&gt; And chances are people in the field would have been aware of what interesting things there are in that field, and would have some idea of what you&#x27;ve come up with.<p>So, do some research that 
others are not likely to do.
Then carry that research
all the way to a
successful business.<p>My research is some math, based
on theorems and proofs, based
on some advanced prerequisites.
Sure, at least in
principle, there are some university
mathematicians who could
duplicate what I derived.<p>It&#x27;s been a while since
I was a teenager.  Since then
I&#x27;ve spent a lot of time
around low end business,
and high end research 
mathematics, business, 
startups, and computing.  
Sure, a lot of that 
experience
has just junk quality information,
but the experience 
does let me
have some understanding
of the people and cultures.
Based on that understanding,
there are at least
three bottlenecks that 
help protect me:<p>(1) To duplicate my research,
the university research
mathematicians would mostly
need a relatively 
clean formulation of the 
the math part of the real
business 
problem as a math problem.
That formulation
requires also understanding
some of my <i>business model</i>,
which is not mathematics, 
in particular, what data
to get and how to get it
and, then, what the heck
data to give the users&#x2F;customers
that they will like, a lot,
and why.<p>E.g., 
first cut a lot of people
will say that I will need
ballpark 10^27 bytes of data.
Nope!  Just why not
is a bit clever;
although the basic
reason is some solid
math, it&#x27;s a bit novel;
also need to understand and
keep in
mind the business model;
only a small fraction of
research mathematicians
have all the math prerequisites;
and, net, 
only a small fraction
of people in pure
math would think of it.<p>Some of what I&#x27;m doing
most people who are close
to such things will say
I can&#x27;t do that.
For things close to what
I&#x27;m doing, they are right.
For exactly what I&#x27;m doing,
they are wrong.  I found
a narrow path through the
woods that works for just
what I&#x27;m doing.  If my
path were broad instead
of narrow, a lot of
books would have to be
revised.<p>(2) The research I did is
relatively applied, 
i.e., would
be regarded by the research
mathematics community as
a niche; then such
mathematicians would have to
do the work of focusing on the
niche; that would take them
away from their main stream
of research, get them few or
no academic promotion points,
and is something they wouldn&#x27;t
want to do.<p>(3) Even among
good university research mathematicians, some of the
crucial math prerequisites are not well understood.<p>For a human, there
is little so obscure as
some math theorems and
proofs where the human
is missing the important
prerequisites.<p>Outside of university research
math departments, the chances
of anyone even being able to
duplicate my work is much smaller.<p>Then there is the issue of
<i>business</i>:  The university
research mathematicians
are a very long way <i>culturally</i>
from a startup in <i>information
technology</i>; they 
don&#x27;t have nearly enough background in the basic computing; 
e.g., they don&#x27;t really know
in any good detail how a Web server works, 
or TCP&#x2F;IP,
know an appropriate 
programming
language, understand
server farm system management,
etc.<p>Then in business, they don&#x27;t understand information technology
startups.  E.g., they haven&#x27;t
been reading Hacker News,
VentureBeat, AVC.com, Mark Andreessen, etc.<p>They couldn&#x27;t, and
even if they could likely wouldn&#x27;t, do the work alone (too
big of a distraction 
from their
university research career)
and with just the math 
wouldn&#x27;t be able to attract
a team without some significant
bucks.  Further, for a VC, 
a professor with a math
paper and a dime won&#x27;t cover
a 10 cent cup of coffee.<p>My effort is yet another
example of something classic
in innovation -- field crossing.
So, for the <i>fields</i>,
there are some advanced
math prerequisites,
some understanding of
some niche topics in
pure and applied math,
the particular, niche 
math research I did,
the computing, and, to
tie it all together, 
the whole business model
I have in mind.<p>So, early on, no one will
bother trying to compete with
me.  Later I will have
some barriers to entry
from the data I&#x27;ve gathered,
some viral and network effects,
some happy users who won&#x27;t
t want to try something
else or pay <i>switching costs</i>,
and will have some publicity, and a brand name.<p>Or, until I&#x27;m quite successful, people who could do the
math couldn&#x27;t easily and 
wouldn&#x27;t do the rest; the people who 
could and would do the rest
won&#x27;t do the math;
and no one with a suitable
checkbook would cough up
enough money to put
a team together that
could do all the required
<i>field crossing</i>.  Later?
Mostly too late unless
someone wants to buy me
out and I&#x27;m willing to sell.<p>&gt; Obviously you are the only person writing your code, but should you assume that someone with a similar background could not come up with something quite similar if he wanted to research it?<p>The &quot;code&quot; is not the point.
The crucial, core point
is the math.  Given the
math, nearly all the code
is quite routine, and the
rest is not much more 
difficult.  The real, core
technical challenge of the
code is the math in the
<i>design and specifications 
document</i> for the code.<p>Saying that I did some
math research doesn&#x27;t 
give away much; it just 
puts one in the QA section
of a research library with
racks and racks of books
and journals where one
can easily get totally lost
for many lifetimes.  And, for
the rest of the news, my
work is very likely not
in the that library at all.<p>Can I do original math research?  Done it often
enough in the past!