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Comment by duxup | Hacker News Reader

>carbon copy, knock-off of the role-based text messaging component of [his] proprietary QrewLive communications platform

Not to say it isn't a good idea but the limited description seems like an idea that I imagine more than one person could have come up with.

That's not to justify the company's actions, but if that is the app I'm not sure how novel a thing we're talking about here and maybe the needs that weren't met were simply back-end tech based and not idea based...?

How many 'roughly the same idea but X' start ups are out there? and it's not always the first that succeeds.

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It's not about whether more than one person could come up withe idea, it's that he pitched it to his own employer, met multiple times with execs to discuss acquisition, only for them to suddenly cut him off and directly copy what he proposed with no remuneration.

That is not the same as two disparate people who have never communicated coming up with the same idea for something.

No expert, and yes I agree it might be a sharp practice if they substantially lead him to believe they would deal with him, but is this not the purpose patents serve?

The app as described in this article at least is incredibly generic - I'd imagine the Delta board members could independently arrive at the conclusion such software features would help and also determine that there may be other options to select that fit their operational requirements better. "Role based text messaging" sounds a lot like a workplace chat app...

Of course they could independently arrive at those ideas, they could independently try them out and see if they are worth it. But why invest what might end up a few hundred man hours in management meetings and trials when you can outsource it to some idiot who didn't even think about getting paid for the initial trial and error phase of the project.

Don't talk to people unless you get paid for the time you invested, the guy behind AppGet had to learn that the hard way, as did hundreds of service companies that got used to outsource initial project planing without ever hearing back from their potential customers.

You can spin that both ways - a company Delta sized may want to partner with a company who have track record in providing support and services to a Delta sized firm, vs a pilot's side project... For Delta, long term support they can count on for years will surely matter.

Especially for "role based chat", there are many mature enterprise offerings in that space already. It's arguably only pertinent to evaluate all options aside from the single one presented by an employee trying to sell a side project.

> For Delta, long term support they can count on for years will surely matter.

Of course, so why even involve the pilot at all if his App idea was obvious and he could never hope to provide the services required by Delta? Clearly at least some delta managers thought they would get some value out of those meetings.

You're arguing theory.

Delta execs could have come up with the same idea independently.

But they didn't, they literally took the idea off him after they met with him to discuss his solution.

Why are you still arguing about whether it's theoretically possible that they could have come up with it without him?

Do you think a company is obligated to purchase every idea an employee cold sells them?

It strikes me as incredibly unlikely in 2016 Delta management at some level weren't aware of the concept of workplace messaging software. Besides this one employee, there were loads of companies trying to sell this in 2016 too (Yammer, Slack, HipChat, etc, etc) as well as the usual enterprise vendors.

No, I obviously don't think that, and are you trying as hard as possible to actually ignore the real events?

You're talking about IN THEORY. There's a difference between NOT purchasing something and completely stealing someones idea / design. How is that not clear to you?

But how can you steal an idea that is already widely available for sale from others in the marketplace? Your assertion they "completely stole someone's idea/design" is equally theoretical here.

If I purchase a washing machine from Hotpoint, I don't steal the idea of washing machines from their rivals. Thanks for the capitalization, I'd never have understood your "theory" of events without it.

The other big component of this that's missing to me is how much he was asking delta to buy it for. If he really invested 100k into it and was asking for some reasonable multiple for his code+idea then it's probably disingenuous of them to not just pay him for it (and maybe pay for him to help dev it).

That said, maybe he asked for something absurd like a billion dollars for what was effectively "a good idea." Hard to know without that and the fact that the information isn't in here leads me to believe that the answer doesn't land in his favor.

If he spent 100k, what did he spend it on? I dont think he is the developer

That 100k number is probably some combination of his time, some investment into server/hosting resources and some money spent on a contractor for development. The 100k cost number seems entirely reasonable, I'm just worried we're missing a part of the story where he asked Delta to pay him X for it and perhaps X was an entirely unreasonable number.

100k seems quite high for a specialized chat app.

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