I signed plenty of NDA's only to hear a really crappy idea. And even if the idea was nice, it would be nearly impossible to execute. Like having some original-ish idea like square is nice, but takes millions to execute. If you don't have the means to get to those millions, you can have the idea but it doesn't really matter. Someone who does have that access will win.
You are making a common but fundamental and potentially very costly mistake: You are looking for a needle in a haystack. Then you are drawing conclusions about the needle from the hay you do see and not the needle you don't.
It may be that for the needle, you will have to sign an NDA and, then, be very glad you did.
We're looking for needles, guys.
We can grab some hay and just hope we find a needle there.
Or we can try some solid means to find and/or create needles. Examples? Sure, look at the last 70 years of the US DoD. E.g., they bet on just the 'idea', just on paper, for, for just a short list, the proximity fuse, the atom bomb, the turbojet engine (GE once told me that the first prototype for any jet engine costs > $100 million), the engines for the SR-71 (both a turbojet and a ram jet), the SR-71, the Navy version of the GPS, the F-117, and much more. They start with just paper, and the failure rate from there on is surprisingly small. The US DoD can evaluate far out projects just on paper with high reliability. I almost forgot, the Internet.
It was DoD, the CIA, and NASA that mostly got Silicon Valley going. Now just what is it about how to evaluate projects that got Silicon Valley going that Silicon Valley now doesn't understand?
May I have the envelope, please? Here it is: DoD does evaluations with people with both technical and military competence, and Silicon Valley uses marketing, 'biz dev', Wall Street financial analysis, management consultant people. Hmm ....
