Huge idea - fear of copycats

[yousf]

Hi there,

After reading The Millionaire Fastlane I introduced a very good friend of mine to the book and we began to watch out for needs. After some days we had a really amazing idea for a mobile application. Every commandment is met, millions of peoples lifes could be made easier with this app.

We are both 18 and 17 and are working on this idea for some weeks now. We wrote the features of the application down and are now at the design part of the app. After that we will work on the marketing section and then the rest (like designing and setting up a website and stuff like that).

Our plan is to have everything perfectly ready for external developers so they can start programming as soon as they get our whitepaper.
The problem we are facing now is that we don't have any capital. We have no money to patent our idea or anything like that. Our plan on getting money at the moment is to use crowdfunding but we fear that there will be fast copies of our idea (or someone patenting it) by people that have the money to do so.

I am sure we are not the first with that problem and I would appreciate any hints you can give.

 

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[ChristopherP]

I'd like to hear people's opinions too - assuming they actually narrow down their target market to less than "millions", what are good ways to fund novel mobile applications? For something that will only cost a few bucks at most, I don't see how to get enough of your target customers to pay ahead without something like a Kickstarter.

Then again, if there's a recurring revenue model, that has already been answered a hundred times on this board.

 

[RHL]

Did someone say "funding?" (NSFW-language)

 

[Mrs. BRKb]

Looks like text and vids are available?


https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/free-mit-entrepreneurship-101-class.51054/

The prof
Bill is a serial entrepreneur with a 25-year track record of success in business, having directly raised more than $100 million in funding for his companies and led the creation of hundreds of millions of dollars in market value in those companies.

The access
Can I contact the Instructor or Teaching Assistants? Yes, but not directly. The discussion forums are the appropriate venue for questions about the course. The instructors will monitor the discussion forums and try to respond to the most important questions; in many cases response from other students and peers will be adequate and faster.

 

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[CommonCents]

Don't use external developers, nobody else ever has, they might rip you off, don't use internal developers, nobody else ever has, they might rip you off. Don't do crowd funding, because nobody else ever has because they'd get ripped off. Don't get investors, nobody else has, they might rip you off. Keep it safe to yourself so nobody rips you off. For sure don't get thousands or millions of users, they will for sure try to rip you off.

 

[yousf]

Looks like text and vids are available?


https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/free-mit-entrepreneurship-101-class.51054/

The prof
Bill is a serial entrepreneur with a 25-year track record of success in business, having directly raised more than $100 million in funding for his companies and led the creation of hundreds of millions of dollars in market value in those companies.

The access
Can I contact the Instructor or Teaching Assistants? Yes, but not directly. The discussion forums are the appropriate venue for questions about the course. The instructors will monitor the discussion forums and try to respond to the most important questions; in many cases response from other students and peers will be adequate and faster.

First of all, thank you very much for you post.
Unfortunately I don't have access to that page and don't think I get the point of why you quoted that.

 

[AllenCrawley]

You can always go the tried and true route. Learn to code the app yourself. Lots of free training, courses and youtube tutorials to teach you. Release a beta and find beta users to help you improve.

 

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[Mrs. BRKb]

Hallo, @yousf , sorry didn't notice it is a thread on the Inside forum. Here is the course:

https://www.edx.org/course/mitx/mitx-15-390x-entrepreneurship-101-who-1312

 

[RHL]

I want to echo what others said about coding it yourself. When you're 26 and have had some successful startups, throwing $10,000 to a really top shelf coder who won't rip you off and resell/destroy your product is +EV. at 17, that programmer's hour is worth a whole hell of a lot more than yours is. Especially when you're coming in here asking how to get money, you can kill two birds with one stone-do it yourself by learning to code. Actually, you can kill three birds, because this way, when someone emails you for customer service, you'll have some idea what's going on.

 

[AllenCrawley]

Read this thread:

Good things happen when you learn how to code

 

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