5 ms·

Sounds like he got "brain raped" (term from Silicon Valley show), where they get you into a meeting and coax you to explain all of your secret sauce and then bu

by daenz 5y ago

Sounds like he got "brain raped" (term from Silicon Valley show), where they get you into a meeting and coax you to explain all of your secret sauce and then build a parallel product. It is clearly morally wrong, but is it illegal? Does someone here have a legal sense of this?

defaultname 5y ago
Alternately he had an idea simultaneously with others having the same idea [1]. An obvious idea. It's entirely possible that his pitch and purported meetings had nothing to do with the eventual app. It's why many firms and creative groups have a strict "don't tell us your `ideas'" policy. In this case his idea was "role-based" communication. He came up with this (2016) as Slack and other role-based solutions were storming across the market. [1] - a common problem coupled with advancements in the field/technology often yield many people "inventing" the same thing simultaneously, because it's an obvious next step. It's why we're so negative of the countless useless "on a computer" patents, "on a network", etc.
- fouric 5y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27845534 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27845534 responds to this quite eloquently: > It's not about whether more than one person could come up withe idea, it's that he pitched it to his own employer, met multiple times with execs to discuss acquisition, only for them to suddenly cut him off and directly copy what he proposed with no remuneration. > That is not the same as two disparate people who have never communicated coming up with the same idea for something.
  - defaultname 5y ago
    That doesn't disprove that "two disparate people who have never communicated coming up with the same idea for something". It's entirely possible, if not probable, that there was independent efforts to build out "role-based" communications. Some employee comes along and says "Look, I've already developed an app do you want to buy it?". They talk with him and decide that what he has built isn't worthwhile and move on. Suddenly he thinks he has intellectual ownership over the entire premise (hence the hilarious $1B claim). It doesn't work like that. Indeed, stories like this are why many firms simply don't want to listen to any pitches, because people often have a pretty outsized notion about their "inventions". Again, maybe they really did rip off his idea. Maybe in 2016 they really had no idea of broadening their communications approaches (or I guess narrowing in this case). His lawyers can demand the pertinent records and that's what a court case is for. But just seeing this reminds me why I'm very clear in a lot of situations that I don't want people's ideas/inventions, because in almost every case they've been considered but now the person thinks they invented it and have ownership over it.
  - kayfox 5y ago
    Its also possible that after pitching it to them, Delta explored the competitive solutions for the same issue and bid it out to some other vendor, perhaps their dispatch software vendor or one who could integrate with that software.
jollybean 5y ago
I'm not sure anything is 'clear' in the situation. He could have had some implementation of some kind of basic messaging functionality, which for any number of reasons they may have decided to implement themselves, which is pretty rational for a whole host of reasons. If an employee is trying to sell a 'side project' to a Corp. they are acting effectively as a 3rd party and should expect to be treated as such. If there was some material, core IP that was infringed upon, maybe there's an issue, but otherwise some kind of independent implementation is probably within bounds. I can't speak to what extent there was 'carbon copy' of features, or even if that is lawful or what not. Think of it like this: company ABC pitches their app to Airline. Airline decides to roll their own, and the feature base seems quite similar. That's pretty normal.
dcolkitt 5y ago
I think people are generally way to over paranoid about this. In my field of quant finance this is particularly acute. People refuse to talk about even what markets they’re trading for fear that their competitors will steal their edge. I’ve seen enough to know, that your secret sauce probably isn’t as secret as you think. Even in the ridiculously tight-lipped world of quant trading, it turns out that everyone’s mostly doing the same few basic ideas with not much more to distinguish than a few peripheral variations here and there. In general execution ability, not having the best idea, tends to be the main driver of which teams win. If a third party does think your idea is brilliant, then stealing it from you is a pretty moronic way to capitalize on it. You’re creating a motivated competitor from day one who by definition has a lot more domain expertise. It’s much simpler to just cut the guy a check for equity in the company.
- Andy_G11 5y ago
  Might be different for different fields: if a firm with initially lower domain expertise but greater development & implementation resources can get sufficient understanding of a good idea to generate a practical solution themselves, they might gamble that by the time the originator of the idea gets the funding and resources to be of any significance in the market, they will have achieved a runaway lead with their mimicked version.
mdellavo 5y ago
is there any secret sauce?
- daenz 5y ago
  Probably not, but does that have an impact on the legality if you explain it willingly without an NDA?
  - lostcolony 5y ago
    Especially while you're an employee of the company you're pitching to.
- bbarnett 5y ago
  Trade secrets are that, but if you willingly disclose, that's on you. I recall as story about a manufacturer, building a new plant. He took "reasonable security precautions" to protect its design, fences, guards while being built. A competitor hired a plane, flew over, took detailed photos. It was later ruled that the trade secrets were intact, thus could not be used.
mustacheemperor 5y ago
Reminds me of the classic HN post "Google tried to patent my work after a job interview" and the included top level comment by the developer of SpeakerBox explaining how they got the same treatment.[0] Google invited them for a meeting about integrating the tech to the Moto X, then after a technical explanation showed them out with a smarmy challenge that the 'race is on' and subsequently filed patents on similar technology. [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18566929 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18566929
dataviz1000 5y ago
I once was going to work for a friend's startup but we didn't see eye to eye on everything and decided to not work together. As a joke I said I would go work for the competition which ended with a 2 hour interview in a town an hour away with the competition. They offered me a job doing backend work however I wanted to develop frontend so I didn't take that job either. What interested me is that in a 2 hour interview I learned everything about my friend's competition's business model and future plans. I've never done it since but if someone wanted to know what another company is doing apply and ask a bunch of questions during the interview. Asking too many question during an interview isn't a thing.
- c618b9b695c4 5y ago
  >Asking too many question during an interview isn't a thing. Not so sure about that. I recently interviewed where I asked something along the lines of, "So what would my daily responsibilities look like?" They refused to tell me what I would be doing day-to-day. No specifics on technologies, platforms, would I be helping internal/external groups, etc. Could not even get them to elaborate on specifics in the job posting itself.
  - 1024core 5y ago
    I have a buddy who interviewed at a company in the Valley back in around 1998. They also refused to tell him what his daily responsibilities would be like. He said to himself, "I'm not going to waste my time parsing f'in Apache log files!", and turned them down. That company? Google. He would've been employee # < 100, and comfortably retired in 10 years.
- lioeters 5y ago
  Hmm, an intriguing business idea: "undercover interview at your competition" as a service.
  - SirSourdough 5y ago
    Now we're coming full-circle back to the start-up posted on HN the other day that was going to send "expert" applicants in to evangelize specific products and technologies in interviews.

