7 ms·

They Will Steal Your Idea. They Cannot Steal What Really Matters.

124 points by jasonlbaptiste 16y ago

thinkcomp 16y ago
Sorry Jason, but you have no idea what you're talking about here. Having been in the real-life version of that movie for the past six years I have a pretty good notion of what can and cannot be taken away by another, and it's a lot more than what your post would lead people to believe.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- sophacles 16y ago
  Unfortunately you are quite wrong. Fortunately by the rules you apparently play by, I need not provide any evidence or explanation to such a declaration, just the smug empty statement itself. Edit: the original parent said (from memory, maybe not 100% accurate): "Sorry Jason, you don't know what you are talking about here." I wouldn't be so snarky about the edited parent.
  - thinkcomp 16y ago
    I made the edit before you posted, though I guess the statement is still smug and empty in your view. All the evidence you need is in my profile or pretty easy to find on Google...whereas I don't even know who you are because your profile is blank.
    - sophacles 16y ago
      You made the edit while I was posting. The edited post is different, like I have mentioned. My reply was to the original. It's a classic concurrency problem. A = thinkcomp, B = me: A posts A starts editing (1) B starts replying (2) A finishes editing (and sees no reply) B finishes replying (and sees edit) B edits his post * (1) and (2) can be reversed for this point to be the same Based on this sequence, there it is reasonable for you to think I was replying to your edited post. It is not the case tho, please take my word for it. HN provides no way for me to know that you are editing as I write. As for profile etc, you are the one making the claim, it is your responsibility to present qualifying references if you want me to think your statements are valid, not my job to chase down the source of every 2 sentence comment on HN.
- jasonlbaptiste 16y ago
  I understand where you're coming from since it's strikes a very personal chord with you+facebook (it might only do that for a few other people in the world.) The facebook examples in the post are meant to be small examples within the context there. There's certainly more than meets the eye and I certainly don't have any idea about the details/final arrangements between you and Mark. You could replace the facebook example with other similar examples in business. If you want to refute the arguments with your own personal first hand experiences in the Facebook situation that would be useful.
  - thinkcomp 16y ago
    Jason, Here's why I have an issue with your post. Intellectual property theft has a number of effects that directly follow, all of which are serious. You lose: - Credibility and trust. There's always that hint of distrust when people meet you because they have heard that you have made a claim on person X who "stole" Y from you. They may not know anything about the details, but (they worry) maybe you'll make that same claim again...on them! Worse, if they don't know anything about it but only find out later through rumors, you will probably never hear anything from that person again. Whether or not you are right and whether or not you have evidence, you will always be referred to in the media as the person "who claims that he" _____, not the person "who" _____. - Credit. If something really was taken from you that you created, chances are you aren't going to be recognized for it. - Money. If you decide to stand up for yourself it costs a lot of money, typically in the six figures, but certainly no less than five. For the Winklevosses in the movie of course it cost low eight figures (though I'm not making a statement about their claims). - Health. Anyone who has fought any major legal proceeding knows that it's pretty much guaranteed to have an effect on your health. - Legal rights. If the person who took the intellectual property later uses a catalyst (like venture capital) to get ahead, you can be left not only minus your work, but also minus legal protections associated with it that are now attributed to the person who took it. - Social relationships. There are three separate ways social relationships are impaired. If a large number of people become associated with the person who took the intellectual property (likely once again with venture capital), then you will automatically be isolated from those people no matter how decent they themselves may be. Dating is harder (see credibility and trust). Hiring, getting hired, or finding co-founders is harder, too (also see credibility and trust). - Rebound potential. The only way to negate all of the above, which apply whether you are right or wrong, and whether the facts are available or not, is to become richer than the other person. Otherwise you are basically stuck. As for the points in your article: - Long term vision. Irrelevant, it can be supplanted with a different one, for better or for worse. - Analytical insights. Irrelevant. - Domain expertise. No, they can't steal it, but it can usually be replicated to some degree. - Talent. No, they can't steal it, but it can definitely be replicated through other hires. - Passion for great service? Sorry, but give me a break. What American consumer expects great service these days and will immediately turn away from a company due to a lack of it? Irrelevant. - Luck. As I've described above, luck is a lot harder to come by in this position. Anyway, that's my two cents. Sorry, but I just couldn't let this one go. Aaron
