How do you protect a Big idea?

the easiest way to do it is register a patent, depends where you live, or make it official, register a company and hire the workers you need legit, make them to sign a confidential agreement which you can hold against them if they follow your idea independently

How "good" of an idea + business model do you need to pitch something online to venture capitalists?

What about a physical product whose buyer market would be government? Speaking in terms of venture capitalists.

Two separate ideas here. I would imagine not many here have pitched an idea to VC's successfully, but worth asking for opinions. Some of you are crafty. I'd like to keep the internet idea in house and see if I can pull it off with my own cash. Thanks for the replies so far.

DO you want to know how much is your idea worth...ZERO...if you want something worth protecting, develop it and then protect that product of yours.

You could tell us about it and we will keep it a secret for you

I ran a hosting company in London during the dotcom boom and we were inundtaed back then with all kinds of ideas from all kinds of people like yourself who didnt have the cash to take themselves to market.

Some had the self confidence to discuss their project in more detail which would engage their audience and generate interest if not excitement in their idea and thats an important part of the process when youre talking about a fledgling idea - engaging potential partners.

Others had no confidence in anybody at all and would constantly speak in guarded tones and would play their cards so clsoely to their chest that it was often difficult to even grasp what the project was.

After seeing close to a couple of hundred ideas, my take on it is this, the ones with the confidence were the ones who realised that if they didnt involve others their project would never ever get started. I dont mean discuss an idea with all and sundry, but i do mean IDENTIFY the types of people you want to be working with and then work towards developing a relationship with them.

Internet projects both then and now, move at lightning speed. The expression "Ready Fire Aim!" was coined around that time because start-ups were making 'it' up as they went along. Its not as though youre walking along an untrodden path now as so many internet start-ups have passed along this way that youre unlikely to be ground breaking to the extent that nobody has a clue what youre talking about and therefore, youre unliklely to be met with a wall of disbelief, but SPEED is what will set you apart.

Read, Fire, AIM is perhaps the mantra you should adopt. Im not suggesting that you naively charge into meetings unprotected and without nda's, but from what youve said, a problem youre facing is that youre under capitalised and are likely to be laughing at the advice youre being given about trademarking/copywritiing your stuff because you simply dont have the cash to burn on that side of your business.

You need to find yourself some partners but selecting the right ones is where youre problems are likely to begin - identifying who to bring in.

Techies whom you cant afford are likely to want a good chunk of equity if theyre to give you their labour free of charge which is effectively what you need. OK, say thats acceptable to you, but what happens when you find out down the road that they dont have ALL the technical expertise that your project NEEDS? youre faced with dropping more equity on somebody else to solve your NEW problems or the project grinds to a halt.

IN ADDITION to that, you'll need marketing muscle to roll the project out, so at that point, the only way to go is to bring investors in who are willing to put their cash in and guess what, they'll want a chunk too.

All of a sudden, youve given away really substantial parts of your business and the chances are that you still may not be fully funded.

The advice you received in post 2 and post 12 are really both quite sound, especially number 12.

Much of what was presented to me by 'would be entrepreneurs' was fantasy, but there were some gems in there and for those, I acted as an interface to vc's. Often through the embryonic FIRST TUESDAY CLUB which at that time brought vc's, entrpreneurs and internet service providers together in one venue for a kind of frenzied date rape.

1. get your business plan together
2. get your marketing plan together
3. get your cashflow & funding requirements mapped out
4. create milestones that demonstrate when more money will come in and why, or where investors can cash out and how

In all investment cases, the vc's are looking for a clear exit route - thats not to say they will want to take it - but generally, they want to know HOW they'll get their initial investment AND RESULTING PROFIT out.

In addition to everything else thats on your plate, my advice would be think about that side of things (an investors exit route).

Not to the detriment of all other aspects of your project, but its an important consideration that cant be ignored, otherwise, you'll find that youve taken your project as far as you can go without investors but when it comes to bringing new money in, you'll struggle to generate the levels of interest that you want from investors because theres no clear plan about what happens to them once theyve put their cash in.

Either way, it must be very exciting for you right now and i hope that its not coming across that im belittling your idea because thats certainly not the case.

All the best from London.

I'm a kind of developer (php programmer and designer too). I can estimate your idea. If this is really has a potential I can help you in many aspects. PM me

britcpa, Thanks for that post. In your experience, when a big idea isn't accepted by VC's as worthwhile, which I'd imagine most aren't - is the reasoning ALWAYS it just wasn't good enough? Meaning, if you had 300 people come in with their ideas. Ultimately only 10 of them were funded and backed, did 100% of the other 290 just not have it? Could you say some of them had the idea, but the way they projected it wasn't good enough and because of that, their concept, while good, wasn't fully grasped?

I am undertaking such project right now, however, I am coming up with initial investment myself without looking for outside money at least until all legal formalities have been taken care of and the project has reached its "beta" version (something that is presentable.)

