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No I won't sign your NDA, here's why.

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Re: No I won't sign your NDA, here's why.

#81

Post by espeed »

idan wrote: post #78

Best line I ever heard about NDA's (not mine): "If you are capable of broaching your NDA in a couple of sentences, you had nothing NDA'able there in the first place." I heard it at an entrepreneurship panel in 2004, so I don't remember the speaker. I think it might have been somebody from Broadcom. Interestingly, the people who (misguidedly) asked me to sign an NDA are usually receptive to this explanation when I tel…

Broaching or breaching? -- the line might have been either "broaching your idea" or "breaching your NDA".

Re: No I won't sign your NDA, here's why.

#82

Post by ma2rten »

jordhy wrote: post #66
ereckers wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the right answer? Because if it's anything other than "nothing" I'd like to hear an example.

Your competitive advantage is your sword. Your barrier to entry is your shield or "moat". Typically, these should be hard to copy things that you can evolve over time to make your business stronger. Here are some examples... - Classic competitive advantages: 1. A strong sales force created by partnering which regional players that agreed to exclusively serve you (i.e. Groupon). In this case the barrier to entry is th…

An algorithm that we developed and academia thinks is not going to work (Google)

That this an interesting thought. I am not sure it is really a classical competitive advantage, though. It's actually the first time I hear this. Is it really applicable in that many cases? You were giving Google as an example. Which algorithm were you referring to? I can think of these three from the top of my head: PageRank, MapReduce, Paxos. Of these only PageRank is what I would consider an substantial competitive advantage, but it had actually been published in an academic paper by Larry and Sergey.

I think Larry Page said on occasion that the early competitive advantage of Google was that the two founders were doing their PhD on how to build a search engine, so they simply knew much more about it than anyone else. Reading published papers about algorithms is all fine and well, but you having the intuitions to come up with them is much more powerful.

Re: No I won't sign your NDA, here's why.

#83

Post by Retric »

brazzy wrote: post #72
Retric wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A simple and strait forward one would be PG's using LISP for his website generation software. It was an ideal language for manipulating structured text and let them run rings around the completion even if they had 5x the budget and tried to directly copy them. It was also the type of thing they kept quiet about, just listing the need to LISP programmers on there job pages and that's it. Google's secret sauce included…

Google introduced MapReduce in 2004, years after it became the dominant search engine.

They where using the filter, map, reduce technique well before they introduced the MapReduce framework.

Re: No I won't sign your NDA, here's why.

#84

Post by nl »

jordhy wrote: post #66
ereckers wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the right answer? Because if it's anything other than "nothing" I'd like to hear an example.

Your competitive advantage is your sword. Your barrier to entry is your shield or "moat". Typically, these should be hard to copy things that you can evolve over time to make your business stronger. Here are some examples... - Classic competitive advantages: 1. A strong sales force created by partnering which regional players that agreed to exclusively serve you (i.e. Groupon). In this case the barrier to entry is th…

An algorithm that we developed and academia thinks is not going to work (Google). If academia thinks your algorithm is a good fit for the problem them that knowledge is public, well studied and been executed upon. (Google used secrecy, designed new systems and engaged in many partnerships with data centers initially to make their algorithm work at scale)

Actually this isn't why Google succeeded as a business. Sure, that made their search work, but the key was that no one else cared. No one realized just how much money Google was making from search until it was too late - and by then Google had built a classic two-sided market which is excellent protection against competition.

Re: No I won't sign your NDA, here's why.

#85

Post by nirvana »

I think its time to stop signing NDAs on job interviews too. (Is anyone still doing this?) I guessed that was what the article was about before I read it. The article is good, and I agree with all the points. But I'll go further.

Realistically if there's some piece of information that needs to be kept secret, and that piece of information, if released, would significantly damage your business, there's no way a startup is going to reveal that information in an interview with a job candidate. The reason is, even with and NDA, the info getting out would do the damage long before they might be able to enforce the NDA.

Thus NDAs are essentially pointless on Job interviews. Back in the last decade, when I was still willing to work for others for a salary, I would refuse to sign NDAs that had terms that were too onerous (like many companies had a combo NDA & IP assignment, that they'd ask me to sign on interviews! Others had terms in the NDA subjecting me to potential audits, including inspection of my living space, for the next 12 months!)

I don't know what common practice out there is, but its time for job seekers to not sign NDAs.

In fact, I think being asked to sign an NDA, is a good sign that the people running the company are either of the "idea is %90" type or doing it just out of tradition.

I think most of the NDAs I was asked to sign on interviews were out of tradition-- somebody back in the day, made off with a customer list, so now its "best practices" to have candidates sign and NDA.

But this is a big clue itself: It tells you management just mindlessly follows "Best practices" without thinking about them and applying them intelligently. That tells you something about how... nimble... management is going to be (and whether they're ready to run a startup.)

Many of the startups that failed in my experience-- second only to fights between the cofounders and bad VC advice-- failed because they were started by people who'd gotten lucky and thought that meant they were brilliant. (EG: worked at Microsoft or Amazon at the right time and made a lot from their options, but didn't really actually know much about running a business.)

