Are you thinking of  starting up a business?  Need help with a business plan, financing, technology, creating financial projections, or just need someone to review your business idea for feasibility?  We can help.

We provide these services to entrepreneurs on a pro bono or free basis.

We review many business plans and ideas.  A common problem with many new entrepreneurs is they won't discuss their idea with us or investors as they are too afraid of it being stolen or want everyone to sign an NDA just to talk about it.

We will not sign one to simply do you the favor of reviewing your plan and few investors will sign one.  Very few business ideas are ever "stolen" and even if it was, simply hearing your idea better not make it repeatable. Personally, I've never seen a case where an entrepreneur told an investor about an idea, and the investor ripped it off. Investors are professionals (for the most part) and they invest money, not build and start up companies.

Angels and Venture Capitalists are looking for people who can implement ideas, not simply come up with them. Ideas are a dime a dozen and the odds they thought of something so revolutionary it will change the world and no else has ever thought of it are pretty low. Implementation of the idea and building a great company is the hard part ,and where the money is.

Here is a list of when and when not to use an NDA:

• Never ask an investor to sign one to have a first meeting or in the first meeting. If you're asking for an NDA to merely discuss your idea, keep your day job because you're clueless.
• You should be pretty open to sending out your executive summary and PowerPoint presentation to investors. The main purpose should be to entice investors to go to the next step. They should not reveal the inner workings or how you plan to create value with your business.
• You can and should ask for an NDA if an investor is interested in your deal and wants to learn more at a much more detailed level. Obviously, this becomes more important when discussing life sciences and material sciences companies.
• You should feel pretty safe once patents are filed to discuss your magic sauce under an NDA--not that you'll have the time or resources to sue for patent infringement. We will also add, for many other businesses outside of science and technology fields it is our opinion patents are a waste of time and money.
• The bottom line is still that the best protection of an idea is great implementation of the idea.