Counter point (thought not arguing against what the actual article content contained, which "was we tried that idea years ago, but failed").
I've been contacted by investors before to look at business plans/technology. They didn't like the founders/team, or thought the idea was really good, but missing a couple things, or they had a different direction they'd run it in. So idea theft does happen. Those with money, power and contacts with the ability to execute DO take ideas and run with them on their own.
The investors were inspired by the startup/founder idea....and then they go execute without original team, assembling their own crack team of pros to execute.
I'm not surprised we don't talk about this sort of thing around here more often. It's a gigantic, dirty pile of laundry no one wants to touch. No one in their right mind would defend the practice. The people doing it will deny it. Those who have suffered from it are often publicaly shamed for suggesting such (see a lot of the general attitudes of the comments in this thread).
It makes sense that this practice is more prevalent than people wish to think. Maybe one factor that explains so many "me-too" startups?
Edit: Maybe I could call this phenomenon "Idea inspiration."
"They didn't like the founders/team, or thought the idea was really good, but missing a couple things, or they had a different direction they'd run it in. So idea theft does happen. "
My two cents:
You can't steal what isn't owned. If you think my idea is really good and then you act on it, you haven't stolen anything from me. I never owned that idea because ideas can't be owned. What if someone else three thousand miles away has the same idea? Do we both own it? Did you steal it from both of us?
On the other hand if, in your scenario, there was an established business plan, and other proprietary details that were taken, that's theft.
There is a Japanese animation from 2009 called Eden of the East, in which the main character funds a software startup that has a product which is very similar to that: take pictures on your phone and tap onto a network of users to identify objects in the picture, while at the same time training its AI capabilities based on the responses people give
I'm not really trying to make any particular point, it's a pretty clever series that touches on japanese social issues though. And I guess I'm agreeing with the OP in that ideas can come from anywhere.
Something I noticed a while back: many people have the same idea at the same time since the timing is just right and things come together.
A few years back I had the idea for Dashboardy (and still have to domain name): a simple tool that just consumed multiple saas apps and their statistics in one beautiful looking dashboard. No one could offer me that. I did not built it, but a few months later Geckoboard and others where there and deliver exactly what I was looking for at the time.
Earlier a few friends launched Avertize, a simple app to get overlays on your Twitter picture: no one doing it when they started building it. But on the other end of the world a day before our launch someone launched the exact same app.
And more examples like this. People, completely unknowingly of each other have the same idea at roughly the same time. Strange? No: the timing and trends are right and the market is just asking for these things.
The uniqueness therefor is not in the idea. The win is in the execution.
Agreed, especially when it happens to you a dozen times in 5-7 years. I have ideas that I've had to wait 2 years for them to be implemented (by others, usually the big names) and I've had a few that took 6-7 years. Members of my family have startups so I have a sense of what it takes to make it work (operate), let alone make it successful. Part of the equation, though, is implementing in the right environment and/or point in time, like the article says.
What is an idea really? If it's a one-liner like "a social network for college students" then sure, it's has little value. Give the same one-liner idea to different people and the outcome will be completely different. But there is more to an idea than that, the founder usually has a much more refined understanding for how to make it work.
For example, today most techies have a fairly good understanding of why Facebook took off, meaning we have as good or even better understanding than Zuckerberg had when he started out. So with this understanding, would we be able to recreate the success of Facebook if we were to rewind time? It would be a lot more likely. So ideas in the sense that you have an understanding for what to build and why, and how to make it work is far from worthless.
if someone stole your idea. it wasn't a good idea. not to say you couldn't make you alot of money off of it, but really you came up with a predictable idea any analytical or entrepreneurial individual would derive given the context/problem. now it's a "lottery". who executes/implements the best increases the odds of winning. that'a crapshoot (oversimplification obviously...you get the point).
on the other-hand, truly good ideas are nearly irreproducible, because there is a probably a very small chance someone will see the vision in your way.
ideas are art. decent art is reproducible. good art is not.
A big part of the success of a project is the marketing and the names behind it. Someone linked me to Jelly a few days ago and I brushed it off not thinking it was that great of an idea. Then today I saw a post title "Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone Explains The Surprising Goal Of His New Company" and thought, "oh Twitter Co-Founder? Maybe I should take a second look at this app".
I even had a small MVP, but gave up on it. Gumroad came along and built a great product. Your idea matters very little. And Gumroad didn't steal anything.
My thought on this is that, I think up "my" idea so that way it benefits people in some way and because I feel the market is not satisfying a need as well as for my own use. So if someone else comes in and does it and I can use it, I actually see that as a good thing as I would rather see software solve problems than never exist.
One example I keep getting stuck on is a Craigslist competitor I've worked off and on as a side project for the past 3 or so years. Every time I get frustrated or stuck on some aspect I think of another way to get past it. I still haven't seen anything really competitive emerge in the space that users have wanted. If it isn't my idea that executes the vision and it is someone else, I will still be happy that it happened at all as I think eBay/Craigslist duopoly is not enough or sufficient for C2C/B2C local and shipping transactions.
