Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Why I Won't Sign Your NDA


I'm mostly writing this so I can forward this link to the next person who has a cool startup idea but wants me to sign an NDA.

Here are excellent summaries of why programmers do not want to sign NDAs under normal circumstances when talking about a startup:

http://mixergy.com/why-i-wont-sign-your-nda/
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000071.html
http://dashes.com/anil/2010/05/one-more-time-no-ndas.html

Speaking personally, asking for an NDA makes you appear as if your startup is more obsessed with secrecy and official process than with going out and kicking ass. It makes me think that your company is probably led by a person who does not understand hacker culture, and is not in a position to have read any of the above articles.

Also, any programmer who has a blog gets emailed all the time about startup opportunities from people who don't ask for NDAs. Why should I bother with yours? I realize some ideas are valuable and worth protecting, but given the nature of the web it's very unlikely that you alone have stumbled onto something that valuable. (It's more likely that you'll be turning a mediocre but promising idea into something super valuable after you spend some time building something cool)

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