Every few weeks or so, I get an email from somebody with a "Big Idea".
They have a great idea for a game and just need a programmer to write it and market it. If they tell me their idea, they say, you can develop the game and we'll split the profits.
There are always two major characteristics of these emails:
1) They expect you to pay for all the expenses for development. They will not contribute anything except the "Big Idea".
2) They won't tell you what the "Big Idea" is, because then you would steal it.
Whenever I get one of these emails, my "Bozo Bell" goes off immediately. Only a total Bozo would think that anybody would take them up on an offer like this.
The market rate for ideas is about ten cents per dozen. Most ideas are worthless. It's not the idea, it's the execution (see You Can't Protect a Good Idea). Actually, some smart guy once said something like "If your idea is actually any good, you'll have to beg people to steal it." I tried doing some searches to find who said this, but couldn't.
But more importantly, what all these people have in common is that they want you to take all the risk for them. Their idea is so good that you should take 100% of the financial risk, but of course you won't get 100% of the financial reward, because they want some (usually half, sometimes more).
Of course no one who is any good at what they do is going to accept a deal like that. Ideas are everywhere - I've got at least a two year backlog of ideas for projects. These are ideas for which I would take 100% of the risk, but would get 100% of the reward.
Now, why then would I want to team up with some Bozo and take 100% of the risk but only get some lesser amount, say 50% of the reward?
Only an amateur or someone without experience would take a deal like that. The opportunity cost of doing a project where you don't get 100% of the reward when you could be doing a project where you do get 100% of the reward is too great.
If you have an idea that you think is good, only you can develop that idea. You will not find someone else to take your risk for you. You have to take the risk yourself. You have to put up the cost of the idea yourself. And when you do that, you will also then get all of the reward for the idea. That is, if you are good enough at the execution of the idea. Execution is everything.
If you do find someone who says that they will take your risk for you, you'll find that they are one of two things: a crook, or an incompetent. Only the incompetent will be willing to try to execute your idea without payment rather than their own. If they were any good, they would be too busy executing their own ideas, or getting paid for executing other ideas.
When I get these emails, I always reject by saying that we only do fully funded external projects. The only way I'm going to spend time on an external idea is if it is guaranteed income (actually, in these cases I only give a very high price - if I'm going to spend time on a project for someone else instead of working on my own projects, their project had better be very profitable, since my own projects are quite profitable).
This usually has the desired effect - get the Bozo to go away.
On the other hand, the model of "you take 100% of the financial risk, you get 50% of the profits" is a common one in the restaurant industry. A talented, experienced and ambitious waiter teams up with a financier and they split the profits 50-50... in fact, the waiter often gets paid a salary on top of that.
The big difference between that scenario and this one is that the waiter is selling expertise, not just An Idea. You *can* imagine situations in the software world where the same kind of thing could happen-- but the Big Idea people don't usually fit the pattern.
How do *you* avoid the risk of being approached with a proposal, refusing, and being sued later on for appropriating the idea?
Posted by: Martin Kochanski | April 25, 2006 at 02:34 AM
I completely agree with Tom. There is nothing arrogant about it, just common business sense.
Posted by: Mark-Jan Harte | April 25, 2006 at 04:36 AM
"How do *you* avoid the risk of being approached with a proposal, refusing, and being sued later on for appropriating the idea?"
That's easy. People with good ideas aren't going around emailing people to execute them for them, they are executing them themselves.
Most of the time, the emailer doesn't tell you his idea. But when they do , they generally fall into two categories:
1) the idea is stupid.
2) the idea is obvious and everyone is already doing it.
Either way, you don't have to worry about it.
Posted by: Tom | April 25, 2006 at 08:21 AM
Heh, I have a post scheduled to publish later this week, but it is about businesses worrying about people stealing their ideas.
Posted by: GBGames | April 25, 2006 at 08:54 AM
That quote you were looking for is this one, usually attributed to mathematician Howard Aiken:
"Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats."
http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Aiken.html
Posted by: Jason Lefkowitz | April 25, 2006 at 10:50 AM
>There are always two major characteristics of these emails:
I get these regularly as well, and there is a third characteristic that most of them share:
3) They massively overvalue not only the idea, but the potential of a completed product.
Some of these types of mails I have received have invoked an (unnamed) authority that told them the finished game would be guaranteed to sell in the tens of millions.
I always wonder why the banks are not all over such a gold mine of an idea. :)
In response to the suggestion that we would "steal" their great idea, I tell them that we have more ideas for projects than we could ever complete, so I have no interest in borrowing a concept from anybody else (and I have never seen one of these that has actually been unique).
Common joke at the CGDC: "Yeah, it would be the greatest game ever. It is just like Doom, but with a flame thrower." :)
Posted by: Gregg Seelhoff | April 25, 2006 at 04:50 PM
The problem is that even the best idea is worthless. What matters is the execution.
Ther are lot of ways to completely ruin a good idea making a horrible game, and vice-versa :)
Posted by: Winter Wolves Games | April 29, 2006 at 02:49 PM