Isn't "protecting it" at cross purposes to making it go viral?
The best protection is first-mover advantage. Take more market share than any competitor can easily gain back, and do it quickly, preemptively. Attach your brand to it somehow; that way your brand becomes famous and the kudos will attach to you.
People worry a lot about protecting their precious ideas when they should be implementing them to see if it's what the market really wants. Good ideas are a dime a dozen. Good implementers are not.
Best of luck, I hope what you've got is transformative.
Thanks. I wonder if I should apply to YCombinator since I already have the prototype ready and can aim to get a few users in next 2 weeks and then submit?
Sure why not? The team at YCombinator are very good at getting ideas into commercial reality. If they agree that you have a great idea, then you'll get massive support.
I agree with much of what ianamartin said. Google is unlike most big companies in that it thinks 10 to 20 years out (but pays scant attention to short-term strategies). Their problem as I see it is not to have great products in 10 years but to build a bridge from here-and-now to the 10-year mark. Clearly, their ad model is fading in significance. Ad spends are shifting (rapidly) from classic PPC search ads to timeline ads (on FB, TWTR, Pinterest, and other "timeline providers") and "native" content ads. In the meantime, Google has suffered a lack of focus, spreading itself rather thinly over a large surface area of products and projects that haven't become big moneymakers. Its efforts in social media (Google+) have brought mixed success. With the decline of classic PPC search ads, the SEO value of Google+ has become moot. Google is attempting to compete with Amazon in cloud services but is unlikely to get further than "also-ran" status.
Over the short term, Google will remain profitable, but whether it can build a bridge to a future of driverless cars, etc., is less certain.
I was asked some riddle that was so ridiculous I can't even remember it now. It was like I was suddenly in a game show and had 5 minutes to complete a riddle. This was at the end of 4.5 hours of interviewing. The questions had been really good all day until then.
Be ready to do your pitch with or without graphics, with or without white board,, with or without aids of any kind.
If you were pitching to Steve Jobs, rest assured that after your fourth slide, or 30 seconds of video, he would interrupt to say you're full of shit. Chances are, you won't encounter that kind of abruptness. Just saying, be ready for anything.
Most investors are pragmatists. They will want to know HOW you know that customers will come; they'll want to know what your market research consists of; you'll need to provide some kind of market "proof." Do a mock preso with somebody interrupting all the time to say "That's pie in the sky. Prove to me it's not pie in the sky."
How many customers do you need to make this thing fly? How soon? What's the timmetable? Where will those customers come from? How many will come from each channel? How do you KNOW they'll come? What market testing have YOU done already? Those are the types of questions to expect. (Among others, of course.)
If you don't have those kinds of answers, be ready to tell how you'll get them. What are your income milestones? How can you prove you'll hit them? What happens if you don't? How soon will you be able to prove you're on track? What form does the proof take?
Angels see and hear good ideas all the time. What they want to know is why you're the one to do this and how you know it will work; why this is the right time; why no one else can execute on this; why it will succeed if YOU do it.