- minalecs 16y ago
  if you're going to call him out.. would be nice for more explanation of your situation.
  - webwright 16y ago
    I put it in a different comment, but here's the guy's story: http://nyti.ms/cC0HwJ http://nyti.ms/cC0HwJ He was competing with Facebook in the early days (and had a service that predated it at Harvard by 4 months).
- webwright 16y ago
  I think your experience ILLUSTRATES Jason's points. (note to others: thinkcomp lays claim to the idea of Facebook: http://nyti.ms/cC0HwJ http://nyti.ms/cC0HwJ ) Jason's point boils down to "effort, passion, ambition, execution". While he didn't overtly say it, the point is that ideas are fairly cheap and certainly easy to steal. IANAL, but I don't think there's much/any INVENTION in Facebook-- And clearly the ideas there are stolen pretty liberally by dozens of companies every day. Hell, Twitter swiped the status update, right? In a world where many ideas can't (and shouldn't) really be protected (social web software), what determines who wins? Execution, market sense, effort, guts, timing, and vision. Near as I can tell, you lost on all of those fronts. Nothin' bad about that (other than your ongoing focus on it).
- jonpaul 16y ago
  I think Jason knows exactly what he's talking about. After reading this: http://www.aarongreenspan.com/letter/index.html http://www.aarongreenspan.com/letter/index.html and this: http://venturebeat.com/2007/09/02/who-founded-facebook-aaron-greenspan/ http://venturebeat.com/2007/09/02/who-founded-facebook-aaron... The quote seems very fitting towards you. I understand that this may come off harshly, but I believe it: it's a good thing Mark didn't take the advice you gave in your open letter.
gacba 16y ago
I hear lots of people talk about how their idea is some competitive advantage. Ideas are cheap. Ideas can be stolen. It's how you execute that counts, and that's what Jason's post drives home. Nicely done.
- jasonlbaptiste 16y ago
  Thank you. I didn't use the phrase "ideas are worthless" on purpose. Reason being, they're worth something (maybe not in a tangible form at least). It's actually hard to find an idea that has the right market size, begging for the right product, which you can build a relevant team around it. Now can people steal the idea? Sure. The points I outlined would probably be sub-sections of execution.
  - icey 16y ago
    I like to look at ideas as "potential energy". Not necessarily worthless, but hard to tell how much you get out of them until you actually get them rolling.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
- ryanhuff 16y ago
  There are some fashionable memes running through entrepreneurship circles these days that are routinely mentioned in blogs, etc. (fail quick/often, ideas are cheap, etc). They certainly have merit, but are usually generalizations that can break-down when applied to specific situations. This concept of ideas being cheap/worthless is one of them. Certainly, business ideas on their own usually have little value without execution. But it really depends. If your differentiator is the idea, you are at greater risk of direct competition, and so spreading the idea around without first gaining a foothold is risky, especially if you discuss it with people who are entrepreneurial minded. Sometimes a startup needs breathing room to find a true differentiator beyond the idea. I bet there is a long, long list of people being "wronged" after discussing their plans with others. Feedback is certainly hugely valuable, but people need to be judicious with what, and to whom, they reveal.
willhf 16y ago
A single idea from the human mind can build cities. An idea can transform the world and rewrite all the rules. Which is why they have to steal it.
- roqetman 16y ago
  Not if the idea sits in someone's head. The execution is extremely important. I've had ideas that pre-dated devices like the ipad and iphone by 15 years, but because I didn't do anything with those ideas, they were essentially useless.
  - saint-loup 16y ago
    Now the question is, where is the limit beetween an idea and his execution. If the idea is a vague thing like "a computer that fits in my pocket", then it's just a dream. The most details you have about your idea, the most you're move close its execution.
- apsurd 16y ago
  Humans build cities; or robots that build cities, or robots that build robots that build cities.
  - phob 16y ago
    Or people that build robots that build city-building robots.
steiger 16y ago
And this is the reason the abolishment of Intellectual Property won't make the world any more chaotic or unfair. Ideas are meant to be shared, and the market competitiveness will reward the ones that best execute them.
- eavc 16y ago
  Copyright doesn't cover ideas. It covers the execution of ideas. So if you're going to abolish stuff that merely protects ideas, leave copyright alone.
  - sorbus 16y ago
