VCs are now selling their ideas to entrepreneurs | Hacker News Reader

VCs are now selling their ideas to entrepreneurs

observer.com

55 pointspadrack21 comments

It seems to be an attempt to reinvent the megacorp with looser managerial boundaries. When you have the capital and the experience it's inevitable that you'll want to push ideas down from the top, but the venture game got like this in the first place because the best ideas bubble up from the bottom.

But Jordan Cooper, a venture partner at Lerer Ventures, recently offered funding and office space to anyone interested in working on an app he mostly wants for himself: a private social network where people can dish on their love lives. ”I want to be able to send a photo of a girl that I really like or one that I just went out with for the first time. I want to tell a story beneath the photo, or just a short note that says ‘so pretty, but soooo boring’ or whatever captures my impressions of this temporal but potentially permanent new entrant into my life,” he wrote last month in a blog post, titled “Whitespace for the taking.” He signed off, “Holler.”

Isn't this called Tumblr?

Tumblr is public by default, and doesn't hold pretensions to specificity of content(which always get broken).

No, he is specifically looking to create a social network for Douchbags.

FaceDouche.com

The examples of "dishing" above seem innocuous enough in print - but the reality of such an 'app' would be far more harsh.

"This dumb slut let me blah blah blah to her!" and other douchebaggery...

probably the idea originator has already been down this rabbit hole, for better or worse douchebaggery is a coveted ad demo. bling.

Cool, now they can bypass the painful step of forcing you out of the CEO role, and just never let you take it in the first place. Also, Fred would not invest in this app and Jordan isn't a real VC, so the piece is pretty bogus.

As much as I hate the idea of this model it's not too different than a Hollywood producer finding a director, cast and other creative talent to make their films. Personally I love the work of writer/directors but on the flip side there are quite a few great films that were put together by producers. Producers are interesting because they're good at fundraising and then coming up with the "bid idea" — and of course putting together a dream team. I wouldn't worry about this model if I were an entrepreneur because it might make that path more creative as VCs might be less risk adverse when pushing their own ideas.

this is why i love the idea of the model. it will supplement all the other models out there, not displace them, in much the same way as not every producer wants to drive the film in a hands-on manner. why do you hate it?

Well looking at Hollywood the mega-producers tend to gravitate to big films that are focused on box office rather than creating a great film. The producer has more insecurity than a writer/director so creativity is substituted for short cuts like a well known license or a big star in a safe film. The result is a film like Transformers -- cool eye candy, makes real money yet it's an average film.

I prefer a VC model where Weinstein brothers find a Tarantino and make a film that not only makes money but can be watched with admiration for years to come. This isn't to say that Hollywood producers in days of old weren't talented, but these days you get bland product.

The same thing will happen with tech. A VC as producer may be good at identifying a unique niche that needs a product (say medical billing software) but you won't get a gem like a Flickr or Facebook that way. And that's not to say that the producer model is wrong, but it's not as much fun.

yes, but there'll be other vcs and other teams to make the fun apps. this will just add to the ecosystem, and who knows, we might get some useful-if-boring and profitable software out of it.

In soviet Russia, entrepreneur funds you.

The super angel founder investor cometh

Speaking of sharing ideas, I'd love to get some feedback from you guys on a recent side-project I developed at http://thesparkfoundry.com . The premise is that you sign up for various mailing lists for voting on ideas and entrepreneurs can access those lists by agreeing to build them (http://www.sparkmuse.com/foundry/howitworks). Highly voted ideas would then be attractive to a developer as you'd get a built-in pool of potential beta subscribers or people willing to give feedback. Unfortunately I never had the time to fully promote it, but it was fun to build.

Looks pretty interesting, even one of them had my Trust API idea I had but dropped. You have stiff competition from half bakery and several idea websites out there though.

However I see it inherently flawed like the other idea websites:

1. Visitors tend to be idea people only and not really potential customers.

2. There is no clear promotion plan either except for 'build it and they'll come'. Ideas people see very little benefit because there's no user base, there's no user base because there's little benefit (chicken and egg problem).

3. All ideas are given weight equally. If I propose a flying car, that's great, everyone wants it but no one will want to take on such a risky idea. More: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Balance_fallacy

Look at Kickstarter; they have their users advertising projects and acting on them after the site got some momentum.

Needs improvement and change of current priorities.

Man, there's a market for that? my "ideas" evernote is full of pages. I should sell THAT.

I had a meeting with a great investor from one of the seed funds, who also happens to be a domain expert in security. She mentioned a great idea she had in grad school, and something she really wanted to fund if someone would do it -- if I were an entrepreneur and without an idea, it would have been really tempting.

I think in that situation offering the investor the right to invest first is fair, but that's about all you have to do (although in this case they're a perfect fit, so it's kind of irrelevant).

Please don't leave us hanging. :) What is her idea?

I find it very hard to get motived to work on other people's ideas. I'm guessing many (most) entrepreneurs feel the same.

Man, I just bet VCs would LOVE to say that "THAT WAS MY IDEA!"... minus the execution

The headline is that VC's are "Giving Away" their ideas, not selling them.

Selling 'em as in "trying to persuade other people of their worth" rather than selling 'em as in "getting money for 'em". Still, I concede the ambiguity.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com