I always felt skeptical about programs were would be inventors present everything to potential investors and hope to get their 2 cents. Most of such good ideas get stolen or replicated.

I am trying to figure out best copyright protection for each region as I am sure there will be different requirements for European Union vs US. Mailing a letter to yourself will not help much in a real legal battle with a company that has money to spend on lawyers (and trademark lawyers charge $500/hr).

Protecting your idea with a non-disclosure agreement signed by a programmer in India or Ukraine will not help either if you are concerned about programmers starting their own thing (so the higher the start up cost the less likely they will be able to push it).

I am more worried about VC's with cash to blow when they see my apple pie, and want to bake their own

How much money you have for marketing?

A BIG idea without the right people and the right strategy will go to waste.

You can't really protect the idea. You just need to launch it big.

Licence it

WILLGOUP said:

britcpa, Thanks for that post. In your experience, when a big idea isn't accepted by VC's as worthwhile, which I'd imagine most aren't - is the reasoning ALWAYS it just wasn't good enough? Meaning, if you had 300 people come in with their ideas. Ultimately only 10 of them were funded and backed, did 100% of the other 290 just not have it? Could you say some of them had the idea, but the way they projected it wasn't good enough and because of that, their concept, while good, wasn't fully grasped?

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Good ideas stand out like diamonds in a coal mine and what separated the winners from the losers were THE MANAGEMENT TEAM who would be charged with implementation of the concept.

Invariably, a good idea which stood out but wouldnt receive funding was due to not having a solid business team behind it - i.e. if most of the drive and delivery was down to one man/two men, the investors would feel they were at risk and move on. Hey! Why not? There's no shortage of people with ideas looking for people with money. Some of the management structures in place will give an investor more confidence for them to go to the next stage - due diligence.

If you truly have a classy idea and it requires outside funding, my advice would be that you need to present yourself to would be suitors as a TEAM rather than as just you.

If its just you, the investors will look at how much hand holding they'll have to do to keep the project sweet and self-sustaining even if youre fully committed to its success, but what if theyre faced with a worst case scenario and you're ill, or lose interest and get excited by something else, or get depressed and wont get out of bed, or are full of joi de vivre and go on a bender with some lapdancing chums, etc etc.

IF you have a team behind you, all of a sudden youre presenting a BUSINESS IDEA to investors rather than AN IDEA.

Michael Gerber wrote THE E-MYTH & depending where you are in your life and with your business, you may well find that it answers a lot of questions this thread of yours has raised.

All the best from London.


ps - in all of MY experience, i never saw vc's put money into JUST an idea. They always wanted to see something up and running even if embryonic, but more often than not, something that was actually working and had ironed out many of the kinks or had identified them all but didnt have the finanical resources to resolve them.

pps - what a vc didnt like, was a nasty surprise and especially the kind of nasty surprise that meant you'd underestimated the investment required of them - i.e you have their cash and some time later, go back asking for more.

Make sure that you know your numbers back to front and blindfolded because that will give them confidence in you and your knowledge of your own business and by definition, that makes you worth listening to a little bit more than the next bloke theyre seeing.

Never never never be in a position where youre asking for more money without that always being part of the original plan.

http://www.kickstarter.com

Use them, your idea will be public, but will be protected by program.

Good way to get money and some kind of copyright...

Hi,

Have a good business plan and a very good lawyer that could help you out =)

Gian Sim

keeping a things are just simple as still quiet and do the things

Some very solid info here..If you keep the records of everything and have ndas you would be good but not great look what happened at facebook. The twins hired zukerberg to code and he stole their idea and has made 7 billion and they only got 65 million out of the settlement. Trust no one and do break the project into many pieces and dont let the workers figure out the big picture. Only you should be able to put it all together also act fast because the longer you delay the more other people may be doing the same thing

You prepare a business plan, create a NDA, talk to investors if you need, get the people who do the work VIA references and sign them on a strict NDA and hope for the best.

Nothing is 100% protected nowadays. Even patents.
The best advice is to start working before someone else will think of your idea and not to hire anyone from IM forums.
Keep track records of correspondences.

jtorres75 said:

Some very solid info here..If you keep the records of everything and have ndas you would be good but not great look what happened at facebook. The twins hired zukerberg to code and he stole their idea and has made 7 billion and they only got 65 million out of the settlement. Trust no one and do break the project into many pieces and dont let the workers figure out the big picture. Only you should be able to put it all together also act fast because the longer you delay the more other people may be doing the same thing

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Whats this about man?
Zukercunt?

WILLGOUP said:

Is it possible to copyright an idea that is already being used? I am looking to implement on a different platform. Isn't original, but the platform it would be using is something that hasn't been thought of or implemented on.

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No, it is not possible and not practical. You can trademark a domain name but that also take time, work and cash.

Only share the idea with your friends at BHW.

P.S. Well keep them safe [=}