    That was the intention of copyright, anyways. It's gotten a bit beyond that, to the point that an idea can be copyrighted if phrased correctly. Requiring a working model to be submitted with every application would go a good way towards fixing that issue.
    - eavc 16y ago
      I'm not intimately familiar with the process, but I was unaware that there was such a thing as copyright applications, let alone working models of something that pertains to copyright.
      - nitrogen 16y ago
        If by application you mean registration, then yes, it is required for some purposes, at least in the US: http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#register http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#register
    - roc 16y ago
      You seem to be confusing copyright and patents. Neither of which can protect an idea. Law concerning Trade Secrets comes closest to protecting an idea. But that doesn't preclude parallel development whatsoever, only theft.
nadam 16y ago
I would not be concerned if I would write a web based product. But I am writing a desktop application in Java. Someone with more resources than me can copy my stuff very fast and beat me before I can get real traction. My most important competitive advantage is in the applied algorithms which I was refactoring so much; it is inside the source code. If they steal that, they not only steal my idea, they steal my execution. Of course they can also do it otherwise, but in that case it last more time. The key is in my opinion being ahead 1-2 years, especially in the beginning. So it might be a good idea to obfuscate the code. On the other hand it is better to be open, so it would be cool if I could ship the complete source code so that customers or consultants could customize my product, (or write plugins) which is quite important in the case of this product. It is a really hard decision whether to: - ship only the obfuscated class files - ship the non-obfuscated class files - or ship the whole source code with the product. Being too open too early can be dangerous. Even big companies had problem from being too open (see IBM PC), not to say about a small company which has no traction.
grannyg00se 16y ago
"They cannot steal your market failure driven pivots" "They cannot steal your analytical insights" I believe that after 2 years of prototyping costing thousands of dollars and significant effort, my widget is ready for release. If someone blatantly copies what I have released, they have stolen all of that prototyping experience. That experience contains test market feedback and prototype rework based on market testing as well as any analytical insights that have been gleaned from initial user testing. All of the pre-release trial and error is built into that release design. I have to say I'd like to believe the whole "ideas are cheap - share with everybody" mentality, but there are good reasons that large companies spend millions of dollars on patenting their legitimate inventions. Competitors can come in and steal years of your work overnight simply by copying your design. That gives them an edge. The last thing you want is to help out any competitors by giving them an edge that allows them to catch up almost immediately without spending a dime.
michael_nielsen 16y ago
Here's an idea: try creating the compound Ba-La-Cu-O. It's a pretty simple idea. It can be explained in seconds. Any competent chemist can do it, and probably a lot of incompetent ones as well. But in 1986 that idea was the key step in a Nobel Prize. And it may yet turn out to be the foundation for a massive industry. Sometimes, the idea is nearly all that matters.
- run4yourlives 16y ago
  The fact that the idea is 24 years old and has yet to properly establish itself kinda refutes the fact that it's all that matters, doesn't it?
  - michael_nielsen 16y ago
    I guess if you view winning a Nobel Prize as a failure, then yes, you've refuted my example. I doubt more than a tiny fraction of people would consider that a failure, however. Ideas can, in fact, have value, and that is a function of scarcity. A lot of entrepreneurs apparently misjudge this, thinking that, for example, their idea to create a social network for X (insert verb of choice) is somehow valuable in its own right. But in most cases X is so generic that it's not. The superconductor example I gave is an example where there really is a scarcity, and so there is value.
    - run4yourlives 16y ago
      I'm not saying that ideas have no value whatsoever, because clearly a bad idea properly executed can still be a bad idea. What I am saying though is that there are few ideas that can be not executed and/or executed poorly and still render a success. Of course success is variable, as you point out with regards to the Nobel Prize here. Assume somebody does execute a strategy to effectively monetize the superconductor described. As you point out that's a game changer on levels that will make the Nobel Prize seem rather small.
      - michael_nielsen 16y ago
daten 16y ago
Just because you can't steal what really matters doesn't mean you don't already have it. You could possibly take someone else's idea and execute it better than they would have. What are the odds that the person who came up with the great idea doesn't have the best motivation or resources to make it successful?

