Getting a survey of customer interest without giving too much away?
cperciva: When I was thinking of starting tarsnap, I just posted to my blog saying "here's what I think a backup service should look like; I can't see anything out there which looks like this; if I build this, will anyone pay to use it?"Now, tarsnap is a bit unusual in that the technical aspects create a significant barrier to entry (even leaving aside issues of efficiency and performance, few people have the security expertise necessary); but as far as I know, nobody tried to steal my idea.