In this episode:
- My new company is registered!
- Creative Commons non-disclosure agreements?
- Protecting the idea in early start-up mode
- Connecting with people around you is important to influence your early ideas on your project
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5 Comments
Yeah, social media makes it ever easier to connect with like-minded people. The downside is you can end up talking only to like-minded people and kind of disengage from everyone else as you spiral into a black hole of special interests.
I was wary of being too specific about my own big idea for a long time. What I ultimately found when I did start showing it to a wider base was nobody else was as interested as me or had thought about it as much as me. Therefore they did not have as much time or energy to spare in pursuing it. Maybe the idea will turn out to be crap but I always remember the quote:
Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats. Howard Aitken.
Actually, I’ve found most possible idea-executers are enthused about an idea only if it’s their own or their peers seem to be behind it. Unless you can convince them that either of those is the case then you’ll generally get no more than a casual interest.
Better to spend lots of time talking to the people your ideas are going to affect to find out how to make them most compelling and accessible.
Congrats on the registration and getting the paperwork out the way!
Really enjoyed your thoughts, Stef. Very interesting. I’m on the verge of a company launch too. For a long time I didn’t really tell anyone about it as I was scared of the idea being nicked. And then after hearing someone (I forget who) talk at a small business event I realised that as long as I’m reasonably sensible I’m very unlikely to have someone gazump me for a variety of reasons:
- You’re the only person with your unique set of experiences and skills that could allow you to start this venture.
- Most people aren’t inherently evil. So the likelihood of someone willfully nicking someone else’s idea are limited.
- If it does get “leaked” outside of the people you’ve discussed it with, the chances are it will fall on the ears of someone who has no interest in going through the agonising process of setting up their own company.
And besides, if someone does steal the idea from you they won’t do it as well as you could. There will always be competition and obstacles. Just consider them your first obstacle and competition to crush like a fly!
I think that in a lot of projects (in my experience anyway) there is always one or two people who really believe in what they’re doing and will spearhead that project to where they think it should be.
It’s not such a bad thing becoming connecting with like-minded people - you’ll get to explore like-minded ideas further and through that be able to understand how to get other people interested.
Those one or two that spearhead the project then have to bring those people together, where ever their expertise lies, to further back up and progress the project.
As for the NDA agreement, technology has always been the big need for one, but Intellectual Property (especially based around the internet) is becoming increasingly important.
There is a fine balance about discussing the idea with potential parties but not giving away so much that it gets taken away from you. The comments above make really good points, so I’ll just say that I’m lucky that the project I’m setting up won’t be forced to have NDAs and wish you best of luck with the business!
I keep trying quite hard to give away business ideas but nobody seems particularly interested. Maybe my ideas are crap or I’m incredibly uninspiring, but I like to think that, as Si says, it’s just hard to find anyone who’s as enthused about your idea as your or really “gets it” like you do. The best I’ve managed so far is to get one of my classmates to “invent” an idea I showed him a couple of years ago. It’s great that he feels some sort of “ownership” of the idea because that’s the only way he’ll be motivated to do anything about it, but I still know that if he actually makes it, he’ll only be interested in making the software rather than building any business around it, and he’d probably even partner with me if I wanted to commercialise it somehow. As you know, it takes a lot of energy and a whole mix of interests (and, ideally, people) to get a company of the ground. It needs someone really motivated to make it happen and it’s a real challenge to make anyone else that motivated about your ideas, even if you really try.
Great news! And an interesting topic. I guess that is can be really difficult to get as many people as possible to know about an idea without giving someone else the chance to create an identical model and launch before you.
I live with and plan to spent the rest of my life with a lawyer, so I can understand where the legal point comes across. Ultimately, the lawyer would say not t make anything public before ownership is confirmed, but then again, how can you be sure if your idea is going to be a success if no-one knows about it.
I do like the idea of a creative common room, where ideas can be shared and spread, but with a common understanding that they are not going to be made public to the masses. This would be difficult to police, almost impossible, but it could provide a good basis for the then big launch of new ideas.
As someone who is new to the industry, and aims to get very involved with one of the leading figures, I am really interested to learn how Creative Business ideas translate into Business Success…
I guess the only solution is to find someway to ‘copyright’ an idea at a much earlier stage, when all it is is an idea, but as the lawyer beside me would say, that is a legal minefield, which translates into English as expensive or impossible. I look forward to seeing how it develops and works in practice.