tech-company, business-plan, legal, e-commerce, websiteI have a business plan in mind that sounds sort of new to the market and can be a major game changer..
I am an application developer myself but the thing is my skill level doesn’t just cut the deal on what I want. With research i found that PHP, MongoDB, Ajax, jQuery, CSS3 and HTML can suffice. But to learn all that it takes a lot of time.
My doubt is when I hire some org, they will basically use a ready made framework or something. and once they get to know my business idea, they may botch up the website, create just enough to prevent any legal actions and then build one of their own.
I lose the idea and they get my business. How should I proceed in such a situation.
I am currently working on my own, but that is going very slowly.
You may be able to protect your business idea in the following ways:
If your idea involves an “inventive step”, it may be something that can be protected by patent registration. If so, any such competing product that the employee goes on to create would infringe your patented rights and you would be able (through the courts) to obtain relief against your losses in the form of damages.
However, if your idea does not involve any such “inventive step” then it won’t be patentable.
Even if you do not register a patent but it would not be obvious to anyone outside your business how to implement your idea, then the employee may be in possession of your “trade secrets” that amount to confidential information. His use of such information for his own benefit could amount to a breach of confidence for which you might have a claim against him.
It is quite normal for an employment contract to stipulate that, after termination, the employee will not compete with your business for a stipulated period of time (e.g. 12 months). This would give you an opportunity to fix your “botched up” website before their competing version comes online.
However, you should be aware that courts are often reluctant to enforce such terms, especially if they entirely prevent the (former) employee from working within his profession. Thus a non-compete that attempts to prevent a website developer working on website development might be considered unenforceable; whereas one that prevents work on your specific business idea might not.
Yes it will be safe to hire a team. I think the biggest mistake of being wanting to start a startup is NOT telling other people. If you want help, feedback, teamwork, investment, customers, you will need to tell someone your idea.
This is similar in nature to the recently fame-stricken “https://startups.stackexchange.com/questions/260/better-to-learn-programming-or-hire-a-programmer” I know you said you’re an application developer, so obviously it’s a little different, but the same principles apply.
It’s been a little while (no it hasn’t) since I said anything about intellectual property on here, so here goes: before you talk to anyone, talk to a patent attorney to protect any intangible assets that might be behind your product idea. If you do that, and if you find you can protect much of it, then you’ll be fine to confidently approach a third party to outsource your work. You might not be able to protect everything, of course, but you should at least know.
I think there’s also an important note about what you said. If you’re worried mostly about your assets being stolen from you, view it more this way: once you release your website, they’ll be just as up for grabs to the general public as they would be now for a company you hire. So take that into consideration. Is it really a big, added risk?
Now, as for getting a baseline product out of a team, well, that’s where it gets a little more complicated. You get what you pay for, in my experience. I’ve never hired a developer, since I am a developer for hire, but I have watched clients hire teams for super cheap (in fact, I’m supposedly meant to be managing one now), that just don’t do good work. So make sure whomever you’re hiring has a great history, either through reviews or some other metric, before you even think of sharing your ideas.
I think the best option you can take, at least from what I’ve seen, is to hire one or two very experienced developers, whether they come as a team or separately, and let them work out the workloads and build the product for you. You can pay for a–maybe–better product from a bigger company, but if you’re hiring someone who might be untrustworthy enough to warrant this question being asked, you probably won’t get shockingly good work out of them. But if you hire two really good people, they’ll be able to get the work done, and you’ll be able to pay them adequately to make them want to help you.
But really, the answer to your question is IP. Make sure you have the right patents, if you can. If you’ve got that, then you’ll be golden in virtually whatever you do.
Prepare a small summary that doesn’t disclose IP. Invite vendors to submit tendor with the understanding that they have to sign legal Non-disclosure / Non-Competitve document, and provide upfront the details of all employees with access, before moving to the negotiation stage.
Non-Disclosure Agreement with Non-competition clauses
Draft an iron-clad non-disclosure agreement (with an attorney if you can afford).
The agreement should also (if you can), contain clauses that ensure that they do not work on a similar project for an year or so. This is what most parties would object to.
Details of all employees who will work on the project
This is something banks do when they approach vendors for tender. The more the vendors have to lay on the table, you come across as a tough, well-prepared guy not to be messed around with. Make it seem like you have a full legal team at your back ;)
Some thoughts on other “security” measures that have been cited:
Patents: Patents are only worth anything if you have the money to sue the other side into submission. If you’re up against deep pockets, then your are out of luck. Best case scenario (for you) is that you can sell the patent to a company that can enforce it. Needless to say, you will not be earning much that way. Competitive advantage can not come from IP if you are start up!
Trade secrets. & Non Compete Clauses. See above.
If your idea is truly new and novel, then it will most likely also be something “out of the ordinary”. Established companies are not great risk takers. This is of course no gurantee that they will not steal the idea, but it certainly helps.
From what I have learned: The fear that your idea will be stolen is usually way overblown. Despite what you may think, chances are that you are not the first person to have this idea, and possibly it has already been tried or someone else is already working on it.
What matters more than the idea itself is the execution and implementation. Lots of people have ideas. My guess is probably less than 1% take any kind of action at all.
my two cents.
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