Hi! This is the Daily Overpass! My name is Eric and I make apps!
Now today, let's talk a little bit about Non-Disclosure Sgreements - NDAs.
Okay, so today, I'm driving down to Winchester, which is about an hour away
from the office to visit with a possible new client. I've mentioned this
before that if you can meet with clients in person, you probably should. It's so much
better than talking to them over the phone. Just because you can
sketch out ideas, you get that synergy you're working together, you could draw a
tiger, I'm always scribbling things out on a piece of paper. But as I mentioned
before, the biggest benefit of going to visit clients in person is that
afterwards... Burger King!
Okay. so the meeting went actually pretty well. They were excited about it. I'm
excited about it It's gonna be a really cool project. I'm kind of eager to get
back and start drawing up the specification and the quote and all that
kind of stuff, you know, really excited! I'm actually - I was gonna do this a video
like within Winchester, but I couldn't find a good place to stop the car cuz
all these one-way roads. So, I'm just parked over the side of the road.
Hopefully, the traffic's not too loud for you. So, one of the reasons I
can't talk about this project that I was working on it's because I think
I'm under an NDA. I'm pretty sure I'm under NDA for this one. In fact, for most
projects, I'm under an NDA. And if I'm not under an NDA, I just assumed that I am.
Because, you know, some people don't think about it and you kind of have this
trust between your client and yourself. So, you know, I get asked to sign so
many NDAs that I'm kind of like I don't remember, I don't even know what I'm
allowed to talk about sometimes. I just - I don't say anything about any-
anyone. You may notice I never talk about my clients by name. I never talk about
any of the projects I'm working on for clients. If you go to our website, there's
no clients listed there because - well, one of the reasons is, I don't want any
competitors go in there and just say, you know, just start picking off clients
saying, "Hey, I understand you have an app. Are you happy with
the work Overpass is doing?", so, that kind of stuff. But there's also the whole
non-disclosure agreement. I kind of feel like sometimes, I feel
like I signed so many NDA's, I feel like in the movie Goodfellas, where they
weren't able to talk about anything. They'd always say, the thing with the guy -
the guy on the - with you know, and then we would just say, "So, that's the way that I talk
now.", said, "the project, but the such and such.." So anyway, I once read a
blog post I think it was by - it was another app company and I was reading
their blog. One of the developers there said that they won't sign an NDA
unless they charge a fee. they would charge like a hundred pounds to to do an
NDA, which I thought was kind of strange. Because I just do NDA's for free. But I
kind of - I just I admired the cojones on the guy just say, "Hey, you know what, if
somebody asked us to do an NDA, we charged them up a hundred pound fee
before we'll even do it. Because we have all of them, you know, cuz illegal,
it's just more work." And that's actually something that I've been
thinking about doing, or at least when somebody comes to me with their own NDA.
I mean, I have my own non-disclosure agreement that I'll send to them which
is just boilerplate. I don't have to read through
everything. One of the early warning signs that I was fine with working with
a client, if they start to nitpick about the NDA. Because to be honest with you, I
know I don't really mind signing it. It's just one of these - one of these things. I
mean, part of me is a little bit afraid that, you know, that we might have us -
I've had one project that keeps coming up and everybody's like nobody's
doing this. And I've heard the same idea from like three different people.
I turned the second and third down because I had already turned
on the first one and I don't want any confusion as of you know, "He stole my idea,"
or you know, "He passes idea onto somebody else." because as you
know, my whole opinion is ideas on their own are worthless. We all have
several ideas. If I talk about an app idea like I did one where I talked about
Uber for babysitters, that was something that I know that I haven't-
nobody's brought that to me. But I'm kind of curious as to how those of you who
work with clients. What is your opinion towards NDA? So, you just sign them anyway?
Because it's, you know, I mean, the whole thing when you're trying to sell the
services to client in my opinion, is that you're trying to put them at ease.
You're trying to make them feel like, you know, that you're not gonna take
anything from them. Because to be honest,t you, guys, know what
it's like. When you're so busy, the last thing - you're not just waiting
for ideas to land on so you can pounce on them. You're busy
working on other stuff and when you take on client work, you'll do that work for
them for a cost, right? So, you know, for me I have no interest in stealing
anyone's ideas. I'm sure you, guys, aren't either. But a lot of people are really
really, really suspicious of that kind of stuff. So, what do you, guys, do towards
NDAs? My policy is put it in front of me, I'll sign it. I'll glance
over it. It's easier when I'm the one who brings the NDA into the relationshi If
they ask for one. But for those of you who do work with clients, do you have a -
do you have a policy on that or do you just sign everything
like I do? Anyway, that's it for today! I'll talk to you, guys, tomorrow.