In this interview with Jeremy Glaser, who is a partner at the law firm Mintz Levin and also serves as Co-Chair of the firm’s Venture Capital & Emerging Companies Practice, we discuss the importance of getting a competent attorney to review a large company’s form NDA before signing. This risks of not doing this can be extraordinarily high.
As Jeremy says:
“I know it’s hard because no one wants to spend the dollars on legal fees, but I tell every startup that you should never sign a form NDA put in front of you by a large corporation. There are ‘gotchas’ in there. Then it could hurt you later. It could mean that you’ve lost protection of some important information. It could mean that you’ve allowed a competitor to get into your space who wouldn’t have been there otherwise by sharing that information. It’s not an expensive review to have an attorney look over the NDA and at least point out to you the issues where you have exposure. You can go back to the other company and at least try. Even if they won’t make changes, at least then you’re aware of where the risks are.”
Also check-out A Smarter Approach to Non-Disclosure Agreements in Entrepreneur Magazine.
For more strategic insights on startups, visit questfusion.com.
This is Patrick Henry, CEO of QuestFusion, with The Real Deal…What Matters.