Using Blogs To Dispense Venture Capital

prostoalex writes "The New York Times describes how Tim Draper, a founder of Draper Fisher Juvetson venture capital firm, is trying out a new approach to finding the next entrepreneurial superstars. In his Web log (which NYTimes mysteriously never links to, but it's on AlwaysOn-Network), Draper asks the readers to leave the comments with their billion-dollar ideas. The winners of this pitch were selected recently, and just reading the comments with innovative ideas is quite interesting."

Comments

Presentation, Presentation, Presentation...

[TWX]

So, if I can theoretically pitch an idea so it sounds absolutely awesome but in reality is totally full of crap, then I too can get venture capital money to use to create a company and pay myself a massive salary? Cool!

Re:Presentation, Presentation, Presentation...

[cranos]

Why not, it worked during the Dot Bomb.

Re:Presentation, Presentation, Presentation...

[JohnFromCanada]

"So, if I can theoretically pitch an idea so it sounds absolutely awesome but in reality is totally full of crap"

It's not going to be easy to pitch a load of crap to this many people and make it easy for all of them to think it's incredible. They will look into the ideas to check if they are feasible and to make sure that they are possible. They are not going to hand you lots of money unless they think your idea is a good one and they feel that you can make them money.

Re:Presentation, Presentation, Presentation...

[sentientbeing]

ive got this great idea for collecting email addresses to help people market products using the internet.

Send me an email and ill tell you all about it.

Re:Presentation, Presentation, Presentation...

[MrAndrews]

I have an article I wrote a whole back dealing with this concept of the "idea men" not being able to execute their own innovations properly. The one thing that a lot of former dotcom execs told me was that they wish they'd sold out soon before they got the big company with all the programmers and Coke machines, because the biggest lesson they learned was that they didn't know how to run a business as well as they knew how to come up with great starter ideas.

I think this blog approach - despite the fact that it's horribly risky for people with good concepts - is closer to the ideal. Find the talent out there, get them to give their baby a kickstart, and then (likely) buy it away from them to make it really successful. People need to see where they fit into the bigger picture, and not try and be in every shot.

I should update that article sometime... hmm...

Re:Presentation, Presentation, Presentation...

[cdiggins]

That is exactly how the Silicon Valley bubble burst. A close friend of mine still makes his living in the Washington DC area jumping from failing start-up to failing start-up, where he gets paid to manage computers for technologically handicapped entrepreneurs wasting some venture capitalist's money.

Re:Presentation, Presentation, Presentation...

[FireBreathingDog]

So, if I can theoretically pitch an idea so it sounds absolutely awesome but in reality is totally full of crap, then I too can get venture capital money to use to create a company and pay myself a massive salary? Cool!

You could do that before. It was called the 1990s. The only difference here, it seems, is that you now do it on a blog.

Re:Presentation, Presentation, Presentation...

[tcr]

Sir, I am intrigued by your views, but do not want to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:Presentation, Presentation, Presentation...

[Hognoxious]

You could do that before. It was called the 1990s. The only difference here, it seems, is that you now do it on a blog.

Does the use of a blog constitute a sufficient improvement to make it patentable?

I never got the word "blog."

[Power Everywhere]

What is its etymology?

Re:I never got the word "blog."

[bigattichouse]

WeB LOG - weblog - blog for short.

Re:I never got the word "blog."

[Anonymous Coward]

its short for weblog. But they took the we out because it's usually for "me me me".

Re:I never got the word "blog."

[pVoid]

Weblog.

Re:I never got the word "blog."

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia - Etymology of Blog

Re:I never got the word "blog."

[NanoGator]

"I never got the word "blog." What is its etymology?"

It started with the word 'bog', and they added the l to describe the people who are hopelessly addicted to it.

Re:I never got the word "blog."

[0racle]

Wouldn't that be a meblog.

Re:I never got the word "blog."

[kartiknarayan]

Web-log... shortened to 'blog'

Hehe...

[robson]

When skimming the headline, I first thought it read, "Using Blogs to Dispose of Venture Captial"...

Doesn't sound like much of a challenge, but hey, it's a slow news day :)

This seems like an interesting idea...

[Zugot]

But I don't know if I would want to submit my idea out in the public before I had a chance to gather some financing to protect it. I also don't want my competitors to get an early leg up on my business before I have a chance to become competitive.

All in all, this is interesting idea. I'm glad to see people using technology in all forms of business. This one idea may help four more just like it come to fruition. This can only be good for folks searching for venture capital.

Re:This seems like an interesting idea...

