Nope. Until you get your exit cash-in-bank-in-your-account, those Big Names are your competitors or potential competitors. The breakup fee is to compensate you

Nope. Until you get your exit cash-in-bank-in-your-account, those Big Names are your competitors or potential competitors. The breakup fee is to compensate you for sharing more than just product name, price, and terms with them. Simply enthusing a little bit beyond "business for me is going great!" to a potential competitor who is in a related space can be sufficient market information for them to convince them to enter your space. There is a lot of emphasis on people sharing tech/trade secrets, but keep in mind that simply confirming that users get excited by what you are doing in your space is information that these Corp. Dev. folks would dearly like to have. Never be afraid to say "no" to a one-sided deal. Look at it this way: most Big Name Corp. Dev. won't even get out of bed for any deal less than an accretive $5-10M+ annual cash flow, and something that pencils out to much, much bigger than that 3-5+ years forward. If they are absolutely serious about acquiring, then they will start talking numbers soon after the NDA counter-signatures are exchanged, because no one wants to lose nearly guaranteed accretive income/revenue/users/etc. If they are shopping you and your direct competitors to see if someone is naive enough to talk without compensation or willing to sell out for a relatively low number, then you see this behavior we're talking about in this thread. Whether or not you want to participate depends upon your personal exit parameters. This thread points out that everyone who might be in touch with these Corp. Dev. folks should already have some numbers in mind already, and a way to qualify the serious ones.