I Stole an Idea from the Internet
And thoughts on building a side project from that stolen idea
I stole an idea from the Internet.
It’s your worst dreams come true. You were right when you thought that you should have made everyone sign an NDA before sharing that comment on Reddit, let alone a full mockup on Dribbble.
Because as developers, you’re damn right that we can just go and make whatever shitty app idea that you’ve shared online. And it’s a shame that we don’t do it more often, really.
Sarcasm aside, I wanted to share with you the story of why and how I decided to steal an idea from the Internet, and how the person I stole the idea from became my partner in Confetti.
There may be more seeking developer for my idea posts than there are looking for singles in my area requests on the Internet these days. I mean, Tinder has actually been successful at pairing people up, whereas the co-founder pairing apps and communities have been less so.
I suspect I know why.
As a developer, I don’t find myself responding to these posts at all, for really one main reason. Risk.
- Commitment Risk. There’s too much risk that the person on the other side won’t actually put in the time or effort to get to a real product or build a real partnership.
- Product Risk. There’s too much risk that the person doesn’t really understand the product they think they have so clearly in their heads, and will struggle to put a shape to it when trying to actually build it.
- Partner Risk. There’s too much risk that we can’t work together, trust each other or get to a cohesive product vision we can agree on.
With all of this risk and potential time commitment looming, most ideas posted online simply aren’t fleshed out and compelling enough to engage with. There’s usually just not much substance there.
In fact, I often find myself cringing a bit when I see these overconfident posts announcing some big vague idea, seeking naive collaborators to build it.
I think to myself — they’re just idea people.
Someone who doesn’t have the skills that would allow them contribute, whose hand I would need to hold patiently through the entire partnership, if you could even call it that, while doing vast majority of the work myself.
Someone who doesn’t understand just how many more tiny little details and decisions have to be made in the process of creating a product, let alone the actual work in making the product itself.
Someone who doesn’t realize that whatever process they’ve gone through to come up with the idea is barely lifting a finger in the process of building and launching something new.
After all, there’s nothing in those posts that would suggest otherwise.
That’s why they never get many enthusiastic responses.
That’s also why, when I came across this post from Danny earlier this year, it felt a bit different than the hundreds of ideas I had seen before.
It was a fairly simple idea, yes, another habit tracker — but he had posted a full mockup of a design that he had already put in the effort to create, based on a need that I also shared. (I have a nearly identical way that I’ve used to track my own habits on pen and paper weekly for several years now.)
Moreover, the product idea and execution were clear and achievable (and beautifully designed), so that I could immediately figure out how to code the app, even as a solo developer.
I was also impressed by his post history, which told me he had some experience with marketing himself and his own products. He even wrote a post about his experience launching and selling a product in the past.
I decided to spend a bit of time mocking up a functioning, but incomplete, MVP based on this design, and sent it to him as a cold DM on Reddit after I had put version 1 together.
And then, long story short, over the next few months, we built Confetti together and we’re launching it today.
How this all got started was more instinct at the time, but now that I reflect back upon it, I think there were a few implicit qualities from how we began this collaboration that helped us reduce the risks and make it work.
1. Embedded Commitment
Before we had even spoken to each other, we had both been willing to put in the time and effort to build something and show it, which signalled that we had the skill as well as the commitment to building something together.
I think this is important in a context where you’re working with someone who you don’t really know, because there are plenty of people out there who talk, but much fewer who would actually put in the work. Danny told me that a number of people reached out to him after his initial post, but none followed through much beyond that point.
I believe that the willingness to commit first, figure it out second is a shortcut to getting things done on the Internet. It may not work out all the time but it sure makes you stand out in a crowd of ghosts.
2. Product first, talk second
Because we had an MVP of a product before we had even spoken to each other, it was much easier to stay focused on iterating on the product rather than getting stuck in unproductive conceptual discussions.
Many side projects die before a line of code is even written — simply because it’s really hard to communicate and work with someone else, let alone someone you don’t really know from the Internet.
Communication becomes more difficult when the product is still a vague concept, but an MVP transforms that muddiness into a kanban board of clear and explicit tasks that you either agree on or don’t.
3. Alignment of Vision
By starting with a well-fleshed out design with all of the details, we knew from the very beginning of working together than the product vision was something that we were both aligned on.
It was also much more productive to have an achievable endpoint for the product early on in the process. It’s important the reduce the uncertainty of how much a product could evolve, thereby reducing the risk of major disagreements around product direction that often leads to founder breakups.
Creators, build in public and let collaborators find you. Thieves, signal a small commitment of effort.
I hope you’ll take something away from our experience, steal from the Internet more often, and finally build and launch that side project.
My hope for this article is that we will see fewer people throwing out vague idea posts into the void, and more people spending the time and effort in fleshing out plans, designs and code for posts that will get people excited and help you find collaborators that fit your product.
We’d love to you try out Confetti if it’s a product that sounds like it might help you build better habits. Find us on Product Hunt.