[gl4ss]

well, for those wild ideas you don't even intend to execute it's great - if somebody likes it enough to even make it worth your time to pursue some silly dream all the better.

Re:This seems like an interesting idea...

[autopr0n]

But I don't know if I would want to submit my idea out in the public before I had a chance to gather some financing to protect it. I also don't want my competitors to get an early leg up on my business before I have a chance to become competitive.

Usualy the winning submissions come from companies that already exist, have a few people and at least some work done on the product. They're not just handing out money for hair-brained ideas :P

Re:This seems like an interesting idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

lol, yeah. having reviewed scores of business plans under NDA this will save the guy oodles and give him a free pulse on what's out there, without surfing or research.

my idea: offer psychotherapy to the suckers that bite... hehe.. then sick a business coach on them

And this slashdotting...

[ToadMan8]

And I'm sure this slashdotting will produce a lot of useful ideas and insightful comments.

Before you mod that actually rather insightful comment down, realize I am offending the script kiddy side of /. and so if you have the urge to use that moderation cannon... maybe your lifestyle leads you to take my comment personally...

Re:And this slashdotting...

[phrasebook]

I'm sure this slashdotting will produce a lot of useful ideas and insightful comments.

Yeah, just like this one did :-/

Re:And this slashdotting...

[hunterx11]

Remember those commercials for BASF? "We don't make the things you use; we make the things you use better." Slashdot could have a similar advertisement: "We don't make the things you use; we take the things you use and imagine Beowulf clusters of them!"

Can I have some money now please?

Re:And this slashdotting...

[ToadMan8]

ha ha ha - it comes with the territory:

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of script kiddies...
I'll call it... SLASHDOT.
Heh. I made a funny.

Agh I Hate eTechnology

[t_allardyce]

I dont want to troll, but I personally would just remove any idea that called itself a technology made up of two words StuckTogether(tm) people just need to be slapped and told no.

Oh, the irony...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.alwayson-network.com/...

Heh, heh, heh.

Here's one

[c0ldfusi0n]

Someone should give him a few suggestions to keep his site reasonably reachable when mentionned on Slashdot -- maybe he'll make you CEO of something!

Well, that's how it used to work.

[stoneymonster]

I personally witnessed $300 million of VC money come to naught. And our product worked. Even a good idea which is completely implemented is no guarantee of success. If giving money out based on slideware alone is alive and well, then the bubble never really burst. -C

Re:Well, that's how it used to work.

[Alan Hicks]

I personally witnessed $300 million of VC money come to naught. And our product worked. Even a good idea which is completely implemented is no guarantee of success.

And really that's exactly how it should sometimes work. Venture capital is an adventure. No one knows if the outcome will be good or bad. People should try to find things that are very likely to work and very likely to fill a need in the marketplace. But even when a company does both of those, there's still no gaurantee of success. Your's is the classic "we gave it our best shot, it did what we said it would do, but that wasn't quite good enough" scenario, and really that's the best anyone can do. The rest is dumb luck playing the marketplace game.

Re:Well, that's how it used to work.

[sydlexic]

I personally witnessed $300 million of VC money come to naught. And our product worked.

Millenium wheel? Segway? pets.com?

Re:Well, that's how it used to work.

[E_elven]

>Venture capital is an adventure.

No, it's not. If it were, it'd be called 'adventure capital'. Duh :)

Alwayson-Network?

[cdgod]

not anymore

always-on.com

[artemis67]

No, it isn't.

Thanks, /.

Yeah, like...

[burris]

BitTorrent. That one has no chance.

Re:Yeah, like...

[Anonymous Coward]

BitTorrent is not a commercial venture.

Intellectual Property Theft

[Sean80]

The first thing that came to my mind when I read this was: "What about IP theft?" I, like many people who think they've had their "big idea," am not too keen on putting it out on the web, where I have no patents or copyright to protect the idea, and where anybody and everybody can come along and put my idea into practice without paying me a dime.

Maybe this is just the paranoia of one inventory, but I wonder how many people would be comfortable doing this sort of thing, and whether this would select any particular sub-population of entrepreneurs by its very nature.

Re:Intellectual Property Theft

[Anonymous Coward]

> I, like many people who think they've had their "big idea," am not too keen on putting it out on the web, where I have no patents or copyright to protect the idea, and where anybody and everybody can come along and put my idea into practice without paying me a dime.

This is because *having* a big idea is worthless.

Everything is in the execution.