I remember, a decade ago, having such a brilliant idea that I asked my friends to sign these stupid NDAs I'd drawn up before they got the privilege of "Advising" me on it. It was absurd. I think I realized it almost right after, and I stopped doing that. Since then, I just don't talk about what I'm doing-- mostly because, I'd rather do something, then talk about it, and if you've not shipped it feels like bragging about what you're gonna do-- we all know the guy whose "gonna do" this thing that's so great. Don't want to be that guy.

If your business or startup is worth working for, it doesn't need candidates to sign NDAs.

Asking them to implies you're just an idea.

Re: No I won't sign your NDA, here's why.

#86

Post by wccrawford »

I once refused to sign a contract that was basically an NDA, but not labeled as such. It had a clause that said if I leaked information about the project and the project failed, I'd be liable for all damages.

When I refused to sign it, the owner started screaming at me that I was trying to sabotage his business, and I'd sign it if I wasn't. I refused to sign and left.

Later that day, I returned with their CD with all their source code. They had lent me to the CD to determine if I'd be able to do what they wanted. I didn't have to sign anything to get that CD, and they didn't ask for it back when I left.

It was quite an eye-opener for me, and I'm vary wary of NDAs to this day. At the very least, they need to have a termination date and be very specific about what they cover.

Re: No I won't sign your NDA, here's why.

#87

Post by BobertK »

paulhauggis wrote: post #49
BobertK wrote: post #13

I love this: boy it's true... It’s a well documented phenomenon how idea-havin’ first timers just need a programmer to bring their vision to life, as though the idea is somehow half the battle (or 90%, as folks like me often get offered sweat equity deals–10% seems to be a popular number).

The idea is half the battle. If it wasn't, you could write a hello world app and make a million dollars. I'm a developer and from my experience, coding=50%, timing+idea=50%. The reason most idea guys are worthless isn't because ideas are worthless. It's because they usually only have a very general picture (I want to write a Facebook clone that does X) when the details are what really matter.

The idea is huge. The vision and ability to execute it is huger. Point is I won't even work with people who think think "I just need a programmer" - they will not value your contributions and try to chisel you out of as much a s they can. After all, you're just a programmer, THEY had the idea.

This w/o getting into the fact that: product == original idea == never happens ....

Re: No I won't sign your NDA, here's why.

#88

Post by TomGullen »

wpietri wrote: post #44
huhtenberg wrote: post #9

Frankly, I am getting tired of this "ideas are worthless, execution is golden" mantra. Of course, "let's build a online shop" idea is useless, but it's not really an idea to begin with. An idea that is worth discussing with others would typically include some minimal validation, an execution and marketing plan and, in general, some amount of thought put into it. Because otherwise it's not an idea, but a random brainf…

I still think ideas are basically worthless. That's certainly true literally; 20 years in software and I've never heard of anybody selling one for significant money. First-mover advantage can sometimes be helpful, but it rarely determines success. Look at Amazon, Google, and Facebook, for example: leaders in their categories, but none of them was first. A person with a brilliant idea who can't execute well is almost…

If Google went around telling everyone about their Pagerank idea, writing about it online, etc, do you think this would be inconsequential to their success?

Re: No I won't sign your NDA, here's why.

#89

Post by gruseom »

andrewflnr wrote: post #22
huhtenberg wrote: post #9

Frankly, I am getting tired of this "ideas are worthless, execution is golden" mantra. Of course, "let's build a online shop" idea is useless, but it's not really an idea to begin with. An idea that is worth discussing with others would typically include some minimal validation, an execution and marketing plan and, in general, some amount of thought put into it. Because otherwise it's not an idea, but a random brainf…

Especially in software, ideas execution is a continuum. I think an idea, a well-thought-out idea, a spec, a program, maybe even machine code are just more-and-more detailed designs. More (and less obvious) detail is more work, and worth more. Now that I think about it, the transition from program to machine code is interesting. I guess design stops when you can turn the design into a finished product via a mechanical…

Your idea is reminiscent of this influential article by Jack Reeves: http://www.bleading-edge.com/Publications/C++Journal/Cpjour2.... He argued that source code is design, and that "construction" or "building" of software happens in the "build" phase, i.e. translation to machine code, which has been automated for a long time.

Re: No I won't sign your NDA, here's why.

#90

Post by wpietri »

TomGullen wrote: post #88
wpietri wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still think ideas are basically worthless. That's certainly true literally; 20 years in software and I've never heard of anybody selling one for significant money. First-mover advantage can sometimes be helpful, but it rarely determines success. Look at Amazon, Google, and Facebook, for example: leaders in their categories, but none of them was first. A person with a brilliant idea who can't execute well is almost…

If Google went around telling everyone about their Pagerank idea, writing about it online, etc, do you think this would be inconsequential to their success?

You mean, say, if they published academic papers about it? Like these?

http://ilpubs.stanford.edu:8090/361/ http://ilpubs.stanford.edu:8090/422/

Of course, PageRank was only one of many relevant innovations. A key one was the open bidding for ads. Another was focusing on a high-quality user experience, which included no banner ads and highly relevant search results ads. Both of which were totally visible to competitors, and only came well after the business was underway.

They have kept two major sorts of innovation secret. One is their aggressive pursuit of very low cost computing infrastructure. The other is the relentless improvements to search quality. PageRank is only a small part of that now. That IP has a ton of value. Not because of some secret Big Idea, but because they have taken a lot of little ideas and relentlessly winnowed them, yielding actual knowledge.

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