When I was looking for investment, and if I was to do it again I never sent an NDA for the first one or two meetings. From my point of view I wanted to interview my potential investors as much as they wanted to interview me. If I'm going to be in bed with these people I better like them. IMO, when you are a 1 or 2 man shop, your first investors will essentially be investing in you as much as your idea. So I never gave away my secret sauce before in the first meetings. I just gave them enough to get them interested. As such, I never sent them an NDA.
Once there was interest from an investor and they want to know more, I approached them with the confidentiality question. Those that wanted to see a demo better understand our secret sauce, read the patent docs that we wrote (but didn't have $$ to file), and/or get to see an in-depth demo had to agree to keep in confidential.
There are ways to tell someone how you're going you're different or going to be better without divulging your secret sauce.
When I was looking for investment, and if I was to do it again I never sent an NDA for the first one or two meetings. From my point of view I wanted to interview my potential investors as much as they wanted to interview me. If I'm going to be in bed with these people I better like them. IMO, when you are a 1 or 2 man shop, your first investors will essentially be investing in you as much as your idea. So I never gave away my secret sauce before in the first meetings. I just gave them enough to get them interested. As such, I never sent them an NDA.
Once there was interest from an investor and they want to know more, I approached them with the confidentiality question. Those that wanted to see a demo better understand our secret sauce, read the patent docs that we wrote (but didn't have $$ to file), and/or get to see an in-depth demo had to agree to keep in confidential.
There are ways to tell someone how you're going you're different or going to be better without divulging your secret sauce.