Re:Intellectual Property Theft

[the-build-chicken]

don't forget, this also counts as a 'public disclosure' which in a lot of countries actually revokes the right for you to patent it

Re:Intellectual Property Theft

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a classic scam pulled by venture capitalists. They have been known to take great ideas from presentations by companies that are courting their financing and give the ideas to companies already in the stable. I personally wouldn't trust this blog idea further than I could drop kick it.

Re:Intellectual Property Theft

[AKAImBatman]

I considered this issue as well. Then I realized that anyone who attempted to implement my ideas would be missing many of the key ingredients necessary to make it work. i.e. I can give a presentation to venture capitalists that they might like, but the details that make the idea work technology wise are still stuck in my head. Anyone who attempts to steal the idea will either be winging it and come up with a useless implementation, or will already understand what I'm trying to do and have the concept already in their head.

Re:Intellectual Property Theft

[natmsincome.com]

Hmmm,

So all I need to do is invent a way of drop kicking a blog.

I'll get back to you.

Re:Intellectual Property Theft

[prostoalex]

Most of the successful businesses are not ideas, they are execution. Look at successful Internet companies right now: online marketplace, online bookseller that's not selling electronics and a lot more, large-scale information archival and retrieval system. Every once in a while you have Edison-like geniuses coming up with brilliant ideas that turn the world around and occasionally make their inventors rich, but more often than not, it's the execution, not the idea that matters.

And don't forget that Draper is not the only one, as NYT article states, he's one of the few people that would invest in half-baked startups, but nevertheless in the venture world he's still one of many. And there's $70 billion dollars out there ready to be invested into the next venture. VCs got a bit tough lately with dot bomb and everything, but the money is still out there, and there are fewer ideas, than there are brains.

Re:Intellectual Property Theft

[Anonymous Coward]

> Most of the successful businesses are not ideas, ...

Yeah, but with the patent examination system so broken, what's to stop Joe Lawyer from taking out a patent on your good idea? Joe will never make a succesful business of the idea, as like you said, the business is in the execution. Instead all Joe Lawyer does is wait until you execute a successful business then he demands easy money.

I hear you say "just apply for a patent before blogging your idea", but that takes money, which requires applying for venture capital. Catch-22.

Re:Intellectual Property Theft

[MrAndrews]

There's a fine line to walk when trying this, though: if your technology is indeed too complex to easily replicate, it will require effort to the nth degree to break through your closely-held knowledge monopoly. How much effort someone is willing to dump into breaking that barrier depends on how insanely useful the idea is. To keep people with money from dumping lots of cash into stealing your idea, you need to keep your presentations as vague as possible, so that there are more question marks involved for you to answer (in exchange for financing). But I've seen it happen that truly stunning technologies die in obscurity because they come across too smoke-and-mirrors for VCs to bite.

Re:Intellectual Property Theft

[prostoalex]

Prior art.

Once you put it in the public domain (i.e. AlwaysOn Web site, Google cache, Archive.org), etc. before the Joe Lawyer files for patent, the patent will be ruled non-valid.

Re:Intellectual Property Theft

[AKAImBatman]

No, I think you misunderstand. I'm not saying that the idea is so *complex* that it defies the ability to present it, rather that the details of implementation are left out of a business proposal. For example, I could propose the idea "Selling books online". Depending on how it's pitched from a business perspective, it could sound great to an investor. Yet the investor lacks the detailed knowledge to actually create Amazon.com. If he attempted to steal my idea before an implementation existed, he'd end up with "Marge's Book Emporium". To effectively steal the idea, he'd need a partner with a vision of an Online Book Store. Now he could run and take the idea to Borders, or he could just stick with me and invest.

Remember, it's not just the idea, it's the vision behind the idea. If the idea is original, then no one will exist to copy from. If no one exists to copy from, then how will it get done correctly? You've got to have that vision to get it done.

Re:Intellectual Property Theft

[Anonymous Coward]

I think slashdot's already done it for you. :-)

Re:Intellectual Property Theft

[femto]

The following relates specifically to Australia, but might also apply to the US?

I'm not sure that it is so simple. I've been looking into this issue and the legal status of online 'publication' seems to be cloudy.

How do you prove that something has been published online? The patent applicant can claim that the date is false and some way is needed to prove the date and contents of publication. Even then, does a court recognise online as being published?

I've been seriously looking into starting an 'open source' journal here in Australia. This journal would publish one paper copy of each issue, complete with an ISSN and would be lodged with the National Library of Australia. By law the National Library of Australia is required to receive one copy of everything published on paper in Australia. This is an eample of the difference in status between paper and online publication, as the NLA requirement does not apply to online publishing.

Is anyone aware of a more straight forward way to establish prior art *beyond all doubt*?

