Execution is most of what goes in to bringing a product to market successfully. It takes a lot more than a good idea to succeed; secretive dreamers abound, but

Execution is most of what goes in to bringing a product to market successfully. It takes a lot more than a good idea to succeed; secretive dreamers abound, but the vast majority of them never ship. This is old news: Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats. [Howard H. Aiken, as quoted in Portraits in Silicon (1987) by Robert Slater] [from wikiquote] Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration. [Thomas Edison, spoken statement (c. 1903); published in Harper's Monthly (September 1932)] [from wikiquote] Actually, startup ideas are not million dollar ideas, and here's an experiment you can try to prove it: just try to sell one. Nothing evolves faster than markets. The fact that there's no market for startup ideas suggests there's no demand. Which means, in the narrow sense of the word, that startup ideas are worthless. [Paul Graham, http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html] NDAs may have uses in established companies with very specific trade secrets that established competitors would be able to use right away (see, e.g., http://www.mbay.net/~heuer/Spystory/Industry.htm http://www.mbay.net/~heuer/Spystory/Industry.htm -- though that points out that some people are willing to risk criminal indictments, not just civil suits...). They're not worth the trouble for your cool idea to, say, monitor eBay auctions via Twitter and bid by tweet. Uh-oh, I guess we're not in stealth mode any more, Toto. ;-)