Over the last few weeks, I’ve probably met 20 or so early stage entrepreneurs and it’s amazed me how many are over-cautious about sharing their ideas. This can range from simply refusing to say what it is, to not being willing to tell you anything about it in advance of the meeting, to asking you not to talk to anyone about it, to being fastidious about you signing an NDA. This latter one, we were certainly guilty of in the early days of our first start-up, but now I will happily tell anyone about ideas I’m looking at. And here’s why…

1. The value of learning is far greater than the risk of someone stealing the idea. You simply won’t move forward if you don’t socialise the idea and improve your pitch and learn from other experience.

2. In reality, the risk of somone copying you directly is incredibly remote. If they’re an individual then the chance of them having the gumption to do what you’re doing is low. If they’re a company, then they’ll be inherently slow and the chances are they’d rather partner with you than not. In my last start-up, every time we met someone who we feared might want to be able to copy us (and who also had the ability to copy us)) we ended up with a positive outcome, being it funding or a major partnership.

3. The people who are most likely to rip you off won’t sign. VCs (and in particular US VCs by reputation) are the people who can most likely connect your idea to people who would want to do it, and you’ll never get them to sign an NDA. They have the power in the relationship and you’ll never get them to sign. The people who will sign it aren’t the people who you should worry about.

4. It makes you look inexperienced. The successful serial entreprenurs I’ve met with to talk about new companies haven’t worried about it and have just shared their ideas. The new entrepreneurs who are just starting out are the people who worry about it. So, save yourself from looking gree, and tell anyone who will listen what you’re thinking about doing.

Flickr photo courtesy of gotplaid?

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