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The Arrogance in Fundraising NDA

A business plan is valuable but making it a state secret may not help you in closing a funding round. There is no way any serious investor would give you money without seeing your business plan. Also, do not expect any investor to even consider signing any NDA (non-disclosure agreement).

When you approach an investor and you ignorantly or arrogantly remind him that your business plan is confidential or proprietary to the extent that you cannot share it, you are not respecting the person’s time.

People, there is nothing that is written on paper that is new. What is new is how to combine atoms, bytes and bits to make any idea come to life. We need to be real: waving a piece of paper to an investor without showing it while expecting funding is classless. Yes, if you cannot share that business plan, go and get a day job because no one would fund you. The biggest risk in life is living in a parallel universe where the mind deceives you to think that only you have the greatest ideas.

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This is my suggestion: when you go out to raise fund, never mention to any investor on the requirement of signing an NDA before he/she can see your business plan. I think it is very rude to even propose that.  Also note that no credible investor would sign that. If there is any that agrees, I would suggest you run away from that person because he/she may not be investing.

But without disclosing the business plan to the potential investor, what would the person be investing in: your word of mouth or the imagined secret? Sometimes what we consider to be an invention or something new might have been in existence for ages, only that the perceived 'newest inventor' lacks awareness to understand that he/she came late to the party. Sharing the idea may even save you time and energy, so as to discontinue from the delusional thoughts, in a situation where there's no market for your famed idea.

Secrecy is even a ruse in many instances, it all depends on your audience and their level of awareness. Nothing is really new, it's more or less about combining and mixing things differently, same way the 26 English alphabets can be combined differently to produce a wonderful piece or great rhetoric exhortations.

That I tell you I want to start producing self-writing pen, and then show you the business plan doesn't in anyway make it easier for you to jumpstart ahead of me and start producing the pen; come on, the devil is in the details!