How do you sell an idea to an established company?

Posted by omghashtag on Saturday May 28, 2016 @04:44PM
from the self-post dept.

Maybe there's an untapped revenue source for a product that would require little to no investment from the company, and you'd like to suggest it to them while retaining credit/ownership of the idea?

As in, if I pitched an idea to a company, how do I ensure that if they use it, there's an agreed-upon payment structure and they don't just use it anyway and say fuck off?

( 4 comments | 2 points | on HN )

Re:How do you sell an idea to an established company? by chrisbennet on Saturday May 28, 2016 @05:27PM (#11793614)

I think it unlikely that you can get money or credit/ownership from them for an idea - at least not without spending money on patents and lawyers to enforce that patent.

Basically, ideas are worthless without execution. Now if you can make a product that performs this improvement you might be able to license it to them. I created and licensed some software to a company once.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How do you sell an idea to an established company? by smt88 on Saturday May 28, 2016 @05:21PM (#11793589)

You don't. I've never heard of this happening.

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Re:How do you sell an idea to an established company? by exolymph on Saturday May 28, 2016 @08:03PM (#11794149)

Ownership of an idea is not really a thing, unless it's patentable. You have zero leverage in this situation.

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Re:How do you sell an idea to an established company? by kwikiel on Saturday May 28, 2016 @05:09PM (#11793533)

Get hired as contractor not saying first your oryginal idea but pitch them improvements on existing process

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