Nobody Is Going to Steal Your Startup Idea
Jayen Ashar · 2 min read
Founders often ask people to sign an NDA before they’ll explain their idea. Most investors won’t sign one, and neither will most of the people a founder needs advice from. So the NDA mostly ends the conversations that would have helped.
The people you need won’t sign
Insisting on an NDA doesn’t protect the idea. It mostly buys silence from the people who could help.
An idea nobody hears about is safe. It’s also going nowhere.
Why the idea isn’t the valuable part
The idea is where it starts. What makes it work is everything after: building it, getting it in front of users, and changing it when they don’t behave the way you expected.
That’s the part someone would have to copy, and it can’t be copied from a conversation.
What founders should take from this
- Talk about the idea freely. The feedback is worth far more than the secrecy.
- Don’t make an NDA the price of a conversation. Most of the people you ask will say no, and the conversation ends there.
- Put your energy into building. A head start in execution is the protection that actually holds.
Nobody is waiting to steal your idea. They’re waiting to see if you can pull it off.
More from the blog
- Build the Waitlist Before You Build the MVP
- Disputes Are Prevented by Communication, Not Contracts
- When Leaving Sharetribe’s Fees Isn’t Worth the Cost of a Custom Build