Apart from the above the point is that the examination system is broken, so prior art has every chance of being ignored, requiring an expensive court case to be recognised.

Re:Intellectual Property Theft

[Anonymous Coward]

For what it's worth, VCs rarely execute non-disclosure or non-compete agreements when considering a pitch. Sidestepping whether this is good or bad, the web site is consistent with the business norm.

Re:Intellectual Property Theft

[GebsBeard]

One method, referred to as the "poor man's patent" is to use registered mail. You place the CDs into a paper envelope, which the USPS seals, postmarks and datestamps and then ship it to yourself. Once you receive the packages you toss them onto the shelf for future patent breaking purposes. As long as the packages are UNOPENED when you go to court the datestamps are fairly unequivocal.

Re:Intellectual Property Theft

[femto]

I can see that this can be used to prove that you were thinking or knew something on a particular date, but doesn't prior art require that your ideas be disseminated, not just posted to yourself?

To counter the use of registered mail, the patent holder might argue along the lines: "Yes your honour, the mail proves that this person was thinking about my invention on that date, but they did not publish it until later. I claim that any page put on the Internet was different to the page in that envelope."

The problem seems to be that prior art requires not only invention but publication. Registered mail proves the invention part but not publication.

Have I misunderstood?

Re:Intellectual Property Theft

[-noefordeg-]

Keeping your idea(s) secret will never ever bring you success. :)

Re:Intellectual Property Theft

[D-Cypell]

The first thing that came to my mind when I read this was: "What about IP theft?"

That is a very 'the glass is half empty' mindset. You wont get very far in business if you are always thinking about how people are gonna rip you off.

If you destined to become a multi-millionaire entrepreneur you wouldnt be thinking about how is going to steal your ideas, you would be thinking about which ideas you can steal ;o)

Re:Intellectual Property Theft

[HeyLaughingBoy]

"What about IP theft?"

The simple answer is that ideas are a dime a dozen. Really. The power of an "idea" isn't the concept, it's the execution. And there's a long, long road from idea to finished product; that's why the overwhelming majority of "ideas" never make it.

Think of it this way: you have an idea. Now how will you make it happen? Can you raise the capital? If you can't, then what value is that idea to you? And remember that if it's really profitable, there are probably already 1,000 people who have the same idea and are trying to find funding just like you are.

Contrary to popular belief, no one pays money for ideas. What they will (sometimes) pay for is the idea, plus a *detailed* plan of how it will be put into action, along with market research and analysis, income projections, etc. Even then, most investors will prefer to give their money to someone who's already done all that and is generating income, if only a little.

Even here on Slashdot, you can often see comments to stories that go "I had that idea xxx years ago, I should have patented (?) it, etc..." The difference between that /. poster and the person who made the news is that the latter actually executed it successfully.

and the winning idea was...

[laserbeak]

The winner had an inovative idea about server bandwidth. Too bad they had no time to implement this new discovery!

hrmm

[2057]

doesnt feel like a safe place to post, with anyone able to read...I'd rather keep my bread-winning ideas in my dreams

Whoops,

[Alystair]

There goes the %99.999 uptime guarantee!

Already slashdotted...

[illumin8]

Gee, I guess the Always On network isn't really always on...

Step 3:

[Quixote]

What's to prevent someone from mining this goldmine ;-) and submitting stuff from it to Mr. Draper?

Wait.. let me patent it first!!11!one!

Yeah, right

[melted]

OK, folks. I'm a millionaire and I've put together this blog where you can help me to become a billionaire for free.

Nice thinking, dude. Try again. :0)

Re:Using Trolls to Dispose Waste on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, I guess that makes just as much sense.

It's obviously someone who's a failure in real life, or at least has major problems dealing with real people/real life situations.

No different from any other trolls though.

moron

[QuantumG]

I don't mean to flame, but it's people like you ("My idea is worth money!") that are the fundimental problem with copyright and patents. It's a freakin' idea. It's not worth a damn thing. What's more, it's not your idea, it come from the public environment in which you live.

Re:moron

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are you flaming him? His views on the topic are ideas are those of the enviroment in which he lives - flame them. It's not his opinion!

Re:moron

[Anonymous Coward]

What's more, it's not your idea, it come from the public environment in which you live.

I'm pretty sure Lee De Forest came up with the vacuum tube without any help from the environment.

Re:moron

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, surely he was influenced by his teachers, coworkers and friends in the development of his ideas, it's not like he lived in a vacuum :)

Re:moron

[Anonymous Coward]

exactly, most ideas are stumbled upon by pure chance.

