Insights · 4 min read
How to protect your app idea before you talk to developers
By Austin Hunter ·
It's natural to worry that sharing your idea means losing it. In practice, ideas are rarely what gets copied. What protects a new product is owning what gets built, a clear contract, and getting it in front of customers quickly. This isn't legal advice; for anything specific, talk to a lawyer.
What actually protects you
- Owning the code: your contract should say the code and designs you pay for belong to you once paid.
- Owning the accounts: domain, hosting, app store and code repository accounts in your name, with the developer invited in.
- Confidentiality in the contract: a reasonable developer will agree not to share your business details.
- Speed: the first working version, real users and their feedback are a bigger head start than any secret.
When an NDA helps
An NDA makes sense when you're sharing genuinely confidential material: customer data, financials, a proprietary process or unreleased partnerships. For an early conversation about the idea itself, many developers will sign a short, mutual NDA, but some won't before a first call, simply because they hear many similar ideas. A better approach is to describe the problem and the users first, and save the sensitive details for after you've chosen who to work with.
Questions to ask any developer
- Who owns the code and designs when the project is paid for?
- Will the accounts be set up in my name?
- Do you reuse code from other projects, and is any of it licensed differently?
- Who else will work on my project, and are they bound by the same terms?
How we work
With us, you own the code and designs you pay for, and accounts are set up in your name wherever we can. Start with a free call about the problem you're solving.