by daenz 5y ago

defaultname 5y ago

Alternately he had an idea simultaneously with others having the same idea [1]. An obvious idea. It's entirely possible that his pitch and purported meetings had nothing to do with the eventual app. It's why many firms and creative groups have a strict "don't tell us your `ideas'" policy. In this case his idea was "role-based" communication. He came up with this (2016) as Slack and other role-based solutions were storming across the market. [1] - a common problem coupled with advancements in the field/technology often yield many people "inventing" the same thing simultaneously, because it's an obvious next step. It's why we're so negative of the countless useless "on a computer" patents, "on a network", etc.

fouric 5y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27845534 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27845534 responds to this quite eloquently: > It's not about whether more than one person could come up withe idea, it's that he pitched it to his own employer, met multiple times with execs to discuss acquisition, only for them to suddenly cut him off and directly copy what he proposed with no remuneration. > That is not the same as two disparate people who have never communicated coming up with the same idea for something.
- defaultname 5y ago
  That doesn't disprove that "two disparate people who have never communicated coming up with the same idea for something". It's entirely possible, if not probable, that there was independent efforts to build out "role-based" communications. Some employee comes along and says "Look, I've already developed an app do you want to buy it?". They talk with him and decide that what he has built isn't worthwhile and move on. Suddenly he thinks he has intellectual ownership over the entire premise (hence the hilarious $1B claim). It doesn't work like that. Indeed, stories like this are why many firms simply don't want to listen to any pitches, because people often have a pretty outsized notion about their "inventions". Again, maybe they really did rip off his idea. Maybe in 2016 they really had no idea of broadening their communications approaches (or I guess narrowing in this case). His lawyers can demand the pertinent records and that's what a court case is for. But just seeing this reminds me why I'm very clear in a lot of situations that I don't want people's ideas/inventions, because in almost every case they've been considered but now the person thinks they invented it and have ownership over it.
- kayfox 5y ago
  Its also possible that after pitching it to them, Delta explored the competitive solutions for the same issue and bid it out to some other vendor, perhaps their dispatch software vendor or one who could integrate with that software.

