Generally, I know by this question that this person will not make it past that phone call/email because if they are so worried about a developer stealing their idea, there is likely nothing there/they haven't done their research/they are not serious.
If you know how to do due diligence and come from a background in business, why do you need to be open with everyone about what you're working on? Yes, if you're a young kid and green behind the ears, you should probably not be too secretive. But you can talk to a handful of trusted, knowledgeable people without needing to be completely open with everybody you meet.
Does 42 Floors write blog posts about all of their ideas and everything that they are developing? Maybe they do, I don't know. As soon as they have real competitors, they will stop - or maybe they will not and I think that decision will be a function of market position. If 42 Floors has an unshakeable market position, they will be as open as can be. If there is a threat and they've lost considerable marketshare to that threat, they will be less open about the competitive ideas they have going forward IMO.
We're working on a company right now that has competitors that, if they had the eureka moment that we have had, would run with it. There is no reason to even risk exposing them to our ideas. So we speak in very broad terms when we discuss what we are working on.
I am going to do some more reading but I do not understand the mentality of share all of your ideas openly and everything will be okay.
Can someone please ELI5 the logic underlying this orthodoxy?
Thanks and I post this with all due respect. It's not an attack. It's a confused man typing in public.
Why don't stock traders tell other stock traders about positions they want to take before they've built their positions? Yes, I know the barriers are lower but unless you're enough down the road in building your product/position, why would you plant the seed of your idea in somebody else's mind?
I think the key qualifier is: have you done anything yet beyond come up with an idea? If you have not done anything but talk, then being secretive is pretty pointless. If your idea is in motion and will be to market sooner than later, talking about it openly is not a big deal.
2. You need the invaluable input from other people. Maybe your idea is crap, maybe it has already been tried, maybe no one is prepared to pay to solve that particular problem, maybe someone else is already doing whatever you want to do successfully and are years ahead of you. You better get to know these things before you spend 18 months coding in your basement.
What we are working on currently is a spin off of an existing company that we already run and we've spoken to numerous other users about it. It's a solution to a common problem in a particular industry that nobody has appropriately addressed. Until we launch, I do not see the wisdom of telling strangers what we are working on. There are existing very large companies that have certain pieces in place and if they had the insight that we do, could devote resources and beat us to the punch. Sometimes there is value in blindsiding your competition.
I simply disagree with complete openness as a universal rule. Maybe because of egos it's better to be open more often than not but it should be a carefully considered modus operandi.
We will be launching within 6 months and already are alpha-ing with users. You can take a measured approach to openness. It's not just complete openness with everyone you meet or complete cryptic, insular stealth mode.
This might come off as overly harsh, but it's absolutely true: taking 45-plus minutes out of your day to engage in an "argumentative" call with "the brother of a friend" who has a "world-changing idea" is a waste of time. As is blogging about it.
Your job as CEO is not to advise other entrepreneurs or to preach the startup gospel; it's to steer your own ship.
In past startups I would have agreed with you. When I did my first startup, I worked on it exclusively. I skipped vacations. I skipped classes (I was in school at the time). I did practically nothing else.
I burned out.
The title of CEO doesn't define me as a person. I'm just a guy that started a company. I get stressed. I need help at times. I have things I like doing unrelated to my company.
Blogging is one of those things. I blog because I love writing. Writing startup stuff for the HN community gives me purpose to that writing. It's a sweet bonus that many of our users are on HN, but that's not actually my top motivation. It's just because I like doing it.
As for 45 minute phone calls to help a friend. I'll bet the karma gets paid back nicely. But even if not, I'm not sure I could I look myself in the mirror if I became so self-important that I lacked the time to be generous.
In my experience, the difference between successful entrepreneurs who have a healthy balance between their personal and professional lives and those who don't is that the former prioritize and filter and the latter don't.
There are 24 hours in a day and each hour is precious. As the CEO of a young company, you probably have a significant amount that needs to get done each day, and you and your employees are counting on your ability to "get it done." If you're spending an hour on an "argumentative" phone call about startup philosophy with somebody who has an idea, you're trading an hour of time that can be used to benefit you or your company for an hour of time with a person who clearly prefers conflict to counsel. Let's talk about you, not your company, for a moment: in an hour, you could easily fit in a vigorous workout, take a power nap, enjoy a lunch with a friend or relative, or cook a meal for your significant other.
