Rick Segal has written an obvious post around a very easy to grok concept: VC's shouldn't steal entrepreneurs ideas. Seems intuitive, right? Let's see… VC steals entrepreneurs idea, word gets out, deal flow dries up. No more investments, no more investment fund….
Sometimes greed trumps common-sense. Without naming names, there's at least one firm that I would never do business with, having seen exactly that behaviour. My advice? Do your homework. Don't show all your cards on the first meeting. Wait until the signs of a real engagement are there, before revealing too much information.
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry make Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
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Wow. For real? Very difficult to prove. Most (i.e. all) VC's don't sign NDA's for this very reason. If they have an "investment path" and are looking at a particular area of future value (say, security and Open-ID), they will speak to a lot of companies in that space before plumping for one or even two in the same space. The guys in Bessemer do a great job of explaining this approach on their own blogsite. Even on the edge of Europe, we will eventually get to hear about this particular example, so if a VC did this for real, it will hurt.
Most VC's don't do this … and to be clear: FUNDING a competitive startup is fair game… saying "hey, that's a good idea, let's CREATE a startup to do *just that*" isn't cool… and yes, I can think of at least one VC that's done precisely this.