Has this ever happened to you?<p>You have an idea for a new startup, you keep on thinking about it. You start planning in your mind each and every page of the new website: what the user will see, what he will do, how you will get new users, why this idea is so cool, etc.<p>Then the "I don't trust you" syndrome clicks in and you start to worry that someone else might copy your idea. You don't tell anything to your friends (just a "guys, don't be surprised if you will not see me around...I have this idea that will make me rich"), you don't tell anything to anyone.<p>But you need someone else to build the idea. With this syndrome it is very difficult to find anyone, as you will think about others stealing your idea, you will think about coders copying the code and launching the idea before you, etc.<p>Finally, one day you find someone that you can trust and usually you bind them with a super strict NDA and you watch their back while they work with you on the idea.<p>The day comes, when the idea finally launches and...you just realize that the idea was not so good, that nobody is interested in it, that you just thought about the basic features of the website and you did not develop the core of it, etc.<p>You basically understand that an idea is nothing, that you should show your idea to as many people as possible to get as many feedback as you can, that execution is everything and that nobody becomes reach only because of an idea.<p>What do you think?
Isn't that what patents are for?<p>Independent of what you think about patents in general. AFAIK you need a minimal implementation to get a patent granted, which you could do almost alone (a crappy looking one), and one could start from there.<p>Please correct me if I'm wrong. Sure it takes years and cash to finish that process, so it's not for every project, but wouldn't it make sense for some mind-bending idea?