Ask HN: Bad experiences after sharing your idea?

The only bad experiences I've had after sharing my idea are:<p>1) realizing that my original idea sucks and that it needed to evolve or completely change<p>2) realizing that even if my idea is good, most people are either indifferent to it or they hate it. Which makes me think of this quote, "Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats."<p>Neither experience is pleasant. Both are morale killers.<p>Ideas are cheap.

The technology roadmap for the next five decades is predictable. For example <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictions_made_by_Raymond_Kurzweil" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictions_made_by_Raymond_Kur...</a> are spot on so far. What ideas do you have that aren't there? No big ideas that's for sure.<p>Startups mainly work by using existing technology to make a working service in a few years. The main problems are economic, social, psychological, not technological.<p>Will people use some silly limited email service? Yes, because it alters the psychology of communication, enables them to talk to more people quicker. Will people use a search engine that indexes the web? Yes if content on the web is worth a damn. Will labeling the world through people's IDs instead of URLs and brands be more efficient? Yes if you pull it off.<p>Will people pay for Adobe's apps instead of buying templates? Yes if they're convinced by designers that templates are bad and they need to go through an exclusive branding ritual.<p>A lot of startups are so mesmerized by what's possible with current technology they can't see two steps ahead. They come up with pretty small ideas in most cases and it's often difficult to link those ideas to the big technological trends even when the startup gets as big as Mint or Twitter.<p>That's why VCs don't care about ideas. We already have the ideas. If you understand tech like Ray Kurzweil did, you can shit out ideas all day. VCs care about fitting into the unpredictable world of fickle humans, like Twitter's 140 characters did, and your motivation to slave away.<p>The tech economy will move forward one way or another. In the big scheme of things we will get to AI and understand our own brains until we can predict if Twitter should add the ability to subdivide long texts into 150 character chunks to limit the size of rants like this one.

Some business ideas are innovative, in the sense that they are a new, bold, or risky approach to solving problems. I don't think you have anything to lose by sharing those ideas. These ideas are all about execution, and passion and domain knowledge will out. Share these with impunity, I think.<p>Some business ideas are just really fancy arbitrage. Execution matters, but the value is self-evident; the more people that know about the opportunity, the faster the market is going to get flooded. I'd keep these a little closer to the vest.<p>I suspect the start-ups that we talk about and focus upon here on hacker news fall more in the first category and less in the second.

Yes actually. When I quit my job to start my first company, I told a few employees at my old company what I was working on. One of them thought it was such a good idea, he also quit and started a similar company. I was successful, he wasn't, but in the early days, it was a major headache that I didn't need.

The one thing I have noticed is that it takes considerably longer to implement the idea if I reveal it to someone else first.

The best thing that's ever happened to me with sharing ideas is that someone was inspired by them who could execute on them better than I could. They built it, saving me the trouble.<p>If you share your good ideas, you'll build a network that informs you and feeds your brain to synthesize more good ideas. Build the ones that really fit you and yours, the ones you can't stop yourself from building, and do it now. Then you don't have this problem, you have the sharing a demo problem, which is better.

I sometimes share my ideas with the hope that someone <i>will</i> do something with it.<p>I don't really care about making money and honestly, I have too many ideas to tell the good ones from the bad ones anymore.

Nobody has ever stolen an idea of mine.<p>At worst a friend has gotten his hopes up then frustrated we can't/didn't execute the idea.

This made me think: what if a particular idea isn't a novel concept in itself, but rather manifests itself as market information?<p>For instance, the knowledge that the available software in sector X sucks might be worth something, simply because people outside the sector don't know that that opportunity exists.<p>Not all ideas are about revolutionizing news reporting or optimizing dating... sometimes they're about making decent software for veterinarians, or something like that.

I realized after several iterations that it is sometimes just as hard to ram down a good idea down someone's throat and it's always worth a shot. But, of course there will always be exceptions.<p>I personally do a proxy pitch. If I know the person I am pitching to is a potential investor/entrepreneur who could actually implement my once in a "blue moon" (haha) idea, then, I pitch a proxy idea to see how smart their response is. If I like the relationship with them, I indulge them with my real one.

Here's my advice: share your ideas, but generally refrain from releasing the seed of it to anyone but investors, most of the time. It's your passion that you should protect. This can can be difficult.<p>For example, here's a couple of mission statements that remind me of what would have been once the core of ideas: "we turn unstructured information into structured information" (Dapper) or "organize the world's information" (Google).<p>Sometimes one needs to talk about ideas to drill down into it and release a core value proposition like the ones just mentioned. But, once you have it, if you mention it, you dissipate its energy in yourself and risk transferring it to someone else who can manifest it better than yourself: basically rip you off. At the same time, by sharing the core energy, people may remember you, help you, or work for you. But they also might trash it or steal it.<p>So once you've refined the gold, just stick it in your pocket until you absolutely need to bring it out, like to customers and beneficiaries of the idea. And when someone talks to you about their ideas, you should likewise respect it.<p>Good to know someone's background to determine what and how much of your ideas you wish to discuss. Also, when your ideas become real physical energy, then start working.

Yes, I did have this experience. Made a trip to Silicon Valley to talk over a licensing agreement with a tech giveback (by us). One of the ideas was shot down by a senior tech guy there as "unworkable". We (stupidly) dropped the idea after being ridiculed for it.<p>More than a year later, he and the head of their marketing took at exact idea, created a company around it, and later sold it for more than 230 million.<p>So, yes, it can happen.

My experience with "sharing ideas" is that I end up spending so much time explaining, justifying and defending my ideas that I end up with no energy left to actually implement them. Consequently, I don't bother telling folks what I'm planning - except for disposible ideas that I spread just to keep folks from pissing on my leg and call it rain.

I think if you have an idea whose execution is complex, its much harder for someone else to grasp, let alone copy. And that's a challenge for the entrepreneur, but you are more likely to build something defensible.<p>Now just explain in 5 words why I can't live without it and you got it.

Nope, never had a bad experience sharing an idea. I do it on purpose to see if anyone will ever give me a run for my money... but no. Nobody I've met could execute with the dilligence I do, nor do they have the marketing savvy.<p>I talk about how I'm going to revolutionize email, with user interface enhancements, make it very step-by-step explaining the logic behind them, at conferences where I speak in front of several hundred people -- and so far as I can tell, nobody has lifted a finger.<p>My ideas aren't revolutionary, either, and they could make a lot of money.<p>Last week I met a person in my city (Vienna), who was excited to meet me cuz of my reputation, and was worried that it turned out we were going to compete. I told him, no problem. We talked about our different approaches to the same problem. I said maybe he should look at selling his technology to people like me, instead of the end users.<p>That's about the extent of it. :)

One time, at Harvard, me and my buds thought up a website. It was gonna be like Myspace, but, uh, like better and stuff. You know, better features and just better. We were too tired from coming up with the idea to do anymore from there, so we went up to this guy and were like, "hey, we have this startup. It's like a Myspace, but better, and like for colleges maybe, I guess. You wanna like do the coding for it?" He agreed, but then he stole our idea, that we put so much thought into. We done the hard part. He just swooped in and made some code to glue our brilliant ideas together. Of course we sued him cause we got the monies, and we ended up with millions, just like patent trolls, but better.<p>Now I have a new idea. It's like a webapp, but better than webapps today. Anybody wanna come up with some code to help this idea come together? But if you read this, and you try to steal my idea, I'm gonna come after you.