I'd go further. Patents are nice to haves for VCs and investors and look pretty on glossy business plans (look at our shiny algorithms and wireframes!). Don't bet the success of your company on your patent portfolio. The fact is, no startups out there succeed in the long run because of their proprietary technology (think facebook, myspace, youtube, yahoo, google, flickr). Even if something is "rocket science" and very hard to build, it might keep your competition at bay for a while. But once, you're successful, they'll always find a way to do it. So, what can you do? Figure out your sustainable competitive advantage. What is the rocket science that will insulate your startup from big competitors? I think that is the angle worth exploring here.

Sustainable competitive advantage - excellent phrase. It covers a wider range of possibilities than are implied by rocket science.

One of the reasons I originally posted the question is that I'm particularly interested in one of the ideas that YC mentioned in the startup ideas that YC would like to fund, enterprise software 2.0 (http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html see number 5).

My experience in that space is that there are a number of companies that are generating huge revenues using software that could be improved via the "build a better mousetrap" methodology. But basically none of that space requires rocket science, unless you include the ability you have as a startup to use more powerful languages and tools than your standard corporate behemoth.

Now, that said, using more powerful tools might free you up to innovate in ways other companies can't, similar to how PG has touted Lisp as a big strength for Viaweb . . .

Tom excellent point. There is a huge market for innovation in the enterprise space. At the financial services company I work for, the average employee uses about 25 applications and has a different username and password for each. And most of these apps are terrible. There is enormous pain in the corporate world and it's an understatement to just build a better mousetrap. Just build something that doesn't suck as bad as their current software; and sell to the business people and upper-middle management decision-makers.

First of all, you have to consider who was being quoted (rtm).

Secondly, the statement points to how you protect your IP. If it's something that's easy to make the first time, then it's even easier to duplicate. How do you protect your idea without any kind of "secret sauce"?

> How do you protect your idea without any kind of "secret sauce"?

Wrap it in a business model that's somewhat robust to competition. Photo uploading is not technically complex, but the business model to support free is more of a barrier to entry.

I think a startup's competitive edge is often not the product or space that they are in but the people on their team. For example, my company is in a pretty competitive space with lots of big corporations as our competitors--but we don't worry because the one thing that News Corporation or Rupert Murdoch doesn't have is me and my team.

A better mousetrap is all you need. Implement well - not all that easy to duplicate or there wouldn't be so much annoying software out there.

Probably shorthand for "what's your real competitive advantage here".