What info (if any) should be kept secret about new startup ideas?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6101375
by pain_perdu • 13 years ago
1 2 13 years ago

Many experts, including Brad Feld in his awesome book Venture Deals, have said that asking VCs or others to sign an NDA for a basic pitch is an obvious sign of an amateur and totally not necessary. That makes a lot of sense to me. But very recently I came up with a concept for a netsec startup that I think I can whip up a MVP for in less than a month and start generating significant and very scalable income immediately there after. So in other words, with minimal time and resources and expertise, this idea can generate a lot of cash.

Now given time, I think I will be able to build up increasing complex algorithms to improve upon the process to such a degree that I will have a good amount of defensibility for the longer-term.

At this early stage of the game, I would like to get as much feedback about my idea as possible (I've already told about 7 people and almost all thought it was a good-to-great idea, many of them have already given me token investments as a sign of confidence) but if my idea is even half as clever as I think it is, if enough people hear about it someone is likely to give it a try for themselves because it is such a simple money-maker.

So what do you think? Should I stop being paranoid and just tell the world or if not, which elements (generally speaking) should I keep to myself?

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