<story><title>No I won&apos;t sign your NDA, here&apos;s why.</title><url>http://blog.jpl-consulting.com/2012/04/why-i-wont-sign-your-nda/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>huhtenberg</author><text>Frankly, I am getting tired of this &quot;ideas are worthless, execution is golden&quot; mantra. Of course, &quot;let&apos;s build a online shop&quot; idea is useless, but it&apos;s not really an &lt;i&gt;idea&lt;/i&gt; to begin with. An idea that is worth discussing with others would typically include some minimal validation, an execution and marketing plan and, in general, some amount of thought put into it. Because otherwise it&apos;s not an idea, but a random brainfart.&lt;p&gt;Moreover, the value of a good idea &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; in that extra thought that was put into it, something that is well worth a bit of protection. This is not an abstract MBA point. I am involved with a project that can be fully described in just 4 words, and these are plenty sufficient to tip off the competition and loose the first-to-market advantage. Should we not have been careful with how we talked to other people about the idea, we might&apos;ve lost it to the established players already.&lt;p&gt;(edit) I am not disagreeing that a lot of people asking for an NDA upfront are lunatics, because they are. It&apos;s the black and white take on the value of ideas that I have an issue with.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wpietri</author><text>I still think ideas are basically worthless. That&apos;s certainly true literally; 20 years in software and I&apos;ve never heard of anybody selling one for significant money. First-mover advantage can sometimes be helpful, but it rarely determines success. Look at Amazon, Google, and Facebook, for example: leaders in their categories, but none of them was first.&lt;p&gt;A person with a brilliant idea who can&apos;t execute well is almost certainly screwed. A company that starts with a bad idea and executes well can turn out fine, though. That&apos;s because in the startup context, great execution involves a lot of exploration, validation, and the now-ubiquitous pivoting.&lt;p&gt;Take PayPal. Their first idea was two-factor authentication for handhelds. That turned into money transfer via handhelds. Which turned into a web-based money transfer product. But that wasn&apos;t the real deciding factor; the IP that let them win was anti-fraud software. And the reason there&apos;s a PayPal Mafia is that the execution-focused culture kept creating successes long after the original idea was played out.&lt;p&gt;Even supposing that there&apos;s an occasional rare idea that actually has some value, I think we should still keep the mantra because it&apos;s inarguable that there are an ocean of chumps who think that the idea is the hard part.</text></comment>
<story><title>No I won&apos;t sign your NDA, here&apos;s why.</title><url>http://blog.jpl-consulting.com/2012/04/why-i-wont-sign-your-nda/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>huhtenberg</author><text>Frankly, I am getting tired of this &quot;ideas are worthless, execution is golden&quot; mantra. Of course, &quot;let&apos;s build a online shop&quot; idea is useless, but it&apos;s not really an &lt;i&gt;idea&lt;/i&gt; to begin with. An idea that is worth discussing with others would typically include some minimal validation, an execution and marketing plan and, in general, some amount of thought put into it. Because otherwise it&apos;s not an idea, but a random brainfart.&lt;p&gt;Moreover, the value of a good idea &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; in that extra thought that was put into it, something that is well worth a bit of protection. This is not an abstract MBA point. I am involved with a project that can be fully described in just 4 words, and these are plenty sufficient to tip off the competition and loose the first-to-market advantage. Should we not have been careful with how we talked to other people about the idea, we might&apos;ve lost it to the established players already.&lt;p&gt;(edit) I am not disagreeing that a lot of people asking for an NDA upfront are lunatics, because they are. It&apos;s the black and white take on the value of ideas that I have an issue with.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>andrewflnr</author><text>Especially in software, ideas &amp;#60;-----&amp;#62; execution is a continuum. I think an idea, a well-thought-out idea, a spec, a program, maybe even machine code are just more-and-more detailed designs. More (and less obvious) detail is more work, and worth more.&lt;p&gt;Now that I think about it, the transition from program to machine code is interesting. I guess design stops when you can turn the design into a finished product via a mechanical translation. Similarly, a physical engineer&apos;s work is done when their design can be executed by &quot;commodity&quot; factories, workers, etc.</text></comment>