Steal This Start-Up! No Longer Content to Write Checks, VCs Are Giving Away Their Best Ideas
If you have a hot idea for an Internet start-up, conventional wisdom goes, do not tell anyone. Draw up a non-disclosure agreement, file a provisional patent, and have your friends sign frieNDAs. Skip the therapist. Do not go out. Stop tweeting. Thieves, copycats and precocious 17-year olds are everywhere, handing you cocktails, eavesdropping on your Sunday brunch, eager to make a Winklevoss of you. You are in super-stealth mode, in start-up parlance, and you should most certainly not blog about how you are “working on something exciting.” That’s just begging to get Zucked.
The current generation of venture capitalists, by contrast, don’t mind getting Zucked; increasingly, they’re asking for it. Read More
