Getting feedback on an idea without giving it away!

zig

Ok dont worry this isnt another typical "I have an idea for a site/app" post.

Basically because
A: Im a web developer with several years experience and can create this myself
b: I know whats involved in the effort it takes to run a business or make something actually work as Ive been doing this for several years so I know even the final product is worthless without a strategy

But Im looking for suggestions on how to approach this.

Its effectively a web app. And I dont want to start investing in design or development till I've heard feedback from a decent pool of potential customers. But to really explain the idea in its fullest I would have to pretty much give away the entire workings on it.

How can you get feedback without worrying about this? Ask friends?

Speedwell

Ask friends, not knowing who they know or might tell? No, you are much better off consulting with someone who has a reputation for confidentiality, even a contract with a confidentiality clause.

Graham

zig wrote: »

How can you get feedback without worrying about this? Ask friends?

Realistically you can't. Just explain the idea and stop worrying about people stealing it.

Forget about the NDA, you're asking people for a favour. Asking them to sign an NDA in advance of doing you that favour is more than likely going to result in a PFO.

zig

Yea Ive been thinking about it a bit more , and the idea is something that if it went very very well could be a nice earner for one or two people but its hardly the next Airbnb or Facebook.

I guess if the idea was going to be stolen by someone bigger and richer it can be done afterwards anyway!

I think my paranoia comes from the fact that its a business to business idea so its businesses Id want the feedback from and alot of business people (well the entrepreneur-y types) often get "inspired" by ideas.

Ill just have to find people I can trust really cause the idea of NDAs doesnt really appeal to me for something like this.

28064212

I've posted this before: Your Ideas Have No Value

There's a couple of hundred more articles out there, all with the same point. The idea of "a social media network" has zero value. Facebook is worth tens of billions due to their execution

AnCatDubh

Graham wrote: »

Just explain the idea and stop worrying about people stealing it.

This.

zig wrote: »

I guess if the idea was going to be stolen by someone bigger and richer it can be done afterwards anyway!

And this. (which you've answered yourself).

Try surfacing it over here for some feedback.

I hope it goes well for you.

14ned

28064212 wrote: »

I've posted this before: Your Ideas Have No Value

There's a couple of hundred more articles out there, all with the same point. The idea of "a social media network" has zero value. Facebook is worth tens of billions due to their execution

Hear hear.

People think in Silicon Valley there is secrecy about what companies are up to. This is totally incorrect, your competitors know exactly what you are working on.

What they don't necessarily know, and what you try to not have them know, is what progress you are making. In other words, your excellence of execution is what you try to obfuscate/hide/lie about, not what you are working on.

Same goes for any idea any individual might have. Ideas are cheap and have zero barriers to entry. A high quality implementation of idea is the expensive hard to achieve thing which has the real value. That's why you see so many clones of the same idea in tech startups, the value isn't in the idea, it's in executing the idea into a viable business. That's why VCs invest in the team, not in the idea.

Niall

sozbox

Ideas are useless, execution is all that matters. Remember iCabbi?

Build a prototype and put it out there for feedback.

No one is going to steal the idea it's more likely someone has already thought of it.

CreepingDeath

zig wrote: »

How can you get feedback without worrying about this? Ask friends?

The only feedback that should matter to you is proper market research against the people who you think will buy your product. A friends test means nothing.

If you have a good idea and propose it directly to your business customers, then your proposition should be more appealing and more cost effective than them implementing it themselves. It should remove any risk to them and be something you can prove has return on investment.

If your idea can be implemented by some I.T. contractor using open source frameworks in a few months, then it is practically worthless.

biko

You can have the best idea in the world but without backing it probably won't get off the ground.

Have it as a pet project for weekends and build a pilot on a free architecture to tune up.

Aswerty

CreepingDeath wrote: »

If your idea can be implemented by some I.T. contractor using open source frameworks in a few months, then it is practically worthless.

I couldn't disagree more. Companies generally don't want to roll their own solutions when there is an off-the-shelf product that they can just pay for.