It was from such an unlikely beginning as an unwanted fungus accidentally growing on a sterile plate that Sir Alexander Fleming gave the world penicillin.
James Watt watched an ordinary household kettle boiling and conceived the potentiality of steam power.
Would Albert Einstein ever have hit upon the theory of relativity if he hadn't been so clever?

All these tremendous leaps forward have been taken in the dark.

Would Rutherford ever have split the atom if he hadn't tried?
Could Marconi have invented the radio if he hadn't by pure chance spent years working at the problem?
Are these amazing breakthroughs ever achieved except by years and years of unremitting study? Of course not.
What I said earlier about accidental discoveries must have been wrong.

In the US

[autopr0n]

You have two years after public disclosure before you have to patent your idea.

Blogs are impolrtant in business AND politics

[Nova Express]

It's not surprising that venture capitalists are following blogs. Despite the vast amount of kibble out there only of interest to the blogger's friends ("I took my Snookypums to the vet today..."), the best of them are frequently scooping major media on important stories.

For example, it was a blog that first broke the story that MoveOn.org was Astroturfing on behalf of Michael Moore's Farenheit 911 . Likewise, I read about it first on a metablog, National Review Online's The Corner. I haven't seen any of the major media pick up this story yet (though many have already been fooled by Astroturfed letters).

Though an immature medium, it will be interesting to see where Blogs go next.

Re:Blogs are impolrtant in business AND politics

[TubeSteak]

I'd say its because blogs allow anyone to be an investigative journalist. What your metablog is doing is helping us to collect widely seperated but somewhat related data & put it together. This is exciting for sociologists and various other peoples because once you begin collecting information and viewpoints that normally would not be considered important or significant on their own, you can build a detailed picture of what is really being thought/said/done in politics, business and just about anything else you care about.

If you could put together people's offhand bloggings about "i had to type up this and that" and another about "we got a call from michael moore's office" you won't have to wait for the similar letters to start pouring in. This will be the power of the blog.

Someone mentions they'll be working overtime, someone else mentions a big order of pastries they had to fill a third mentions their husband will be away on business during the weekend. put the facts together and you might find out who's throwing a party!

Obligatory

[ndavidg]

1. Blog
2. ?????
3. Profit!

Astroturn'

[autopr0n]

I don't think what moveon is doing is astroturfing, exactly. Astroturfing generaly involves paying people to write fake letters to the editor. These guys are simply giving people a list of newspapers near them, and a few talking points.

STUPID JOKES ON MY MARK

[Perianwyr Stormcrow]

3... 2... 1...

not exactly the "always on" network now, is it?

OMG CREATIVITY ISN'T DEAD (just sleeping, darling)

My great idea

[Ossadagowah]

Get livejournal to charge people a nickel for
posting a whiny comment on it every time they do.

It'll force people to cheer up and also get a lot of money in the meantime.

Hate-o-Matic.

[eddy]

Yeah, everyone knows the correct pattern is $(sillything)-o-matic. For instance, I'd buy a Sludge-o-Matic(TM), but I'd never buy a SludgeMatic(TM) -- cause -- well, that just sounds completely stupid.

I was a contestant & was asked to follow up

[fruscica]

Here is the follow-up email I received from Draper Fisher Jurvetson:

Hi Frank,

Thanks for your time today. If you would like to provide us with further information about your idea we would be happy to review it in more detail.

I will be traveling however, until the 19 July.

If you would like to touch base with me that week then that would be great!

Best regards,
Tristen.

My Microsoft-approved biz plan for a provider of customized lifelong learning and career services is here.

Feel free to send a resume to fruscica at jobczar.us if you like the plan...

Half bakery - prior art on this idea

[wadiwood]

I always loved the website

http://www.halfbakery.com/

been there, done that...

At the moment, I'd like to start a chain of bio-diesel and vege oil filler stations for diesel transport.

I'm still waiting for a decent teleport. And I'd like, in my town, someone who will do takeaway food after 9pm, the kind of food that won't clog your arteries.

My Great Idea...

[bfg9000]

... a website where nerds can get together and read about stuff that matters to them, and people can comment and then others can moderate those--- nah... that'd never work. Who'd actually pay for that? Duh.

Therefore, my new great idea is the Sex Helmet.

'Just do It'

[Greg@RageNet]

With the state of things and what CPU cycles, open source software, and co-location costs these days, who needs venture capital if you are starting an online business. If you are sharp and have decent sysadmin and coding skills you can do it yourself.. Find yourself a partner that's got complementary sales and marketing skills and you're set. I've done this with my own startup KnowTraffic and am doing rather nicely without selling my virtual soul to the the VC's.

