This is sooo funny. Almost every week there's a "Ask YC" type of post where a business idea is seeking programming talent, and almost all the time the response is, "Why should I partner with you? What will you do for the startup while I code?"
And here we have a "bored software developer" just soliciting free business ideas and the mere suggestion that he should offer something in return seems to be unpopular.
Have you ever considered that the person who you seek ideas from may have developed the idea over months ... or even years of thinking, unpaid research, trial-and-error, awkward conversations with potential users, constant analysis of other things on the market, etc.?
Perhaps you may consider that from their perspective it would be something like, "Why should I share the insights of months/years of thinking about the problem? What were you doing while I was investing the time to investigate the feasibility?"
And yet the very question of what value the idea giver can expect meets scorn.
This is news.yc... have you read any of PG's thoughts on the value of ideas?
Here's an idea for bored_dev:
Apparently, some people have a bizarre habit of highlighting the text as they read. Write a script that checks whether a user reads the entire text of, say, an EULA, or maybe an essay...
Okay, let's review reality. This "bored developer" is apparently not PG. So PG's opinions/thoughts are not relevant here, since obviously this particular "bored developer" is straying from that view. For example, PG said you don't even really need a good idea - just get started. But this "bored developer" apparently can't start without the good idea, so he apparently is experiencing a different reality at the moment than PG.
Seriously what does my response to "bored developer" have to do whith what PG says/thinks/does/where he goes on vacation? If PG writes an essay that says he thinks oxygen is useless and somebody next to you has an asthma attack, are you going to turn around to them and tell them, "Well, didn't you read PG's latest essay where he tells you he thinks oxygen isn't that important?"