Divelment

OP you'd be surprised at how your idea/concept may well diminish big time after a number of people have a chance to examine it and give feedback. It's easy to see the opportunities in an idea but the risks and the threats are often not as apparent.

Ziycon

If it's something that interests you and you have the spare time to put effort into it do it, don't go into it saying 'I'm going to make millions out of it', just go into it with the intention of producing as good a product as you can then focus on pitching it to potential customers once you have a working prototype and if it doesn't work you have a nice showcase for github.

You'll never know unless you try.

K0m0d0zer

As any investor or venture capitalist group will tell you, if you really think that you need an NDA (read: you think that your NDA is your competitive advantage) - why would someone invest you or steal your idea?

zig

Divelment wrote: »

OP you'd be surprised at how your idea/concept may well diminish big time after a number of people have a chance to examine it and give feedback. It's easy to see the opportunities in an idea but the risks and the threats are often not as apparent.

I do run a business, and am a developer so I definitely know that ideas dont matter a damn, and I also know how quickly they fall apart. And really thats why my question is about getting feedback, not about how Im going to make loads of money (which btw this idea wont, its quite specific and as I said, it may pay a wage or two)

14ned

zig wrote: »

I do run a business, and am a developer so I definitely know that ideas dont matter a damn, and I also know how quickly they fall apart. And really thats why my question is about getting feedback, not about how Im going to make loads of money (which btw this idea wont, its quite specific and as I said, it may pay a wage or two)

Even if you explain an idea really well to someone else or a small group of people, it doesn't actually help much. Building it and seeing what happens is your only realistic way of getting decent feedback.

Spoiler for Silicon Valley follows:

Silicon Valley the TV series did a great episode on this just recently. They built out this platform which all the engineers who tried it thought it was spectacular. The average public didn't get it, and so it flopped. The Founder gets well upset, and so spends a day teaching a focus group of average public how it works, venturing into shard theory, hashing and redundancy as you do. Eventually he succeeds, and one very small slice of "the public" gets the product, and become really enthusiastic on the tech. Of course, that doesn't help the numbers, and the platform collapses with a unicorn valuation dropping down to just $1m, all the early investors lose money big time.

Same goes for whatever idea you have. The idea is worthless, the execution of that idea is where the value gets created. tl;dr; you have no choice but to build the thing and see if it's got traction. I certainly wouldn't be hiding the idea from anybody, you gain nothing relative to the potential business partners you might gain from spreading the idea around.

Niall

K0m0d0zer

zig wrote: »

I do run a business, and am a developer

In that case, you don't really need validation from an individual or group.
You need validation from paying customers.

Build a prototype and test it.

If you really are a developer then surely you are familiar with lean startup/testing principles?

fergalr

K0m0d0zer wrote: »

As any investor or venture capitalist group will tell you, if you really think that you need an NDA (read: you think that your NDA is your competitive advantage) - why would someone invest you or steal your idea?

They will also tell you your valuation is too high.

...

Of course they'll say that.

OP is worrying about the wrong thing, but that isn't a good argument why.


Unlike the groupthink position in this thread, I argue ideas can be valuable - depending on what you mean by 'an idea'.


A) "It's 2016, I have an [undifferentiated] idea for a social network" - probably worthless.

"It's 2002, and I have a persuasive argument for why social networks are about to become valuable." - is that still worthless?

C) "It's 2002, and I have a credible letter from the future saying that in 2016, a social network will be worth >$300B" - such an artifact would have to be worth millions to VCs active in the space.


Obviously C can't exist, but is a thought experiment to show how information or perspective, even without execution, can clearly be valuable. Everyone apart from its creator will think A is fairly worthless.

But B, is somewhere in between.

No one writes business plans anymore, the equivalent is the pitch deck.
It seems like a good deck (i.e. the material within) isn't worthless.


All that said, the expected value of OPs idea is probably close to 0.
The fact that OP is precious about explaining it is a marker that they don't know what they are doing.