jollybean 5y ago

I'm not sure anything is 'clear' in the situation. He could have had some implementation of some kind of basic messaging functionality, which for any number of reasons they may have decided to implement themselves, which is pretty rational for a whole host of reasons. If an employee is trying to sell a 'side project' to a Corp. they are acting effectively as a 3rd party and should expect to be treated as such. If there was some material, core IP that was infringed upon, maybe there's an issue, but otherwise some kind of independent implementation is probably within bounds. I can't speak to what extent there was 'carbon copy' of features, or even if that is lawful or what not. Think of it like this: company ABC pitches their app to Airline. Airline decides to roll their own, and the feature base seems quite similar. That's pretty normal.

dcolkitt 5y ago

I think people are generally way to over paranoid about this. In my field of quant finance this is particularly acute. People refuse to talk about even what markets they’re trading for fear that their competitors will steal their edge. I’ve seen enough to know, that your secret sauce probably isn’t as secret as you think. Even in the ridiculously tight-lipped world of quant trading, it turns out that everyone’s mostly doing the same few basic ideas with not much more to distinguish than a few peripheral variations here and there. In general execution ability, not having the best idea, tends to be the main driver of which teams win. If a third party does think your idea is brilliant, then stealing it from you is a pretty moronic way to capitalize on it. You’re creating a motivated competitor from day one who by definition has a lot more domain expertise. It’s much simpler to just cut the guy a check for equity in the company.

Andy_G11 5y ago
Might be different for different fields: if a firm with initially lower domain expertise but greater development & implementation resources can get sufficient understanding of a good idea to generate a practical solution themselves, they might gamble that by the time the originator of the idea gets the funding and resources to be of any significance in the market, they will have achieved a runaway lead with their mimicked version.

mdellavo 5y ago

is there any secret sauce?

daenz 5y ago
Probably not, but does that have an impact on the legality if you explain it willingly without an NDA?
- lostcolony 5y ago
  Especially while you're an employee of the company you're pitching to.
bbarnett 5y ago
Trade secrets are that, but if you willingly disclose, that's on you. I recall as story about a manufacturer, building a new plant. He took "reasonable security precautions" to protect its design, fences, guards while being built. A competitor hired a plane, flew over, took detailed photos. It was later ruled that the trade secrets were intact, thus could not be used.

mustacheemperor 5y ago

Reminds me of the classic HN post "Google tried to patent my work after a job interview" and the included top level comment by the developer of SpeakerBox explaining how they got the same treatment.[0] Google invited them for a meeting about integrating the tech to the Moto X, then after a technical explanation showed them out with a smarmy challenge that the 'race is on' and subsequently filed patents on similar technology. [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18566929 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18566929

dataviz1000 5y ago

I once was going to work for a friend's startup but we didn't see eye to eye on everything and decided to not work together. As a joke I said I would go work for the competition which ended with a 2 hour interview in a town an hour away with the competition. They offered me a job doing backend work however I wanted to develop frontend so I didn't take that job either. What interested me is that in a 2 hour interview I learned everything about my friend's competition's business model and future plans. I've never done it since but if someone wanted to know what another company is doing apply and ask a bunch of questions during the interview. Asking too many question during an interview isn't a thing.

c618b9b695c4 5y ago
>Asking too many question during an interview isn't a thing. Not so sure about that. I recently interviewed where I asked something along the lines of, "So what would my daily responsibilities look like?" They refused to tell me what I would be doing day-to-day. No specifics on technologies, platforms, would I be helping internal/external groups, etc. Could not even get them to elaborate on specifics in the job posting itself.
- 1024core 5y ago
  I have a buddy who interviewed at a company in the Valley back in around 1998. They also refused to tell him what his daily responsibilities would be like. He said to himself, "I'm not going to waste my time parsing f'in Apache log files!", and turned them down. That company? Google. He would've been employee # < 100, and comfortably retired in 10 years.
lioeters 5y ago
Hmm, an intriguing business idea: "undercover interview at your competition" as a service.
- SirSourdough 5y ago
  Now we're coming full-circle back to the start-up posted on HN the other day that was going to send "expert" applicants in to evangelize specific products and technologies in interviews.