Partly, NDAs are one of the weird things where high-status/power/etc organizations dictate "Hey, low-status/power/etc person. We have an arbitrary hoop here.

Partly, NDAs are one of the weird things where high-status/power/etc organizations dictate "Hey, low-status/power/etc person. We have an arbitrary hoop here. You must jump through it." They're usually contracts of adhesion ("Negotiate the terms of the NDA? They were established by legal 5 years ago and everyone uses the same ones. Get with the program.") and usually filed-and-forgotten. This is why VCs treat entrepreneurs' NDAs like a mark of immaturity and why Fortune 500 companies treat their own as usual indicia of serious business being conducted. Personal stance: Asking me to sign anything catapults me out of "friendly chat" mode and into "enterprise sales" mode. I've only had one startup really fail to understand the distinction. ("Hey Patrick, can you do us a favor and fly out here to talk about X? We'll reimburse you for the ticket." "Sure!" fast forward to two hours before the flight "Oh, BTW, here's an NDA, which I haven't read, but if I had, I'd know that you're already in breach of it because our lawyers didn't think we'd ever talk to anyone outside the US." "I have no desire to sign an NDA with you, most particularly not this NDA, which clearly has not been drafted in anticipation of our circumstances." "We need it to let you into the building." "WTF no you do not. If this is worth doing, it is worth getting Legal to fix this. If you will not waste Legal's time with it, I will simply decline to sign." "I didn't expect you to be difficult on this." "PLEASE CLARIFY WITH YOUR CEO WHICH OF US IS DOING THE OTHER A FAVOR." "Umm maybe we can skip the NDA." "GOOD DECISION.") There exist some entrepreneurs who, having worked at BigCo, believe that constructing straw replicas of BigCo's NDAs will result in having BigCo levels of success. This is not a success-enhancing belief.