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Comment by mikesabat | Hacker News Reader

Do you know someone? Can you give an example of someone that was starting a business told someone the idea and that person went and ran with the business?

I believe that it may happen, but it feels like an urban legend - I've never actually seen it or heard it.

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It does happen. Not as often as founders fear, but it does happen.

The writer would have been closer to the truth if he said that founders generally err on the side of secrecy.

"It does happen." I believe it has happened, but the whole point of the post is do you know anyone that this has ever happened to?

And if you don't know anyone this has happened to, how do you know that it actually happens?

A company claiming to be interested in buying Viaweb instead copied us (as well as they could) and went on to be very successful. They didn't kill us, because they were in Japan. But I expect they did make it harder for Yahoo to launch a Japanese version of Store.

This is a good example. I'm guessing you didn't only tell them the idea, you opened up your books, detailed plans and possibly even your code.

A potential sale situation is different from taking the first steps on the idea. You had already started building the company.

I think managing the disclosure of sensitive information is a totally different topic (one which I wish I knew a little more about).

It was so early that we had no books to open, and they were business guys who would not have understood our code if we'd shown it to them. All we did was explain what we were doing.

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