I currently have a website idea which involves investment into potential websites/businesses. The website would allow access to new people into the website world with their proposed ideas, with proposed expenses and future listed, and then other investors could take the opportunity to invest in a certain idea and help that idea progress. This could be done for businesses as well as websites. Any thoughts?
It's good. Meaning to help people without money to start web business and thrive right? I would love to be the first candidate.
It's a pretty good idea. You see a load of posts here in the 'General Business' section asking for partners/investors, so there is definately a market for it. I'm sure if you advertised enough you could get pretty big, but you'd probably also have to moderate a lot because you'd potentially get a number of scammers.
You really need to read into the US Securities laws before you pursue such an idea. The problem with this type of site is you are regulated by the location of your investors. There are exceptions, but you still have to meet certain guidelines and then it is only available to high net worth people. http://www.sec.gov/about/laws.shtml
What sort of help would you need? Financial or physical help? I'm sure this idea would work on a freelance script which you can actually find for free. The concept is basically the same: you put up an advert and people bid. You could make it so people offer a percentage of their company and then people bid on how much they want to spend? Advertising might take a pretty big budget if you want to make your site as popular as possible, but making the site successful shouldn't be too hard because of the lack of similar projects.
What if none of the transactions were taking place online? I am based in the UK as well. What if the project would just be a portal to get connected so that there is somewhere to start off (so there would be contact but no actual dealings - if an offer is closed, then this is down to the respective bidders and others to carry out any money exchanges outside the website. The website would not be liable for this) It would require both. The script, I can code myself since I am good at PHP. So there should be no problems with creating the script. Mainly advertising would be the key and I would need someone to support me, as I have a major reason holding me back from full commitment.
I would think you would have to have some sort of standard Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA) in the general terms and conditions but even then it is difficult to stop someone from stealing a good idea, doing it themselves and leaving the person who came up with idea with nothing. There are a lot of horrible people out there who would do such a thing, trust me. How would you prevent this?
Ah, pedigree, that's a very good point. Maybe you should make the website but distance yourself from it as much as possible, just moderate bad advertisements. This way, if anyone's idea is stolen then you can say it wasn't your fault. And also maybe do an article on how to deal properly on your site? This should hopefully minimise any problems.
Well, I would guess that if an idea is stolen, then the person would give me a URL for the website. By checking the date of the advertisement on my website, I could check the date of creation at the URL. Then compare and see if they are new and therefore, they may have copied.
Yes, but, it would be pretty straight forward and simple to detect idea theft, but to make people feel comfortable using your site you would need to prevent idea theft from happening in the first place. How do you intend to prevent it?
Hmm. This would take some thinking. But how about if the adverts were locked and if someone wanted to invest then they would contact the owner. If the owner of the advert approved there request (where they would give reasons for why they wish to invest or may be interested) then the investor will have access to further information and details regarding that idea.
Pretty good idea. To be honest, I can't really think of any suggestions because there will still be the odd few who do come on, request to see the idea and then run off with it to create it (which a larger budget than the owner had), but I think you've got as close as you can. It's the sort of thing where you need iTrader or a similar system, then advanced members don't get excluded.
Yeah. It could be that if they have an 'iTrader' above xx then they don't have to request. They can just see the advert without any requests etc. The other factor is that people who ask for partners anyway (for example on DP), are running the open risk of the idea being stolen anyway. This website would feature the same facility, so really it would just collate ideas and then this would be optional protection. Is there anyone interested in supporting this idea?
I think you should keep the original idea of having to request. Let's say someone has invested in 20 small projects that totalled to about $50 each. Yes, $1000 is a lot, but then say he abuses that position, looks at a project worth tens of thousands of dollars and steals it. You should definately keep the request thing.
Now you put it that way, I agree. I discussed this with some other people and found that if I was just a portal for adverts i.e. the website would only lead to contact behind 2 people, and there was no transaction or money dealings, then I am not liable for anything they decide.
In my opinion you should spend a lot of time on writing the TOS for this project, maybe even hire a lawyer to write it for you. If someone gets scammed out of an idea which will later lead to thousands of dollars then you really don't want to get sued or whatever. You need to totally disclaim yourself from the listings and say that anything you do on the site is at your own risk. In my opinion you should seek a professional opinion on all of this, just incase.
Some good potential solutions to the theft problem so far but I think there is more you could do. I think there is at least one thing that might act as an initial deterrent, this would be to make the a membership site which requires a recurring monthly payment to get to view the projects. Projects themselves could be posted for free to encourage that side of things - these members will not have access to any other projects than their own. I think this first step would put the small time scammers off while providing you with an steady income from the site As for those who are willing to pay to steal an idea (if that makes sense lol) i think the iTrader thing is difficult to implement because some investors may only invest in one or two big projects a year so their score would be low. I don't quite know what the best solution is here. Just out of interest, how much detail will a potential investor be able to see before they have to ask for more info? For instance if an ad said "I have an idea for a site" I doubt many investors would give it a second thought - will there be things like niche, type of project (site/widget/facebook app etc), investment required?