-- Greg

Re:'Just do It'

[blooba]

So, where can I find a partner with sales and marketing skills?

Re:'Just do It'

[Greg@RageNet]

Strangely enough my 'partner' came from a customer support request from one of my trial users. He loved the idea and wished he'd thought of it first. I asked if he had sales/marketing background and it turned out he was an expert in the area.

Some other avenues to try are your 'social network' (i.e. friends and friends of friends), a posting on craig's list; or just start up business and sink a few bucks into google adwords and put a little blurb on your website that you are looking for someone with those skills.

-- Greg

Re:'Just do It'

[Lord_Dweomer]

You know, its funny, I have a lot of great ideas myself and want to take them further, but also don't want to sell my soul to a VC person.

However, unlike yourself, I study marketing/advertising, and would be able to take care of that end of it. What I have a big problem with is knowing where to look to find someone who could handle ALL of the technical side of things (including manufacturing).

I would prefer to not have to pay them a salary and instead have them come on as a partner and split profits, but I have no idea where to look. Are there any databases for this? Does anybody have any suggestions?

Re:'Just do It'

[dilvie]

The service and sales pitch are good, but I guarantee you're losing a lot of potential conversions.

Your site design looks like just walked out of 1997, as does your HTML (with the exception of the CSS code).

In order to make a conversion, you have to overcome a few important obstacles. One of them is trust. One of the most important trust factors on the web is a professional-looking design.

Design matters! Check out this before and after comparison. Which site would you be more likely to give your money to?

Improving your design would improve your conversion rate, and that could make a BIG DIFFERENCE to your bottom line. You'll get more sales in less time, improve your ROI for advertizing, build better good-will and brand-loyalty with your existing users, and get more inbound links, which will in turn bring in more potential customers faster.

Get your site a make-over.

Better yet...

[WindBourne]

Why not announce about this stuff BEFORE they decide on it? Did anybody on /., hear about it before?

I have this idea, a site that survives slashdottin

[brak]

SO I'm sure it's worth millions, but wouldn't it be cool if you were able to have a website that was robust enough to survive if it was mentioned in a slashdot article... an article with only 80 comments, no less.

So I would like, get some bandwidth, and like, get some servers that didn't suck, and maybe like hire this dude to write an app that didn't suck. So like, if you do that, then there's like this weird chance that when you get bombed with traffic people will still get a page back...

I dunno though, I think it'll cost like $20 million. Oh my gawd, so hardware alone would cost like $5K, and bandwidth would be aboue $1K/month... (cogent) oh, and then there's the dude, another $100K/year.... so for $20M you should be able to keep this running for about 178 years. Wheee!!!

Potentially Dangerous

[jnguy]

Why can't I just browse through all those ideas, and act quicker than these people. Head to the patent office, use my own capital, etc. Publicly viewable ideas are dangerous.

Re:Potentially Dangerous

[foniksonik]

Any good idea worth investing in has a few things to deter such activity... this is called a "high barrier to entry",

What that means is that the idea requires one or more of the following:

- Large amounts of capital investment

- Key staff in the prospective industry, requiring high salaries

- Prolonged Research and Development

- High raw resource costs

Any of these and especially any combination of these will keep the average businessman from being able to establish a credible business around the idea, hence the need for Venture Capital who can provide investment resources much greater than any individual or SBA or bank loan will be willing to invest in a risky venture.

Patents only count if you can capitalize on them... very few patents can be immediately licensed to established entities and very few can be developed sufficiently to become profitable within a reasonable timeframe for traditional funding.. again, Venture Capital.

that's just to start... there are many more reasons to pursue VC money...

Finding entrepreneurs is not his problem..

[Anonymous Coward]

Timothy Draper has enough difficulty detecting good entrepreneurs when they are sitting right in front of him at his offices. I hardly think this will help him.

Entrepreneurs beware, don't be fooled by this gesture and think he is "more like you". Enough IP gets "borrowed" by VCs like Tim from entrepreneurs during private pitch meetings; how could the Next Big Thing be trusted to a blog?

Garage.com already does this

[Animats]

Garage.com has been doing this for years. They have some modest successes.. Guy Kawasaki ran Garage.com for a while, after he quit Apple.

Re:Garage.com already does this

[Anonymous Coward]

Guy Kawasaki is still listed as the first name on the Team page - looks like he's still involved.

Re:question

[Anonymous Coward]

bugmenot.com

and it's an extension in firefox, too, now.

