I don't really disagree with you. If you have a revolutionary idea in a city like Atlanta, and you are determined to build it without customer contact - you sh

I don't really disagree with you. If you have a revolutionary idea in a city like Atlanta, and you are determined to build it without customer contact - you should probably move to Silicon Valley. As one VC I interviewed in my research, Mike Maples put it, "Silicon Valley is the place to create 'Thuderlizards,' but you can build a great company anywhere." Most startups, however, have bad ideas, so keeping them secret doesn't help anyone. PG has talked about this repeatedly. Usually your 'Big Idea' turns out to either be total shite, is different enough from what customers want that they won't buy it in its initial form, or the market for your product is not the one you expected. So as a non-attorney, I can't possibly disagree with you. As an entrepreneur, I know in my GUTS that the key to succeeding here is to get your 'Big Idea' from a customer asking for it. That doesn't mean you come into the conversation with a blank page - you still start with your initial product vision. You just iterate until someone is dying to pay you for it. Do it any other way here, and you'll miss most opportunities when the market moves on or someone else with funding does it before you. The same applies for building a demo without customer contact to get early stage funding - your time is better spent. This is not a place to pursue the kind of idea that you are talking about, unless you can break it down into a minimum viable product people will pay for very quickly. Fortunately many opportunities are not the kind you describe.