124 points by jasonlbaptiste 16y ago

Sorry Jason, but you have no idea what you're talking about here. Having been in the real-life version of that movie for the past six years I have a pretty good notion of what can and cannot be taken away by another, and it's a lot more than what your post would lead people to believe.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
sophacles 16y ago
Unfortunately you are quite wrong. Fortunately by the rules you apparently play by, I need not provide any evidence or explanation to such a declaration, just the smug empty statement itself. Edit: the original parent said (from memory, maybe not 100% accurate): "Sorry Jason, you don't know what you are talking about here." I wouldn't be so snarky about the edited parent.
- thinkcomp 16y ago
  I made the edit before you posted, though I guess the statement is still smug and empty in your view. All the evidence you need is in my profile or pretty easy to find on Google...whereas I don't even know who you are because your profile is blank.
  - sophacles 16y ago
    You made the edit while I was posting. The edited post is different, like I have mentioned. My reply was to the original. It's a classic concurrency problem. A = thinkcomp, B = me: A posts A starts editing (1) B starts replying (2) A finishes editing (and sees no reply) B finishes replying (and sees edit) B edits his post * (1) and (2) can be reversed for this point to be the same Based on this sequence, there it is reasonable for you to think I was replying to your edited post. It is not the case tho, please take my word for it. HN provides no way for me to know that you are editing as I write. As for profile etc, you are the one making the claim, it is your responsibility to present qualifying references if you want me to think your statements are valid, not my job to chase down the source of every 2 sentence comment on HN.
jasonlbaptiste 16y ago
I understand where you're coming from since it's strikes a very personal chord with you+facebook (it might only do that for a few other people in the world.) The facebook examples in the post are meant to be small examples within the context there. There's certainly more than meets the eye and I certainly don't have any idea about the details/final arrangements between you and Mark. You could replace the facebook example with other similar examples in business. If you want to refute the arguments with your own personal first hand experiences in the Facebook situation that would be useful.
- thinkcomp 16y ago
  Jason, Here's why I have an issue with your post. Intellectual property theft has a number of effects that directly follow, all of which are serious. You lose: - Credibility and trust. There's always that hint of distrust when people meet you because they have heard that you have made a claim on person X who "stole" Y from you. They may not know anything about the details, but (they worry) maybe you'll make that same claim again...on them! Worse, if they don't know anything about it but only find out later through rumors, you will probably never hear anything from that person again. Whether or not you are right and whether or not you have evidence, you will always be referred to in the media as the person "who claims that he" _____, not the person "who" _____. - Credit. If something really was taken from you that you created, chances are you aren't going to be recognized for it. - Money. If you decide to stand up for yourself it costs a lot of money, typically in the six figures, but certainly no less than five. For the Winklevosses in the movie of course it cost low eight figures (though I'm not making a statement about their claims). - Health. Anyone who has fought any major legal proceeding knows that it's pretty much guaranteed to have an effect on your health. - Legal rights. If the person who took the intellectual property later uses a catalyst (like venture capital) to get ahead, you can be left not only minus your work, but also minus legal protections associated with it that are now attributed to the person who took it. - Social relationships. There are three separate ways social relationships are impaired. If a large number of people become associated with the person who took the intellectual property (likely once again with venture capital), then you will automatically be isolated from those people no matter how decent they themselves may be. Dating is harder (see credibility and trust). Hiring, getting hired, or finding co-founders is harder, too (also see credibility and trust). - Rebound potential. The only way to negate all of the above, which apply whether you are right or wrong, and whether the facts are available or not, is to become richer than the other person. Otherwise you are basically stuck. As for the points in your article: - Long term vision. Irrelevant, it can be supplanted with a different one, for better or for worse. - Analytical insights. Irrelevant. - Domain expertise. No, they can't steal it, but it can usually be replicated to some degree. - Talent. No, they can't steal it, but it can definitely be replicated through other hires. - Passion for great service? Sorry, but give me a break. What American consumer expects great service these days and will immediately turn away from a company due to a lack of it? Irrelevant. - Luck. As I've described above, luck is a lot harder to come by in this position. Anyway, that's my two cents. Sorry, but I just couldn't let this one go. Aaron
minalecs 16y ago
if you're going to call him out.. would be nice for more explanation of your situation.
- webwright 16y ago
  I put it in a different comment, but here's the guy's story: http://nyti.ms/cC0HwJ http://nyti.ms/cC0HwJ He was competing with Facebook in the early days (and had a service that predated it at Harvard by 4 months).
webwright 16y ago
I think your experience ILLUSTRATES Jason's points. (note to others: thinkcomp lays claim to the idea of Facebook: http://nyti.ms/cC0HwJ http://nyti.ms/cC0HwJ ) Jason's point boils down to "effort, passion, ambition, execution". While he didn't overtly say it, the point is that ideas are fairly cheap and certainly easy to steal. IANAL, but I don't think there's much/any INVENTION in Facebook-- And clearly the ideas there are stolen pretty liberally by dozens of companies every day. Hell, Twitter swiped the status update, right? In a world where many ideas can't (and shouldn't) really be protected (social web software), what determines who wins? Execution, market sense, effort, guts, timing, and vision. Near as I can tell, you lost on all of those fronts. Nothin' bad about that (other than your ongoing focus on it).
jonpaul 16y ago
I think Jason knows exactly what he's talking about. After reading this: http://www.aarongreenspan.com/letter/index.html http://www.aarongreenspan.com/letter/index.html and this: http://venturebeat.com/2007/09/02/who-founded-facebook-aaron-greenspan/ http://venturebeat.com/2007/09/02/who-founded-facebook-aaron... The quote seems very fitting towards you. I understand that this may come off harshly, but I believe it: it's a good thing Mark didn't take the advice you gave in your open letter.

