Hypothetical Question regarding Intellectual Property/NDAs

[moonman]

How do I ensure that the evaluators of the Y Combinator application do not steal my intellectual property? Especially in the event that the initial application is rejected for reasons not relating to the viability of the idea itself.

Is there an implied non disclose agreement/non compete agreement on the part of the evaluators when they evaluate the vast number of intellectual property submitted to them?

[jsjenkins168]

This question is covered in the YC FAQ: http://ycombinator.com/faq.html

They wont sign an NDA (apparently this is common among investors), but they wont steal your idea either. Even if they did, ideas are only as good as how they are executed. By themselves ideas are worth very little (look at Facebook vs. ConnectU), especially in the early stages since they change a lot.

[moonman]

That's true, no idea by itself is sufficient to becoming successful unless there is solid execution/implementation. However, in the case of startups that are "inventing" a product instead of making something existing better the initial idea becomes the "moneymaker". Startups applying for YCombinator to improve on an existing product (social networking, social news, finance softwares) don't have to worry about giving away an idea that they have been brainstorming for months. They primarily are banking on the fact that their approach is solid and the engineering of the product is high quality (no easy task either).

The idea is a very necessary factor, but yes not by itself sufficient. The Paul Graham article "How to Start a Startup" assumes that a startup is only developing something to improve on an existing idea/technology.

A startup inventing a product would be taking a huge leap of faith by believing that a power broker like Y Combinator would not be tempted to (in the event they came across an idea that they felt was revolutionary) to not farm out the engineering/business dev to seasoned developers; especially if they lacked faith in the approach/abilities of the founders. After all the process of execution/development is pretty much a commodity task.

[jsjenkins168]

You have valid arguments, but my point is if you're looking to get outside investment, you need to get used to the idea of your potential investors not signing NDA's. Unless you're God himself, they probably wont sign anything (you are LUCKY to have them look at your venture).

If you have some process/idea that is really as significant as you say, and the barriers of entry to implement it are so low that anyone who simply hears about it could screw you, then you should apply for a patent.

[moonman]

That's exactly why I was initially worried 1) because most tech-ventures have low barriers of entry (due to low over-heard costs) 2) generally speaking, the expertise required to implement a novel idea is almost rather trivial because programming is a commodity skill.

Thanks for the to-the-point response.

[pg]

> "How to Start a Startup" assumes that a startup is only developing something to improve on an existing idea/technology.

No it doesn't.

[moonman]

Maybe not--but the article is written in a way to minimize the importance of a good idea. Read below:

"In particular, you don't need a brilliant idea to start a startup around. The way a startup makes money is to offer people better technology than they have now. But what people have now is often so bad that it doesn't take brilliance to do better.

Google's plan, for example, was simply to create a search site that didn't suck. They had three new ideas: index more of the Web, use links to rank search results, and have clean, simple web pages with unintrusive keyword-based ads. Above all, they were determined to make a site that was good to use. No doubt there are great technical tricks within Google, but the overall plan was straightforward. And while they probably have bigger ambitions now, this alone brings them a billion dollars a year." (How to Start a Startup)

Sure, search engines sucked (algorithm-wise) before Google but the concept/idea of a technology to aggregate links by relevance, was pretty critical to Google's existence, IMHO.

[breck]

> Sure, search engines sucked (algorithm-wise) before Google but the concept/idea of a technology to aggregate links by relevance, was pretty critical to Google's existence, IMHO.

Certainly Pagerank was important, but I would assume(so I could be wrong) there were Pagerank copycats in the early days. Having Pagerank was a necessity for Google or any copycat to become the best search engine. But it's the dozens of other things that they did at Google that were just as necessary to make a search site that didn't suck IMHO. Clean, fast, simple, etc. I think Pagerank was great but if you were to drop that behind the UI of a competing search engine it wouldn't have had nearly as much impact as it did at Google.

But my assumptions could be wrong. Maybe Google's IP prevented anyone from doing a PR copycat and that led to its success.

[Ultrapreneur]

I've pitched a few ideas/products to VC's in the past, and although you're sharing the next big thing with them if they don't invest they're not going to steal your idea.

why you ask? it's simple... no respectable VC company wants to be known as the company that stole "your name here"'s idea. imagin what would happen if word get out that they stole someones idea after hearing their pitch. nobody would ever pitch to them again.

when all else fails.. use the "poor mans patent" print off your code, idea, etc. and register mail it to yourself, but don't open it. in case you ever need proof you have it... signed, dated, and stamped.