OP: share your idea; if its good enough, it'll probably already have competition; regardless, chances are it sucks, and the benefit of discovering that outweighs the risk of getting more competition.

Regardless, its generally hard to build defensibility in this space, so hiding it buys you little - its not like your going to patent it.

zig

fergalr wrote: »

All that said, the expected value of OPs idea is probably close to 0.
The fact that OP is precious about explaining it is a marker that they don't know what they are doing.

OP: share your idea; if its good enough, it'll probably already have competition; regardless, chances are it sucks, and the benefit of discovering that outweighs the risk of getting more competition.

Regardless, its generally hard to build defensibility in this space, so hiding it buys you little - its not like your going to patent it.

Best reply so far, hard hitting obviously for me but makes complete sense. I would happily share it via conversation with people, or through PM but not on boards.ie publicly here, not because I believe people will copy it, and also not because I think its a bad idea but because its just not the right platform.

But thanks , the bit I've underlined is whats more interesting to me, and something I've to look at.

And the more I think about the more I realise you're right.

1. No ones gonna copy it
2. It requires a combination of expertise/skills to do anyway so Id question how repeatable it is anyway.

fergalr

zig wrote: »

not on boards.ie publicly here, not because I believe people will copy it, and also not because I think its a bad idea but because its just not the right platform.

That's fair.


This stuff is good if you are seriously considering startup-ing:
http://startupclass.samaltman.com/ [especially first 3 lectures relevant here]
https://www.udacity.com/course/how-to-build-a-startup--ep245

VonRyan.Budo

So you've spotted a problem that needs a solution and you think this might be the next big thing. You need to engage with customers from the get-go, and before any specification stage. Be wary of basing outcomes on limited research. That is, research based upon a limited number of friends and acquaintances to whom you float your 'hypothetical' product. These are generally not "real customers".

Lean startup thinking requires the elimination of wasteful practice by making customer validation an inseparable part of the product development cycle from the very start. It’s all about getting in front of your customer quickly and finding out if they like your product and if they will sign-up to use it (even at the concept stage).

Normal Startup Cycle
Idea -> Analyse -> Develop -> Launch ->Customer feedback

Lean Startup Cycle
Idea -> Customer feedback -> Analyse -> Customer feedback -> Develop -> Customer feedback -> Launch -> Customer feedback


Launch As Soon as Possible

Lean startup thinking promotes the launch of a web software project as soon as it is developed to a minimal viable product stage. It simply means that you shouldn’t obsess about delaying launch until you consider the product is "perfect", "finished", "stunning" etc.; instead launch as soon as you have a core set of requirements met.

MVP (Minimal Viable Product)

A very cut-down and feature restricted or prototype version of a product (your web application) is referred to as MVP or a Minimum Viable Product. It should be built quickly and as cost effectively as possible.

Build-Measure-Learn Feedback Loop

As soon as the prototype application (MVP) is developed it should be launched and real customers invited to sign-up and use it. Customer opinion should be then actively sought, analysed and key observations or requests implemented quickly and then re-released. Again feedback should be actively sought, taken into account and the product refined accordingly and released again. Wash and Spin until a majority of your customers become satisfied with your product.

The Value of adopting Lean Startup and MVP launch

The sooner your web application is launched the sooner you can establish the veracity of your intuition. With customer engagement from day one, the product is shaped quickly and if launched early into the market it will quickly fail (or succeed) without burning up valuable resources. The faster a product fails, the faster you can adjust or pivot until it succeeds using quick iteration of the build-measure-learn feedback cycle.

Your Lean Team

So you if you have bought into the Lean Startup Strategy; next is to find a development partner who has the technical expertise, experience and capability (Rapid Application Development Environment, Software framework, MVP architecture support) to fast track your prototype development and get your product launched and your start-up business underway. .....

zig

This is great stuff thank you!

happycoach

sozbox wrote: »

Ideas are useless, execution is all that matters. Remember iCabbi?

Build a prototype and put it out there for feedback.

No one is going to steal the idea it's more likely someone has already thought of it.

+2

It's all about the execution