[Discuss] Startup?

[Max Timchenko]

On Mar 1, 2015, at 14:35, discuss-request at blu.org wrote:

> Reach out to all your friends and contacts, get all their advice.  Become comfortable with having everyone sign NDA's so you're not publicly disclosing anything.  Get your form NDA from your legal counsel - because if you download from the internet, there are lots of different ones that are valid and invalid in different regions.  

Investors generally refuse to sign NDAs, and even raising the subject is a strike against the founder. It’s a potential legal liability and a hassle for them. Just search on the Internet:

From the horse’s mouth (an actual VC): http://www.canrockventures.com/why-vcs-do-not-sign-ndas/
From Forbes (maybe I know nothing, but perhaps they do): http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4pJxAgVhPZMJ:www.forbes.com/sites/wilschroter/2013/08/22/why-investors-dont-sign-ndas/+&cd=6&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
https://medium.com/@tmcpro/why-i-wont-sign-an-nda-4193aeda7251
https://www.fundable.com/learn/resources/guides/investor-guide/why-investors-dont-sign-ndas

…and thousands more links. The same advice (don’t bother with NDAs at the initial stage; it’s not about technical details anyway) was given to me when I was getting my MBA with a startup focus, by actual VC investors and successful founders.

A lot of “entrepreneurs” believe their idea is precious and worth a ton of money. In most cases, it is almost worthless, and the execution will decide whether their business will succeed or fail. They may also believe patents are the key to their future success; but patents can be invalidated, they cost a year’s engineer’s salary to get and don’t bring any revenue or product in, and it costs a further metric ton of money to actually attempt to enforce them in case a competitor arrives, with uncertain chance of success - money a fledgling startup typically does not have.

If a friend approached me for an advice about their startup but wanted me to sign an NDA first I would refuse outright.

Yours,
— 
Max