gacba 16y ago

I hear lots of people talk about how their idea is some competitive advantage. Ideas are cheap. Ideas can be stolen. It's how you execute that counts, and that's what Jason's post drives home. Nicely done.

jasonlbaptiste 16y ago
Thank you. I didn't use the phrase "ideas are worthless" on purpose. Reason being, they're worth something (maybe not in a tangible form at least). It's actually hard to find an idea that has the right market size, begging for the right product, which you can build a relevant team around it. Now can people steal the idea? Sure. The points I outlined would probably be sub-sections of execution.
- icey 16y ago
  I like to look at ideas as "potential energy". Not necessarily worthless, but hard to tell how much you get out of them until you actually get them rolling.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
ryanhuff 16y ago
There are some fashionable memes running through entrepreneurship circles these days that are routinely mentioned in blogs, etc. (fail quick/often, ideas are cheap, etc). They certainly have merit, but are usually generalizations that can break-down when applied to specific situations. This concept of ideas being cheap/worthless is one of them. Certainly, business ideas on their own usually have little value without execution. But it really depends. If your differentiator is the idea, you are at greater risk of direct competition, and so spreading the idea around without first gaining a foothold is risky, especially if you discuss it with people who are entrepreneurial minded. Sometimes a startup needs breathing room to find a true differentiator beyond the idea. I bet there is a long, long list of people being "wronged" after discussing their plans with others. Feedback is certainly hugely valuable, but people need to be judicious with what, and to whom, they reveal.

willhf 16y ago

A single idea from the human mind can build cities. An idea can transform the world and rewrite all the rules. Which is why they have to steal it.

roqetman 16y ago
Not if the idea sits in someone's head. The execution is extremely important. I've had ideas that pre-dated devices like the ipad and iphone by 15 years, but because I didn't do anything with those ideas, they were essentially useless.
- saint-loup 16y ago
  Now the question is, where is the limit beetween an idea and his execution. If the idea is a vague thing like "a computer that fits in my pocket", then it's just a dream. The most details you have about your idea, the most you're move close its execution.
apsurd 16y ago
Humans build cities; or robots that build cities, or robots that build robots that build cities.
- phob 16y ago
  Or people that build robots that build city-building robots.

steiger 16y ago

And this is the reason the abolishment of Intellectual Property won't make the world any more chaotic or unfair. Ideas are meant to be shared, and the market competitiveness will reward the ones that best execute them.

