James Siminoff

So tired of NDA’s

I would try to add up all of the time that my teams and I have spent reading and signing NDA’s but it would probably make me sick so I prefer not to.

Personally an NDA is just a waste of time and a worthless piece of crap.  How many times have you sat in a meeting and someone says “I am under NDA so please do not tell anyone else about [insert highly confidential information about other company here]”.

Or even better you are under NDA with a company and they come out with a competing product, I have had that happen a few times and my lawyers say that it is not worth it to sue.  Those are the same lawyers that tell me to make sure I get NDA’s from everyone we work with.

But not all NDA’s have to suck, a few weeks ago I was meeting with Josh Kopelman and he told me some stuff under what he calls “FriendDA”. That is an NDA that I am happy to agree to and would actually not violate.

The reality is an NDA is a false sense of security, mostly unenforceable and many times violated in some way.  While it is probably still worth it to get them done for the one time when the violator actually is worth going after (still have not had that happen yet) it sure does feel like a big friction filled waste of time.