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Ideas ARE worthless. "Here's another way to look at it. If merely telling someone your idea means that it can be ripped off, then you hardly have a defensible

Ideas ARE worthless. "Here's another way to look at it. If merely telling someone your idea means that it can be ripped off, then you hardly have a defensible product. If secrecy is your main weapon, then it will be hard to find investors. By the way, what happens when you ship? Are you going to ask every customer to sign a nondisclosure too?" And what about your first employees? (quote from an Old Guy Kawasaki Column) http://www.forbes.com/columnists/2005/06/16/entrepreneur-venture-capital-kawasaki-cx_gk_0616artofthestart.html http://www.forbes.com/columnists/2005/06/16/entrepreneur-venture-capital-kawasaki-cx_gk_0616artofthestart.html And if you think the fact that her seed-funded team of 5 developers gives her an indomitable advantage, think again. It's not what you do, it's HOW YOU DO IT. So what action should you be taking? I'd say to look real hard at what she's doing. If she nailed it and has built something great, find another idea. They're everywhere. If she hasn't nailed it and you can make a better product, make it. And, if you're feeling vindictive (I wouldn't bother with this), you could plant a few seeds within your shared network-- tell your mutual friends/contacts what she did.

jey 20y ago
Most webapps are trivial to implement, and the real value is in the idea. Given the idea, a competent programmer-designer could probably whip out most of the popular webapps out there easily.
- omouse 20y ago
  Maybe, but they have to come up with the idea first. And then they have to avoid being discouraged from going through with the implementation. And then they need money to put the implementation somewhere on the net. And then they need to market it or hire a PR company to do that. And they need to maintain and support it. And then...you get the point. There's more than just the implementation to web apps.
  - jey 20y ago
    Yes, and the idea is the only hard part of all that. Especially if you're already a webapp-guy, not a random joe-schmoe who doesn't know source code from a security code. These are webapps, not operating systems, not mainframes, not databases. The barrier to entry, cost of operation, and development time are all pretty low. You can hire the PR people when you actually need them (probably sometime after you actually have cash flow). There's plenty of ways to market a webapp for free, and I sure would not hire a marketing firm to promote my new site.
- mkull 20y ago
  bullshit. ideas are cheap, implementation is hard. I am very competent web app developer, with several major applications under my belt. While on the surface you might think you will be able to whip out a clone of one of the popular web apps easily (let alone a brand new idea) but you will find the devil is in the details. What makes or breaks those sites are the thousands of minute implementation level decisions which build up to make a quality application.
  - jey 20y ago
    I don't dispute that, but the point is that at that point it's just a matter of doing it. You start writing code, encounter problems, find solutions. If implementation is really so hard and ideas are so cheap, you should be trying to implement dozens of ideas and giving up because of the technical challenges for each site you're actually able to launch. For me it's the converse, I have a harder time finding a good idea worth doing than doing the implementation and refinement. Yes, refining the idea and doing it right are non-trivial, but that's got more to do with how competent you are in general. I personally don't have a glut of good ideas and a shortage of implementation skill. Yes, I can come up with ideas if we just want to measure by volume -- but these have to survive through the "Is this a good idea?" filter before I count it as an actual idea. Generating crap is easy.
  - Ev 20y ago
    Bullshit. Web "development" is a high school skill. Which is why web frameworks are trivial to implement, learn and use. Which is why building web sites takes months, not years. Tenths of thousands of dollars, not millions. Complex software takes good knowledge of complex algorithms and man-years of development. Well.. since everybody wants to get rich quickly these days, innovation scaled down to web "applications", where the only valuable thing is percisely the idea. And your only advantage is the time to market. It took years for other big firms to develop search engines as good as google's is. THAT is what I call "implementation is hard". Implementing something as trivial as myspace is less complex than compiler class project in college. (I've done both).
    - sbraford 20y ago
mojuba 20y ago
Still, there are good ideas that can be easily stolen. Apple's transparent case for Macs was a brilliant idea - in fact one of the factors that brought them back to the market. That was too good and too easy to steal. It happens. Thinking "it's implementation, stupid" is too narrow-minded and Web2.0-ish.

jey 20y ago

Most webapps are trivial to implement, and the real value is in the idea. Given the idea, a competent programmer-designer could probably whip out most of the popular webapps out there easily.

omouse 20y ago
Maybe, but they have to come up with the idea first. And then they have to avoid being discouraged from going through with the implementation. And then they need money to put the implementation somewhere on the net. And then they need to market it or hire a PR company to do that. And they need to maintain and support it. And then...you get the point. There's more than just the implementation to web apps.
- jey 20y ago
  Yes, and the idea is the only hard part of all that. Especially if you're already a webapp-guy, not a random joe-schmoe who doesn't know source code from a security code. These are webapps, not operating systems, not mainframes, not databases. The barrier to entry, cost of operation, and development time are all pretty low. You can hire the PR people when you actually need them (probably sometime after you actually have cash flow). There's plenty of ways to market a webapp for free, and I sure would not hire a marketing firm to promote my new site.
mkull 20y ago
bullshit. ideas are cheap, implementation is hard. I am very competent web app developer, with several major applications under my belt. While on the surface you might think you will be able to whip out a clone of one of the popular web apps easily (let alone a brand new idea) but you will find the devil is in the details. What makes or breaks those sites are the thousands of minute implementation level decisions which build up to make a quality application.
- jey 20y ago
  I don't dispute that, but the point is that at that point it's just a matter of doing it. You start writing code, encounter problems, find solutions. If implementation is really so hard and ideas are so cheap, you should be trying to implement dozens of ideas and giving up because of the technical challenges for each site you're actually able to launch. For me it's the converse, I have a harder time finding a good idea worth doing than doing the implementation and refinement. Yes, refining the idea and doing it right are non-trivial, but that's got more to do with how competent you are in general. I personally don't have a glut of good ideas and a shortage of implementation skill. Yes, I can come up with ideas if we just want to measure by volume -- but these have to survive through the "Is this a good idea?" filter before I count it as an actual idea. Generating crap is easy.
- Ev 20y ago
  Bullshit. Web "development" is a high school skill. Which is why web frameworks are trivial to implement, learn and use. Which is why building web sites takes months, not years. Tenths of thousands of dollars, not millions. Complex software takes good knowledge of complex algorithms and man-years of development. Well.. since everybody wants to get rich quickly these days, innovation scaled down to web "applications", where the only valuable thing is percisely the idea. And your only advantage is the time to market. It took years for other big firms to develop search engines as good as google's is. THAT is what I call "implementation is hard". Implementing something as trivial as myspace is less complex than compiler class project in college. (I've done both).
  - sbraford 20y ago

mojuba 20y ago

Still, there are good ideas that can be easily stolen. Apple's transparent case for Macs was a brilliant idea - in fact one of the factors that brought them back to the market. That was too good and too easy to steal. It happens. Thinking "it's implementation, stupid" is too narrow-minded and Web2.0-ish.