Ask HN: How to pitch startup to corporates without losing ownership?

5 points by TadaScientist 7 years ago | 7 comments

I was just reading this [https://playbook.samaltman.com/] and thought I would post here.

I have a startup and a well specified product in my mind and I'm already drafting a business plan. It's a b2b product which requires an upfront investment to develop an MVP for. Some will ask why don't I built it myself - I am not a coder, nor a full-stack developer.

The plan is to reach out to a bunch of businesses but I am afraid they would either laugh me out of the door or simply take my idea and with their infinite balance sheets build it themselves.

Besides asking the representatives of those Corporates to sign an NDA at the door during the demo what else can I do to protect myself?

Finally, let's say I wanted to create animations such as this [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y6aVz0Acx0] to demonstrate my use cases - which software would you recommend for me to work on?

Many thanks

dpeck 7 years ago |

| simply take my idea and with their infinite balance sheets build it themselves

If large businesses were actually able to do this then the vast majority of startups would never exist. These days many startups are really just speculative r&d for big co's that like to spend capex for a (mostly) known commodity vs opex that may never amount to anything.

You probably wont make them a customer, but the chances of big co managing to take your idea, implement it, and put it out into the market to compete with you is vanishingly small.

g10r 7 years ago |

The best protection is going to be execution.

NDAs aren't really going to help you in this regard.

Just take some meetings, tell them what you're working on and if some form of collaboration is of interest.

tixocloud 7 years ago |

Is your idea very unique? There's much more to commercial success than just the idea itself. If your idea is very unique, then you might want to consider patents as a way forward in addition to NDAs. Companies, especially large ones, have minimal interest in stealing startup ideas.

sharemywin 7 years ago |

Do you know any of the potential customers? Are you solving a problem they complain about? Is there a solution already?

check out bubble.is you might be able to build a prototype.

If you have a few customers using a patched together prototype you have a 100% better chance of finding a developer.

TadaScientist 7 years ago | |

Thank you for posting, I am not currently looking for a developer and as I mentioned I do know of potential customers which are not consumers. My questions were specifically about protecting my idea during the demo session and the program I should use to create an animation.

sharemywin 7 years ago | | |

You can find some explainer video creators on Fiverr.

https://www.fiverr.com/search/gigs?query=explainer%20video&s...

10 Awesome Software To Make Explainer Videos? https://www.wowmakers.com/blog/explainer-video-software/

sharemywin 7 years ago | | |

If they're not software companies your pitching to, I doubt they want to build the software in house.