Seattle 2.0 Blog

February 1, 2008

    Unless you live in a world where patent extortion exists (darn it, isn't this true?) your ideas are worth nothing. In a Tech Startup world what matters is execution!

    There are a lot of "ideaman" that claim company A stole their idea. Some even go to the extent of suing company A. It might even be true that they stole it from you, but more likely you (or your startup) were not well equipped to execute on that idea, or were too slow, or simply tried and failed. And, now you want credit for what? For a thought?

    Sure, from an ethics perspective you shouldn't steal other's people idea, but if that was a black-on-white statement, the world would not evolve. I didn't create the idea of "blog", but I certainly added it to Sampa. I didn't create the idea of online photo albums, or menus, or headers, or a lot of the things I put on the product. Am I stealing ideas?

    A friend of mine that went to college with me had a philosophy that there is absolutely no new ideas to humankind on its entire history. Everything is an evolution of something that came before it. He used to say people can never say "I created X", because they didn't, he suggested that what people did was "connect Y and Z and got X".

    Now, stop talking (or asking for an NDA) about your idea and just do it.

Comments (3) for "Your idea is worth... zero d...

Excellent mini-rant Marcelo! I was attending an entrepreneurial event this week and one attendee asked the speakers about NDAs and how to protect your idea when you talk to investors. The speakers basically said, "don't bother with NDAs, no one will sign them"... I wanted to jump out of my seat and scream.... "It ain't the idea, it's all about execution!" Guy Kawasaki makes this point very well in Art of the Start, when answering this question. He basically says, as an investor, if I believed that the only advantage you had in making your business a success was keeping it a secret, then I wouldn't be convinced you were a very good person to make the business a success. That being said, I do think there is a lot more value in using intellectual property correctly than many "technologists" (particularly software developers) realize. But that's probably a whole other blog post worth of a rant. ;) By Brad Hefta-Gaub - Fri, 01 Feb 2008 16:29:35 GMT

Thanks for the kick in the ass - guess I better quit reading blogs and get back to coding... By Craig Huizenga - Sat, 02 Feb 2008 20:24:58 GMT

Everyone attending tech related startup events that isn't a coder/developer should be required to memorize this! Whenever I encounter "idea" people wanting me to join their new startup my question is always: "What value will you bring to the company?" If their answer is "I have a great idea" the conversation is usually over. Every founding member better be able to contribute a heck of a lot of value to the company or it aint gonna fly. And by value I mean endless hours of blood sweat and tears that actually create revenue. By Justin - Mon, 04 Feb 2008 10:49:13 GMT