I hate the you stole my idea logic, because it's insulting to the people that actually succeeded. For example, let's take the Oculus Rift. VR headsets have been around for a long time, and all sorts of companies have tried to implement them and failed. New attempts show up on the radar all the time, and disappear even quicker. If the Oculus Rift proves to be successful, you'll have other companies complaining they stole the idea of VR, or your grandmother is going to say she thought of VR when she was a child, and she'd be a millionaire if it wasn't for the Oculus Rift stealing her thunder.
Meanwhile in reality, the idea is not what made the platform successful, but the countless hours and minds invested in nailing the execution. As I said, it's an insult to say otherwise.
I really appreciate the author's attitude, and I suppose it helps that it aligns well with my philosophy of execution over ideation :-)
One of the things to keep in mind is that ideas are rarely successful in a vacuum. That is to say that an idea that is an accelerent on other things around it, is often more successful than a standalone idea. When an idea makes other things 'better' people invested in those other parts of the system encourage its adoption.
I often point people at comparisons of open hardware vs closed hardware. When you have open hardware you get a bunch of different people who are invested in it succeeding and that builds a stronger product base and a bigger area of effect. People with proprietary hardware solutions just don't get the extra lift.
I'm not really concerned about my ideas.
I'm concerned about someone taking advantage of all my time and effort validating a potential market with an mvp, then swooping in with a slight tweak and crushing me with a new viewpoint and excellent, well funded execution.
I think that's just plain market competition :)
I'd like some way to say ..."hey...I'm going to try something out....I'd like for nobody on the planet to compete for at least 5 years while I give it my best. After that feel free, but in the meantime leave the potential market all to me."
I think that's how some people expect to (ab)use the patent system to their advantage.
I think its okay, isn't it the ultimate LITMUS TEST. If you instantly gave up after you googled that the idea has be done or "stolen". Then you were never passion enough to tackle it in the first place - in the first sign of 'competition'.
We are naturally go through this - and yes those people need to suck it up and should be actually EXCITED their idea was implemented - and if you are truly passionate about the idea, you should consider on joining the new team rather than scorn them.
They brag about their idea was "stolen" because they just desire the riches the successful implementation founders have received.
Someone showed me an online service yesterday which does location based notifications and peddles it as an original idea. Now in the past 20 years, and with growing frequency (due to smartphones), I have heard this idea explained; I helped a company pitch it to investors in 1999. Yet still people think this is a) original b) worth asking me to sign a NDA for.
A lot of people seem to 'steal' my ideas; the ones I executed and didn't execute. Except they stole nothing nor did they necessarily get the idea from me :) I'm not a big fan of 'ideas'. Execute them and work hard to make them into a success.
Is there a difference between having your idea stolen and being to far ahead of your time? It would seem OP inferred that was part of the problem:
"In 2009, Charoo and I built Viewpointr. It was ahead of its time and today, Biz Stone and co, launched Jelly.co. They seem to have got it right… time will tell."
Sometimes I guess you just have to wait until the market is ready for your product? As opposed to arguing someone stole your idea?
Timing is very very very (I could keep going) hard. Mostly it is luck, a few very perceptive people can see all the network flows that need to come into place for an idea to take hold in the collective consciousness.
If we operated on a different location in the economic parameter space we would solve a problem, and if it didn't fit into the current graph, we would shelve it only to reactivate it later when it could fit.
Ideas cannot be stolen - it does not disappear once it has been appropriated. Ideas can however be misattributed; ie, if someone takes credit for what they knowingly did not invent. Ideas can be formulated independently. Some ideas are so obvious you think you already had them (but this might just be confirmation bias/memory bias.)
Years ago I heard so many people say they had an idea for Youtube before Youtube ... and some of these people can't even code. It's my vice that I'm not proud of, but whenever I heard it I felt like slapping that person.
I can do better than that, so feel free to slap me :) My partner Michael had a working implementation for a youtube like service and we both agreed it would be better to concentrate on our 'live' business because it was already making money.
Well you had a working service that you actually built, I have respect for that. Never-mind, you don't know how things would turn out in your case and you built a business with revenue - that's awesome.
How about this one: the CEO of the most popular desktop 3D printer company has been on our waiting list for the first cloud printing software for four months and they just released 3 products with that feature at CES
what if your idea is an algorithm that can take a photo of someone and tell your their age? If you have a detailed understanding of how the algorithm will work (and what won't) and you have proved it will work, someone can steal that? Is that OK?
I agree with the "ideas are nothing without execution" but I feel like this applies largely to the consumer web/apps field. There are a lot of other 'ideas' that have taken years (maybe even a lifetime) of research and work.
Look out everyone, we've got a crazy and very original idea here!
I'm sorry for the overwrought sarcasm, but hasn't this been understood around these parts for, what, years now? Why the hell is this blog post on the front page?
I don't want your idea. I have too many of my own. Here, take some of mine. Most likely, I'll think your idea is shit anyway, because almost all ideas are shit when they are just an idea. For an idea to have value it needs to be backed by something tangible. As the article says, ideas are a dime a dozen. Execution is where the [value] lies.