Ask YC: Would you still apply to YC if

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=103499

by tyohn • 19 years ago

4 13 19 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Ask YC: Would you still apply to YC if your application could be viewed by anyone?

tyohn• 19 years ago

When I was younger I would have been worried about someone stealing my idea but now I think I'd be fine with it.

daniel-cussen• 19 years ago

I have ideas that I wish someone did, just so I could buy their product and solve problems that annoy me. I used to see new stuff and say to myself, "I thought of that, why didn't I do it?" Now I say, "I knew there had to be something like this out there. Awesome; I'll buy it."

iamelgringo• 19 years ago

Yes

pius• 19 years ago

Nope.

Some smart people started the meme that ideas are less important than execution. That statement is very true. Unfortunately, there are too many cargo culters out there who take bromides like this to the extreme just because their favorite guru said it.

If you've got something innovative, why in the world would you want to give a group of entrepreneurial hackers not only your idea but enough about its execution and strategy to attract investors? Doesn't make a bit of sense to me.

I can already hear the wags saying, "You must not be very confident in your ability to execute better than the competition." My preemptive response to that is that there always exists a group of people who can execute an idea just as well as you can. Your likelihood of having the dominant implementation of an idea is based not only on solid execution but luck, relative time to market, and other factors -- most of which are not served by giving away your strategy to potential competitors.

Don't get me wrong, I give out ideas all the time, will talk openly about things that I'm working on within reason, and will risk strategies getting out when I pitch investors, but that's much different from guaranteeing that the blueprint to your business will be handed out to your competitors on a silver platter. That's not wise unless you consider your competitors really incompetent. I think too highly of my colleagues here to do that. :)

edw519• 19 years ago

Agreed.

If I wanted to see how quickly someone else could reverse engineer and clone my app, this is the first place I'd go.

Hell, there is so much talent (and attitude) here, it would almost be a little contest.

icky• 19 years ago

> Some smart people started the meme that ideas are less important than execution.

Ideas are less important than execution, but a head start is a big advantage in execution (and adoption).

I like to give away ideas that I'd like to see made into products or services, but that I don't have any interest in implementing myself.

anaphoric• 19 years ago

It depends on the idea one has. For the idea of my company, I would have no problem making it public. It's based on solving fundamental research problems. Anyone is welcome to the area if they dare. :-)

If the idea is more about what could make a quick and easy splash on the Internet, then no way should people give away their ideas. That would be nuts.

A similar thing happens in the research world. Only an idiot shares their funding proposals will colleagues in the same area who might put in a proposal before the same board.

webwright• 19 years ago

Yep. If I thought a 3 month head start was the major competitive advantage for my team, I'd go find a day job.

If you think the stuff you write on that application (did someone call it a "BLUEPRINT"?!) has anything but the most tenuous connection to what your software/strategy will look like in 3-6 months, you're smoking something.

The problem with secret ideas is that they are secret to your users, too. We literally got onto TechCrunch with three speculative jpg mockups and barely a line of code... We were buried with amazing feedback and ideas and fairly quickly became very smart about the market we were playing in. We got offers to help. The level of interest was incredibly motivating.

Startup geeks are passionate about THEIR ideas. Not yours. The risk that a great team is sitting around waiting for an idea is absolutely minuscule compared to the reward of exploring the market.

mrtron2• 19 years ago

My open YC app Jan 08:

   # of people working on project: 1
   brief summary: todo list
   monetizing plans: none
   reason for site: personal use
   competitors: lots of better products
   other notes: Step 2 of the project is much more exciting than Step 1.

By the way, look forward to my site launch and press release congratulating our team of 20 developers sometime this month. It will be our little secret.

motoko• 19 years ago

Your secret that it took 20 developers to make an online todo list for yourself with no plans to make money?

mrtron2• 19 years ago

Sorry, poorly written comment.

I was implying that I was going to pretend that my work was the work of 20 people to get people more excited about it.

Maybe a rumor that my company received 100 million in funding would do...

sonink• 19 years ago

Yes, because an idea does not make a business. Its just a starting point of figuring out how to eventually create something useful and build a business around it. You are not really sharing your strategy/plan of how to build a business, because essentially if you dont know it yourself how can you put it down on paper. The hardest part is to create that path of making something useful over an year or so and its not something you know beforehand.

bayareaguy• 19 years ago

I have a few ideas on hold until I meet the right people. I'm not really worred about the real YC crowd because they should all be too busy on their own startup stuff (and if they aren't then they should be -- get back to work!). But if I spill the beans here chances are some bright Googler watching this list could pick it up as their 20% time project and I'd rather not have that happen just yet.

Ask YC: Would you still apply to YC if

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