I may have a cool start-up idea. Now what?

The next step is to write out a formal business plan. This will help you to get a handle on the details of your proposed businessin terms of initial capital investments, ongoing expenses, logistics and expected revenue. Since you’re broke, you will probably be needing investors to fund your startup- and they will want all that information and then some.

Or, you could try to scale your business down to the point where you could start it on the funds you have available. Then you wouldn’t need investors- but you will still need the plan.

I love this. It’s great to see somebody so excited about something and I wish you the very best of luck.

I don’t know how much start up cash you would need, but is there a friend or family member that you could borrow from? Or maybe a small bank loan?

@rexacoracofalipitorius Awesomely sound advice.

I just thought of this idea last night and now my brain is on fire. I definitely want to write up a formal business plan ASAP and probably a a SWAT analysis too.

I know some people through Silicon Valley connections who might be able to fund me, if my idea is really that good. I just need to work up the ovaries to approach them once things are more solid.

I’m a little nervous about potentially “ripping off” and getting in trouble with the artist who inspired this because that’s no my intention at all. He seemed to have implemented a cool prototype/idea but never really mechanized it into action and kept it kind of narrow.

I think it’s a great idea but want to make it my own and different enough to not get in any trouble.

@LeavesNoTrace I’ll give you one of my ovaries for courage. lol

You can do this!

Even if you can legally use the idea depicted by the Danish artist, you may not be able to get a patent on it, because the use of it by the artist puts it in the public domain. I don’t know if that is a concern of yours.

@LostInParadise I’m not sure if I should be concerned or not. Can you explain a little more or provide a link?

I am just saying what little I know about patents. If you want to keep people from stealing your idea, you need to patent it. To get a patent, you need to show that nobody is using the idea. If the Danish artist has used the idea, that may be interpreted as meaning that the idea is in the public domain and therefore not patentable.

@LostInParadise That’s not entirely accurate, at least not in the US.
Having a patent does not keep anyone from stealing your idea- it only gives you a “license to sue” if they do. If you can’t afford a lawsuit, your patent does you no good in this regard- though it may look good on a CV.
Also, patents can be invalidated by a showing of “prior art”. USPTO does not check to see if the idea on a patent application is in use elsewhere, only if there’s a pre-existing patent (and they don’t do a great job searching that IMO). It’s up to the patent applicant to perform “due diligence” in making sure the idea on the application is really novel. Otherwise you’re out thousands of bucks for the patent application process and possibly tens of thousands on a lawsuit which gets thrown out when your defendant shows evidence of prior art.