The honest answer: your idea is the least valuable thing you own, and almost nobody wants it. What is worth protecting is the research you did, the accounts and code you are paying for, and your ability to walk away with everything if the working relationship ends.

This is not me being dismissive. It is the same fear I see in people worrying about open source, that if the code is out there someone will take it and launch the business. Ideas and code are not the hard part. Finding out what people will actually use, and then doing the work, is.

Is a developer going to steal my app idea?

Very rarely. A freelancer or an agency is working on your project because they want to be paid to build things. Taking your idea means giving up paid work to fund, build, market and support a product in a market they have not researched, for a customer they have never met.

The realistic risk is not theft. It is a build that does not match what you meant, which is what most of these articles should really be about.

There are exceptions, and they are specific: a novel technical method, proprietary data you have access to and others do not, or a contract or relationship that is the actual asset. If one of those is your situation, talk to a lawyer before the conversations, not after.

What an NDA does and does not do

An NDA is reasonable when you are about to share specifics with someone you do not have a relationship with yet, and normal when there is proprietary data involved. Plenty of freelancers will sign one without blinking.

What it will not do is protect an idea that is simply a good idea, because that is not what confidentiality agreements are for. It also adds friction at the exact moment you are trying to work out whether you like someone, and in early conversations where you are mostly describing a problem, there is often nothing confidential being said at all.

I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. If protection matters for your situation, get an hour of a real one's time. It is cheaper than the alternative.

What actually protects you

Own the accounts. The App Store and Play Store accounts, the domain, the hosting, the database, the analytics, the email. In your name, on your card, with your recovery details. Give access, do not transfer ownership.

Own the code, in writing. A line in the contract that says all work is yours on payment, plus the repository in your account with them added as a collaborator. Not their private repo that you get a copy of at the end.

Get a handover list into the contract before you need it: repository, credentials, third-party accounts, store listings, build and signing keys, any design source files.

Keep your research. The interviews, the notes, the strategy document. That is the part of this that took real effort and it is the part that is yours.

What to share, and when

Share the problem freely. Share the research summary. Share the scope of the first version. That is what a developer needs in order to give you a real answer, and withholding it gets you a quote based on nothing.

Hold back the parts that are actually sensitive until there is a relationship and an agreement: the data you have access to, the partnerships, the launch plan, anything a competitor would act on.

The same instinct applies in user research, for a different reason. When I interview people I do not share my idea at all, and if I do, it is at the very end after the interview is over, because saying it earlier changes every answer I get.

Keep reading

What Do I Need to Know Before Hiring a Developer?

Do I Need a Technical Co-Founder to Build an App?

The App Idea Everyone Thinks Is Unique, and Why That's Not the Problem

Learn this with me

From Passion to Product is my free six-week live course, and what you build in it is the thing that is actually worth protecting: the research, the evidence, and the strategy package that came out of them. An idea is easy to repeat and the work behind it is not.

Six weeks, live, no coding needed, and you leave with that package written down under your own name.

Join the waitlist for the next free cohort, or start with the App Strategy Workbook.