Intellectual Property
In high school language arts class, there was a poster on the wall that said "Just Because You're Paranoid, Doesn't Mean They Are Not Out To Get You"
I memorized it, as I read it every day for a whole entire school year. I was mystified by it. Perplexed, confused and unsure of it's meaning. Of course I was paranoid in high school, as I smoked pot and took hallucinogenics. I was paranoid every single day.
As the year went on, the poster seemed to be some sort of personal message to me. Everyday I asked myself why the teacher would have that poster on the wall? What the heck was he trying to teach me? Or tell me? At times, I was sure he knew I smoked pot and he wanted to freak me out! Scare me so much so, that I would stop smoking the now legal drug in my state, Colorado.
Being a startup builder there is this funny thing us founders have to be "reasonably paranoid" about, according to the book Venture Deals by Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson. It is Intellectual Property. Yeah, that good old thing in our mind called our "Ideas". Now the poster burned into my head says this "Just Because You're Reasonably Paranoid, Doesn't Mean Someone You Had Beers With While Discussing Your Startup Idea, Won't Fuck The Hell Out Of You" down the road, when you get funding and you're building your idea into a preforming company.
I find this to be one of those funny areas of the startup dilemma. First of all, after you get over your paranoia of sharing "what you think is the greatest idea in the world" because you are so afraid someone will steal it. You go through all kinds of good's and bad's to get to the place where you can only believe in your own idea, when random people sign up for your idea on your website, let alone share it with a friend.
I do not remember who quoted this statement, I read it in one of Paul Graham's essays, but it said essentially this "You have to shove your idea down their throats to get them to believe it" I found that to be true.
No One Is Going To Steal Your Damn Idea!
Get that in your startup head. The problem is the leeches. They are sort of like internet trolls. This is the person whom you thought was your friend, and you went drinking with and you shared your great idea with, and they put in their helpful friendship info, and said, "Oh yeah that's a cool idea, and you could do this" they contributed what you thought was just a friend helping you shape your idea, but nine months later your baby startup is blossoming into something beautiful and they remembered that drinking night and they looked at their sorry ass life and realized they had no money, and your startup was looking like it was going to have money so they got a lawyer, and they waited until your hard work was ripe and they pounce on you. "You owe them half the company!" the lawsuit says. Gulp, what?
Loophole Leeches
Yep, you don't really have to worry about sharing your idea because no one is going to steal it. Stealing your idea would be a ton of work for someone to build. It's probably one of the least likely things to happen. The problem is someone claiming they were "in on the idea with you" that's the problem. I call these types leeches because they don't want to work. They just want to leech onto all the hard work you did, and claim it's theirs too. These are lazy types in my mind. These are the type who want to find loopholes to suck the benefits they did not earn out of others. Sadly, we have many loopholes in our laws, and leeches and trolls have nothing better to do while sitting around doing nothing, so they look for good companies to suck blood out of.
Sad really. I think a ton of progress is being done to stop internet trolls and hopefully we also we be able to stop leeches. Because we really ought to have the right to share our ideas with our friends without the fear of them getting all legal on us. : - /
What Leeches Are In My Life?
After reading about this potential danger that could derail my startup from getting funding in my Venture Deal class I went over all the idea sharing/beer drinking stories in my past and yeah, I have a potential leech. The good thing is the idea I'm chasing now is not the one I shared with this leech. Whew! Still, the worry that some casual friend whom asked what I was up to, and I spilled the beans, could lead to a legal issue in the future is a bit troublesome for my good soul to like.
I think we will always have to face these type of issues in startup life and in regular life. We just have to live up to our standards of ethics, and not be derailed by the cruelty of others. Sometimes a hard task to do. But us good people just do it, knowing that if we have to carry the bricks for the leeches, we will do it.
No comments:
Post a Comment