How much is an idea worth?

jay_girlsgirlsgirls

Hey all,

Quick question on copyright and Intellectual property...

Me and a friend came up with an idea for a website together, and I think its a good idea so I'm going to run with it - I've never built a website before so it will be a lot of fun and a steep learning curve.

I'm not expecting to make millions out of it, or even any money whatsoever. I'm just doing it for a bit of fun, and spending a bit of money on domain registration, web hosting etc.

My concern is, if by some miracle I make a little revenue / money from the site, would he have some right to it as it was partly his idea? I'll have done all the work, and he showed no desire to actually start the website etc...

What do you think? (Yes, I recently saw the Facebook movie )

kwikbreaks

It's all yours unless there is anything in writing or there were witnesses. Even with witnesses you made the running and have control so it's still yours.

mj12_2

Of course this post were your friend to find out about it would make some pretty good evidence for his case?

Teaching yourself to web program especially once you go beyond basic HTML/CSS can be a time consuming exercise, there is a lot to learn... to make a database driven reasonably functional site you will need a minimum of 4 and maybe 5 programming languages - HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL and JS if your want to do anything client side, thats on top of learning a little about server administration/.htaccess files etc. You may find that depending on the complexity of the project 2 heads are substantially better (and faster) than one.

On another note I can't speak for your friend but were one of mine to do what you're describing to me I would take a pretty dim view of it regardless of where the law may or may not stand, if this person is a good friend then why not share.... you could at least mention your intention to them, that way if they don't want be involved so be it no problem; doing it without so much as a word seems a little sneaky if it was both of your ideas.

jay_girlsgirlsgirls

mj12 wrote: »

On another note I can't speak for your friend but were one of mine to do what you're describing to me I would take a pretty dim view of it regardless of where the law may or may not stand, if this person is a good friend then why not share.... you could at least mention your intention to them, that way if they don't want be involved so be it no problem; doing it without so much as a word seems a little sneaky if it was both of your ideas.

I am more than willing to share, but as I indicated in my original post, he has little / no interest in developing the idea and actually turning it into a reality... I have told him I'm doing the website, so I'm not being sneaky at all, and I've shown him a couple of pages etc, but he hasn't seemed too interested - so I just wanted to confirm that if I go ahead without him I wouldn't be landing myself into issues down the road

mj12_2

jay_girlsgirlsgirls wrote: »

I am more than willing to share, but as I indicated in my original post, he has little / no interest in developing the idea and actually turning it into a reality... I have told him I'm doing the website, so I'm not being sneaky at all, and I've shown him a couple of pages etc, but he hasn't seemed too interested - so I just wanted to confirm that if I go ahead without him I wouldn't be landing myself into issues down the road

Fair enough, didnt catch that in your original post :-) not had my 2nd cup of coffee yet

Might be worth for the sake of avoiding future problems seeing if you can get something in writing/email from your friend stating that they aren't interested, if it does become successful you might be glad you had done so.... money (especially large amounts) can do very strange things to people.

antrobus

jay_girlsgirlsgirls wrote: »

How much is an idea worth?

As a general rule of thumb, absolutely nothing.

Lots of people have ideas, it's the execution that matters.

paddyrg

Antrobus is absolutely right. But it is worth getting your friend to sign a discalimer now in peace time, just in case you suddenly invent facebook or tw*tter and he gets all Winkelvoss on you.

dixiebb

whatever u do -- don't get a patent lawyer involved -- they will bleed u dry -- literally

cit_k

Assuming lots here, but lets assume the idea is a brilliant one.
Lets assume you can get the site actually written.
Lets assume it gets popular.

Thats the stage when multiple things happen, one you start making money, two your site falls over as it and the server wont cope with the demand, and you wont have a clue how to fix it (most likely neither will who you probably ended up getting to write the site either).

Assuming you can get past that stage, by then, clones will be all over the place and you wont stand a chance of competing against the bigger fish who steal the concept and can afford millions in marketing/seo etc.

If your lucky, you may end up with a small income, and be able to sell the site for a decent amount at some point.

But if you dont know about making websites, its going to cost you a fortune just to get it written to a decent standard, then a fortune to market it online/offline (seo/advertising etc).

Hosting alone will be expensive as soon as it gets slightly popular.

mj12_2

cit_k wrote: »

Assuming lots here, but lets assume the idea is a brilliant one.
Lets assume you can get the site actually written.
Lets assume it gets popular.

Thats the stage when multiple things happen, one you start making money, two your site falls over as it and the server wont cope with the demand, and you wont have a clue how to fix it (most likely neither will who you probably ended up getting to write the site either).

Assuming you can get past that stage, by then, clones will be all over the place and you wont stand a chance of competing against the bigger fish who steal the concept and can afford millions in marketing/seo etc.

If your lucky, you may end up with a small income, and be able to sell the site for a decent amount at some point.

But if you dont know about making websites, its going to cost you a fortune just to get it written to a decent standard, then a fortune to market it online/offline (seo/advertising etc).

Hosting alone will be expensive as soon as it gets slightly popular.

Optimism :-) I like it.

I kinda agree with you but as Google proved with its attempt at social networking, all the money in the world doesnt guarantee success.

As for the cost of getting it made I have to disagree, this time last year I hadn't done an iota of web programming in my life, I now have a few sites making me some decent pocket money and all i've paid out is £6 a month fo hosting. Teaching yourself costs nothing but time.

InsideInsurance

mj12 wrote: »

Teaching yourself costs nothing but time.

But time itself is expensive. Guess thats why we all go to GPs when we are sick rather than decidign thats a good time to apply to med school so you can diagnose yourself.

As to the original question, well in this example http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13886534, $64m at the time of settlement but now over $100m

If you truely believe the idea has legs then it is better to tie up lose ends now with your friend(s) and either agree that they have no claim or that they receive a certain share of it.

Strangely people are much less happy to settle for 5% of very little than 5% of billions.

Having been involved in the web development business (though not personally a designer/ developer) for over 12 years I am possibly slightly biased but I do think some others have been overly negative.

If it is a simple idea then potentially you can do it yourself and if you have a natural design flair it may be great. At the same time I have seen how much poor DIY sites have cost business both in the direct costs of having to re-engineer the site when the business realises their cobbled together code isn't scalable plus the lost business through terrible user journeys, buggy code or plain unprofessional design.