Great place to steal ideas, get ideas for free

[shodson]

Hey, what kind of schmuck would post their idea to the public like this? The same schmuck that will give away 99% of his company for Draper to have them fund it for $1M.

On the other hand, DFJ have funded some pretty gutsy ventures in the past, so I gotta give them props for trying something different.

Don't worry about people stealing your ideas.

[Sunlighter]

If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.

-- Howard Aiken

Stealing ideas. How unethical. Quick let /. him!

[syousef]

Oh wait a second we already have...

It happens

[Anonymous Coward]

Just ask the Traitorous Eight that left Shockley Semiconductor because William Shockley sucked at management. He was a very brillient engineer though and had great ideas.

http://www.pbs.org/transistor/album1/eight/

Your IDEA is not unique!

[kerb]

read the cult of the NDA
http://www.frozennorth.org/C509291565/E193940 4619/

won't somebody please...

[Anonymous Coward]

just give me $3 million to start a brewery. I promise free beer the rest of your life! contact me: abe underscore kabakoff at gmx dot de

procket networks

[stoneymonster]

Recently acquired for a fraction of their highest valuation by cisco.

Even more ironic

[Anonymous Coward]

hey guys,

i'm not sure exactly what i'm doing here. so...bear with me!

i clicked "geeky" on my match.com personals profile, thinking that i'd maybe get hooked up with somebody who was into math or some kind of toy train hobby or something...boy howdy was i in for a shock! i went on 4 dates with guys who all got on match.com because of osdn personals from slash-dot! 4 guys!

anyway, it didn't really work out with any of them, because it seemed like they were all under some kind of mind-control robot or something! i was like "what do you think about office? office 97 is enough for me, but there are some things about xp that are cool too...." the first guy i asked that to exploded on this tyrade about how office was evil, and that it uses html that's invalid...blah blah blah, whatever...i figured "ok, this guys a freak, but i'm not giving up that easily." so guy number two and i are having dinner, and just as a test i bring up office, and he says the *exact* *same* *things* the first guy said! it was like he was reading from a script! i'm thinking to myself "is everybody from slash-dot programmed to say the same thing or what?" i decided to do a bit of investigation.

i actually surfed over to slash-dot and read some of the articles...mostly they were pretty boring, and the comments were just like i expected judging from my previous past experience: scripted!!! just when i was about to completely write the whole thing off, i found a post from some guy who's with anti-slash, some kind of anti-slash-dot website. i mailed him and was all "i so agree with you guys, look at what sheap these slash-dot people are!" he wrote back and made some funny comments (funny and so *true*!...that is soooo the best kind of humor...but i dirgress...) and guess what? this weekend i'm supposed to meet him for dinner :) if you're reading this, i look forward to meeting you in person, john!

anyway, that's my story. ladies: if you're looking for the real cool geeks, check out anti-slash. and fellas, you should check it out too and maybe use to to break out of your mind-control suits!

ok see ya later,

cyndi

Garage.com

[sammyo]

Garage liked Steve Jurvetson (the J) well enough to invite him to a panel at thier 'Start' conference.

I visualize these venture guys at an expensive diner , opening with a lame joke, 'The Idea is Out There'

Venture business plans

[titzandkunt]

"... have an article I wrote a whole back dealing with this concept of the "idea men" not being able to execute their own innovations properly. The one thing that a lot of former dotcom execs told me was that they wish they'd sold out soon before they got the big company with all the programmers and Coke machines, because the biggest lesson they learned was that they didn't know how to run a business as well as they knew how to come up with great starter ideas. ..."

This is precisely why a lot of the successful venture firms (think 3i and the like) plan to remove the innovators within eighteen to twenty-four months of startup, before even thinking about ipo.

They VC firms know:

The innovators generally don't have a clue about running a business.

The innovators are often more in love with seeing their idea fly, rather than being methodical and realistic about growing a business.

I suppose if a guy with a Harvard MBA and ten year's management experience came along for funding he might be retained, as he would be "one of us". Unlikely though - The Harvard man is more likely to pick up the phone, and talk to his old college buddy T. Pierce Morgan III, who he knows got a few mil sitting idle: Venture firms are there for those with little experience or connections in business and finance. Once the ideas have been transferred and proven, the innovators are so gone.

T&K.

it's called ratings

[ftide]

This isn't a new approach. It's called ratings.

Ratings are pretty straightforward: excellent, good, fair and poor. Some people's scale includes a fifth indicator. Four is good because it's quadratic.

