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.
Don't get advice from people that never did it!
As simple as that. Start today by seeking advice from people that did it on the past, preferably from people that succeeded at least once and failed at least once. I'm not saying to ignore everybody else, but somebody that climbed Everest is much better qualified to tell you how to climb a mountain than somebody that sells climbing gear.
Be very skeptical of any VC telling you how to build a company if s/he never did it. Be even skeptical of entrepreneurs that are building their first company now (they haven't had a successful or failed exit yet), or entrepreneurs that had a single hit, although any entrepreneur advice is better than a non-entrepreneur advice on how to build a startup.
And... I just told you to ignore this advice as well. 
If Mini-Microsoft is right, this will be a great opportunity for Seattle startups to grab some good minds out of the mothership. 
Quote:
"...
One that sticks in my mind right now is how if we acquired Yahoo! - such a big company - we'd have to naturally have layoffs within Microsoft to accommodate it.
...
Man, if I was in the Online Services Division I would be worried. Especially if Yahoo! did something my team did and did it well.
..."
Well, let's see a few things Yahoo does better: Upcoming, Flickr, Del.icio.us, MyBlogLog, HotJobs, Finance, Groups, Travel, ...
I like Yahoo Maps, but Virtual Earth is probably a bit ahead in technology, although Yahoo Maps has a lot of support options (AJAX, Flash, Static, etc.). The search guys have nothing to worry about because they will be the one dictating the rules. And Mail is a tie.
January, 2007
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