In reality, of course, the decision to give an hour to an individual who won't even reveal what he's working on sans NDA doesn't mean that you have an hour less work to do. It just means that you'll need to make it up, today or tomorrow, increasing the likelihood that you'll be "working late" and reducing the likelihood that you'll be able to fit in a vigorous workout, take a power nap, enjoy a lunch with a friend or relative, or cook a meal for your significant other. Activities that it should be noted benefit your overall well-being and are thus likely to have a positive impact on your performance as the leader of a company.
Obviously, I'm not saying "never take a phone call" or "don't be willing to provide advice." But as the CEO of a company with employees, you are important, and your time is valuable. Being unreasonably generous with it is not of benefit to your company, or you.
I have a rule that I'll never turn down a 30-45 minute catchup with someone who needs some advice, or wants a sounding board, or just wants to talk about something they're excited about. Life is about people, and has a funny way of turning things around so that those kinds of meetings grow into friendships, business connections, and sometimes of course - nothing at all.
Most people agree that mentor-mentee relationships benefit both parties equally well. I've definitely found this to be true. While these kinds of interactions may not be the same kind of dynamic as a long-term mentor relationship, spending a small chunk of time can also break you out of a rut or give you a new idea.
Don't discount the power of taking a few minutes out of your day to pay it forward.
But when you're the CEO of a company with employees and/or investors, you need to prioritize and filter, and you need to recognize the important, worthwhile conversations from the unimportant, unproductive ones.
Spending an hour of your time arguing with a person who doesn't want your advice in the first place and won't even tell you what he's working on without an NDA clearly falls into the latter category.
That means appropriately dedicating time and effort to your company, if you have one, but not forgetting to live your life too, continuing to invest in your personal relationships, etc.
Wow. What a sad comment to read. Being a CEO means being a leader, and not just of those that work for you, but to serve as a leader and thus guide others that are trying to trek the same path you've taken (and might re-take).
However, in retrospect, I concluded that serving as an advisor to another company while I was building a new company of my own was not a good decision. Did taking the time to advise another company have a material impact on the outcome for my company? I don't believe so, but I can never know either. And that's the thing: when you start a business, win or lose you should always put yourself in a position where you can look back and know that 100% of the hours you made available to your work life were dedicated to the right effort.
Plus, teaching others is one of the best ways to learn things for yourself.
There's a very simple way to tell if HN is really your target audience ... is writing startup bla bla that has nothing to do with your company the only way to get your company on the front page?
Potential customers could be reading company blogs. I would be concerned if the CEO was spending time ruminating about startup philosophy on those blogs to potential customers.
I don't know how you would you feel if you worked at the OP's startup, but I would have a problem with the notion that the person ultimately responsible for making payroll found it worthwhile and enjoyable to spend 45-plus minutes defending his views on startups and arguing with a person who wanted him to sign an NDA about an unrelated business idea.
It's not the 45-plus minutes, it's how he chose to spend them.
Nonetheless, there's still a lot to apply. Identifying early adopter players and a channel to them, measuring retention and other analytics, iterating and releasing frequently, creating a viral loop -- these are all concepts that apply to game dev.
At some point, I think most games do try a "big launch" because ads and top 10 lists is how a majority of people find new games (even indie games now have the Humble Bundle as a consolidated channel). Another reason for big launches is the fake market dynamics of the app store: a one time boost when launching, and a positive feedback loop for downloads. But even with big launches, a lot of testing and tweaking is done internally (and it's standard practice on the app store to test the release in single markets, likes say Canada, because the app store stats are independent for each market)
I think I can make a good/great game eventually given a long enough time with many feedback cycles, but I'm not sure if the user base for games ever grow that way. It seems that you get your one chance to be amazing from the start or you wasted all your time.
My plan is to get to a point where I can have people in coffee shops try it before I make it public or have a very tiny private beta eventually. But I wish there was a way I could get feedback sooner from more than friends and family.