This is the part where the story begins to make sense: "But even Mr. Draper appreciates that he is skating close to the outer boundaries of common sense by erecting a virtual billboard on the Internet and inviting the world to compete for 10 minutes of his time." That's what ratings is all about: competition. If using a registered user-only, forum format you jot down what should be sold then you can definitely ask, refine, expound upon etc. what should be bought, by method of ratings. See my previous post on ratings formats.

This is an advertisement?

[Queuetue]

So, this is an advertisement for whatever this vidtel dot com thing is? I'd love to know how it's working - probably cheap as heck, considering all they do is give out a little cash and a few cameras, and sites like us bury them in vidtel sales leads...

NDA

[blooba]

The one thing that, for me, stands out on the DFJ website is the statement that they do not sign NDA's. And their excuse for not signing NDA's is weak: that it would create a deluge of legal documents. Oh too bad. You have millions and millions of dollars, yet you cannot afford a small legal staff to proofread the NDA's.

At least they could provide their own NDA, or offer an industry standard NDA which both parties can sign. Or they could post some guidelines for NDA's, such as number of pages, number of words, parameters of liability, required paragraphs, etc.

Re:NDA

[gray peter]

No VCs sign NDAs. They read way too many b-plans and signing NDAs would limit their ability to fund new projects. If they had to go back to legal every time they wanted to fund a new business and make sure the idea didn't conflict with any other business they may have an NDA in place with they would never be able to fund anybody.

Risky...

[nickol]

That's true. "Idea man" is not able to make something working out of his idea. The problem is not only in 'business abilities'.

Few years ago I started a project out of nothing. We made several kinds of electronic devices. We could sell enough of them to be able not to die of starvation, but not enough to continue development. Eventualy our enterprise (two people company) decayed back to nothing.

The problem is : the most useful and profitable are the most crazy ideas. They are also the most risky AND they have the biggest chance to remain unnoticed.

Who could ever think that it is possible to transfer voice via wires ?

Another serious problem is that the new technology becomes more and more complicated. It was easy to make gadgets working with RS-232, but it is not so easy with USB or FireWire. To make your idea into iron you need not an individual, but a group of specialists. What if this idea won't work ?

BTW I had a funny experience. In one of our projects I've got no role because there were no microcontrollers inside. Instead, they told me just to 'think about it'. After a week I came to conclusion that the whole project is physically impossible :-) They just got some misconceptions about Re and Im parts of some expression.

As for me, after several years of useless attempts I stopped remembering new ideas. I think it's a natural process. Or should I try with that blog ? No, it is closed now...

Re:Risky...

[Hognoxious]

The problem is : the most useful and profitable are the most crazy ideas.

The problem is that given the premise that some good ideas initially appear crazy, people reach the conclusion that crazy ideas are good.

after several years of useless attempts I stopped remembering new ideas.

It's much easier to remember old ones. It's very hard to remember future ones.

Nigerian leaders

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello sir
Sorry to contact you this way, but my father was recently deposed of his king ship in africa. He was very rich but his money is still in Africa. I can share that money with you if you send me 1,000 dollars. The return is guarenteed ....

I think you get the idea

Some might, but Draper wouldn't

[krysith]

In defense of Tim Draper, I have presented a proposal to DFJ (Draper Fisher Jurvetson) without a non-disclosure statement or any other form of IP protection. He merely gave us his word of honor. Maybe I was stupid, but our idea was technical enough that he could not have reproduced our work without a few years of his own work. I was under the impression that discussing ideas without a form of IP protection is standard operating procedure at DFJ. They basically use their reputation as backing.

Of course, we got funded, so YMMV.

I would be interested to see any verifiable stories of DFJ backstabbing someone in such a way. I worked with Tim for 5+ years and I just don't see him doing that.

I'm not too surprised to see Tim doing something like this. He has a lot of energy and is always trying some new idea. Supposedly he is the one who came up with the idea of putting the little blurb at the bottom of free email (Hotmail) in order to get more people to try it. That got buzzworded as "viral marketing".

a former CEO of a DFJ startup (Fiat Lux Research)

Poor man' s Patent = Provisional Patent

[krysith]

A much better idea, in the US, is to apply for a Provisional Patent. Look it up on www.uspto.gov. Basically, it establishes patent rights for 1 year, during which you must apply for a patent if you want one. At the end of the year, the information you disclosed becomes public knowledge, if the patent has not been applied for. It's relatively cheap (compared to a regular utility patent), at $80 for a "small entity" (like an individual inventor). The prov pat has much more legal standing than a sealed and dated envelope.

Re:Using Trolls to Dispose Waste on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine if it's some 48-year old man in his mother's basement... always promising to get a job [...] Fat fuck.

I am Michael Moore you insensitive clod!!!!!