I had been chronicling (sp?) our progress of our mobile start-up but a major setback caused me to take down the blog in frustration. My partner and I decided we would not just give in to the forces of evil so we are back. We'd be interested in hearing similar stories.
This is a story of David vs Goliath where a large tech company steals the ideas of a budding young start-up. When challenged the Goliath dares them to fight back. Not the American ideal I was raised to believe in.
Here is a quick overview of our journey with very large disk drive company (VLDDC):
Get introduction by mutual business associate.
Sign mutual NDAs.
Hold many meetings and conference calls introducing the idea and product detail to mid management team.
Excitement ensues. Main message from VLDDC - show us it works and we may well launch it.
We show them it works.
More meetings, more conference calls. 9 months elapse.
Largest disc drive company decides to launch product at CES. One problem, not with us.
Seems they have "had this idea all along" and can't risk working with a start-up on such an important project.
They say product is not really like ours anyway.
They don't want to step on our intellectual property claims and ask for a proposal to a) "go away" or to b) "work with us"
They dont like either of our proposals.
They tell us about their team of in-house lawyers and suggest they will simply outspend/outlast us.
They launch at DEMO '07. Not surprisingly, the product is JUST like ours.
Sidenote - we pitched the CEO of DEMO and she tells us she has seen nothing like our product and that we would be a great fit for her show. We never hear from her again. Guess she heard the story again, his time from VLDDC and liked VLDDC' bank account better than small start-up.
What's a start-up to do? Hire a lwayer and go round for round with a VLDDC and their inhouse team of lawyers? Probably not a great idea.
This newly hip disc drive company (is that an oxymoron or what?) is now pursuing the coveted 18 to 30-something market saying they can use this product with their personal video, music, etc. They are even offering an SDK so that people can develop apps for them.
Dreams of a start-up crushed by the big corporate titan. Bet all those 18-30 somethings will love that story. Now, how do we tell that story - blogs, youtube...let's see how that big team of lawyers can defend against that. We're not naming names, we're just sayin'...
WE dont mind if VLDDC sells lots of the product and gets even Larger, we just dont think they should do it at the expense of us.
