Ask HN: Should I be scared of you stealing my idea? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Should I be scared of you stealing my idea?

Let's say I have a brilliant idea for an app that has real potential to take off, as it covers a known demand.

I have a working prototype. I know how to make it a real thing.

But I lack the time and resources to make it quickly.

"Ship it as soon as possible!", they say.

The worst possible scenario for me, that makes me skeptical of even posting about it until the product is ripe for market, is someone with more time, experience (incl. marketing experience) and resources stealing my idea and shipping it, only for me - the originator and innovator behind it - to be left and stranded bare-handed, unrecognized and forgotten.

Is this a realistic threat?

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... someone with more time, experience (incl. marketing experience) and resources ...

The reality is, most of those people have their own ideas they are already working on, and their ideas are probably as good as, or better than, yours. Or at least they are in the minds of their proud parents.

Normally you have to fight tooth and nail just to get somebody to even listen to your idea. And there just aren't that many people sitting around going "Ya know, I've got all this time, talent, and money, but no ideas. Wish I could find an idea to steal..."

Now that's not to say it can't happen. But I'm reminded of the old saying "you should be so lucky as to have an idea that's good enough for somebody to want to steal it".

My guess is most HN'ers have their own ideas and don't need to steal yours. HN aside, if your idea is good, then someone has already thought of it. There are 8 billion of us you know.

I'd recommend two things. 1) Get some love from your initial user reviews and build your 5-star moat so to speak. 2) Take naming it seriously and get a trademark if patent protection is not an option.

Some will "take" your idea (or maybe it will be simultaneous discovery). It happens to all innovators. If you are an execution machine, and want it more than your competitors, and have a good brand, you'll be #1. But if the market is big enough then coming in top 10 will still work out great for you unless your ego is fragile.

Literally everyone in any field has a drawer full of great ideas. The "idea guy" is a myth unless you're rich enough to buy companies and actually make your great idea. Until you actually have something what you have is the software equivalent of people with a "great idea" for a novel they will never write.

What you should be afraid of is someone having the same idea or realizing the same need and moving faster while you worry about someone stealing it.

Now the truly truly savvy thing to wonder is: if this is such a great idea, why hasn't anyone done it before? Because a lot of times, someone has but hadn't pursued it for good reasons. Or they did and found out why no one was competing in the space.

The thing is, it’s not about the _idea_, it’s about doing the work to make the idea a _thing_.

Make the thing.

Most product ideas are fantasies. People believe that the product is the business when in reality successful products only succeed when there's a good business structure behind it and a very determined entrepreneur. I believe that's where the competition lies not the product. A product might go viral but unless there's a business to back it, it will be short lived. Personally, I think you should tell everyone about the product to get a feeling of its usefulness and what features it should have. A product will only be successful if it has customers so you need to know what they want. Keeping it secret will produce a less than useful product.

The idea that products are king is so strong that there are businesses whos business model is to develop other people's product ideas for a fee. Of course, people pay a lot of money only to see their product fail since there's no business to back it.

Great ideas are a dime a dozen. Really. If your idea is truly great -- which includes aspects such as being implementable at a reasonable cost and quality, as well as being marketable -- someone else will have the idea as well.

Combine this fact with "the pioneers get all the arrows". The ideal situation isn't to be first to market, it's to be second or maybe third. That gives you the advantage of seeing what works and doesn't work in the real world (at someone else's expense) and adjusting your offering accordingly. Look at the big software successes in the industry. Very few of them were first to market.

So I think worrying about theft of ideas is a waste of time and energy. Better is to ignore that issue entirely and just produce the best product you can. If a competing product appears, pay attention to it and apply the lessons it's teaching to your own.

The idea is merely a seed that may or may not grow into something bid. For a great tree to grow out of the seed, many things are needed (although a great tree cannot be grown out of seed of some random weed no matter how hard someone works on it).

Everyone has ideas, but just a small fraction of startup attempts are successful. There's so many ways things can fail in startup even if the product/service/SaaS concept was good. Quality execution is what makes or breaks a startup even if idea is mediocre.

One should not worry about copycats, as they will be some steps behind in building a product and will primarily be able to copy externally visible aspects of the business.

Chances are, someone somewhere had the very same idea and failed to become rich anyway.

You should always be scared of your innovative ideas being redeveloped by someone else. But until it’s been proven to work copycats won’t bother trying. Their goal is to get rich quick and until you’ve established your ability to make money in an empirical way it’s very unlikely someone will steal it. But once you’ve demonstrated even a modicum of success the copycats will swarm like locusts, or maybe mosquitos or hair lice or other annoying parasites.

Nope. You should not. If your idea is incredible, I'd talk to you about partnering up to build it. Chances are, I'd rather work on ideas of my own, which I have many.

yes.

but, you have a choice - stay scared forever, never release anything, and die with regrets.

or, release your great idea -- that is, build it, release it, publicize/market/try to sell it, and see what happens. then, maybe you might not die with regrets.

one way i like to think about products/services is like youtube videos that teach something. like, literally 50,000 people who have already created ChatGPT (3.5) tutorials in the past few days. by next week it will be 500,000 people. why would _you_ create yet another? because you're you -- you have your own unique view of the world and how ChatGPT might be used. and people might be interested.

good luck.

It is a real threat. Is your app technically difficult to build? If it is then the threat is not as high as app that is easy to build but the idea is novel.

Looking outside of software:

Hydrox came before Oreos and yet Oreo is the default "sandwich cookie" for most people. If they've even heard of hydrox.

You not shipping is a real problem. If its a great idea, other people will also come up with it soon enough without the need to steal.

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