eavc 16y ago
Copyright doesn't cover ideas. It covers the execution of ideas. So if you're going to abolish stuff that merely protects ideas, leave copyright alone.
- sorbus 16y ago
  That was the intention of copyright, anyways. It's gotten a bit beyond that, to the point that an idea can be copyrighted if phrased correctly. Requiring a working model to be submitted with every application would go a good way towards fixing that issue.
  - eavc 16y ago
    I'm not intimately familiar with the process, but I was unaware that there was such a thing as copyright applications, let alone working models of something that pertains to copyright.
    - nitrogen 16y ago
      If by application you mean registration, then yes, it is required for some purposes, at least in the US: http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#register http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#register
  - roc 16y ago
    You seem to be confusing copyright and patents. Neither of which can protect an idea. Law concerning Trade Secrets comes closest to protecting an idea. But that doesn't preclude parallel development whatsoever, only theft.

nadam 16y ago

I would not be concerned if I would write a web based product. But I am writing a desktop application in Java. Someone with more resources than me can copy my stuff very fast and beat me before I can get real traction. My most important competitive advantage is in the applied algorithms which I was refactoring so much; it is inside the source code. If they steal that, they not only steal my idea, they steal my execution. Of course they can also do it otherwise, but in that case it last more time. The key is in my opinion being ahead 1-2 years, especially in the beginning. So it might be a good idea to obfuscate the code. On the other hand it is better to be open, so it would be cool if I could ship the complete source code so that customers or consultants could customize my product, (or write plugins) which is quite important in the case of this product. It is a really hard decision whether to: - ship only the obfuscated class files - ship the non-obfuscated class files - or ship the whole source code with the product. Being too open too early can be dangerous. Even big companies had problem from being too open (see IBM PC), not to say about a small company which has no traction.

grannyg00se 16y ago

"They cannot steal your market failure driven pivots" "They cannot steal your analytical insights" I believe that after 2 years of prototyping costing thousands of dollars and significant effort, my widget is ready for release. If someone blatantly copies what I have released, they have stolen all of that prototyping experience. That experience contains test market feedback and prototype rework based on market testing as well as any analytical insights that have been gleaned from initial user testing. All of the pre-release trial and error is built into that release design. I have to say I'd like to believe the whole "ideas are cheap - share with everybody" mentality, but there are good reasons that large companies spend millions of dollars on patenting their legitimate inventions. Competitors can come in and steal years of your work overnight simply by copying your design. That gives them an edge. The last thing you want is to help out any competitors by giving them an edge that allows them to catch up almost immediately without spending a dime.

michael_nielsen 16y ago

Here's an idea: try creating the compound Ba-La-Cu-O. It's a pretty simple idea. It can be explained in seconds. Any competent chemist can do it, and probably a lot of incompetent ones as well. But in 1986 that idea was the key step in a Nobel Prize. And it may yet turn out to be the foundation for a massive industry. Sometimes, the idea is nearly all that matters.

run4yourlives 16y ago
The fact that the idea is 24 years old and has yet to properly establish itself kinda refutes the fact that it's all that matters, doesn't it?
- michael_nielsen 16y ago
  I guess if you view winning a Nobel Prize as a failure, then yes, you've refuted my example. I doubt more than a tiny fraction of people would consider that a failure, however. Ideas can, in fact, have value, and that is a function of scarcity. A lot of entrepreneurs apparently misjudge this, thinking that, for example, their idea to create a social network for X (insert verb of choice) is somehow valuable in its own right. But in most cases X is so generic that it's not. The superconductor example I gave is an example where there really is a scarcity, and so there is value.
  - run4yourlives 16y ago
    I'm not saying that ideas have no value whatsoever, because clearly a bad idea properly executed can still be a bad idea. What I am saying though is that there are few ideas that can be not executed and/or executed poorly and still render a success. Of course success is variable, as you point out with regards to the Nobel Prize here. Assume somebody does execute a strategy to effectively monetize the superconductor described. As you point out that's a game changer on levels that will make the Nobel Prize seem rather small.
    - michael_nielsen 16y ago

daten 16y ago

Just because you can't steal what really matters doesn't mean you don't already have it. You could possibly take someone else's idea and execute it better than they would have. What are the odds that the person who came up with the great idea doesn't have the best motivation or resources to make it successful?