EasyNDA aims to Lubricate Business

We live in a sharing society which seems to be divided by generational lines which dictate your level of privacy. 30 and under? You likely share virtually everything about yourself online. Older than that and you probably guard your privacy more. Interestingly there are also companies that look at their internal confidentiality the same way. Some start-ups will not share anything about their plans for years – preferring to stay in stealth mode. Others start tweeting their plans from the moment they get the idea – through funding and potential IPO.

The one thing both sides have in common however is the need to confidentially share trade secrets with some people. In other words, when you are seeking support for your idea to launch “Tinder for pets” you want to ensure your potential partners and hires keep the secret until the time is right.

This gets us to the non-disclosure agreement or NDA… At one point or another, every company runs into situations where they need to sign these or produce them. Currently this involves going to your legal team or in many cases hiring an outside attorney if you are too small to have a team. You could always use the last one you came across and modify it accordingly but who knows if that is the best way to go about easy-nda-logo.pngensuring your trade secrets aren’t shared improperly.

Then there is the challenge of managing it all. Has it expired? What are you obligated to keep secret? For how much longer? Who in the company is allowed to sign it? Where do you store it once its signed?

In a recent conversation with Crick Waters, co-founder of EasyNDA, he explained to me the idea to launch this company came about because he himself needed to deal with the challenge of making and sending out NDAs. Now he says, the company’s SaaS-based platform gives small companies the ability to quickly produce NDAs and lets large companies deal with the complexity of knowing what NDAs have been distributed and signed – and of course to whom.

easynda-howto.png

In addition, there is mobile-support allowing two people at a lunch to quickly agree to and sign an NDA with their fingers on a smartphone.

For larger companies not using such an automated system, the process can be even more complicated. In one scenario, a person fills out a form which is turned into an NDA that is given to a salesperson who gets it signed and then returns it for scanning and filing. Let’s spell that out in steps:

  1. Identify the need
  2. Fill out the form
  3. Deliver the form
  4. Legal develops the NDA
  5. Sales gets it and potentially prints it out
  6. Sales delivers it to a customer who signs it
  7. Sales brings it back for processing/fax/email/scan etc.
  8. Legal files it

The main benefit of automation is not just NDA-management but the lubrication of business… Currently, if you want an NDA signed before you share an idea, you have to take potentially a few days to deal with the production and signing of the document. With a “standard purpose” NDA from EasyNDA, both parties will feel generally confident that the wording won’t take away their first-born child and will hopefully sign without much thought. This should allow more focus on business and less on legalese. Moreover, since information is stored in the cloud, the rest of the people in each organization will be aware of the new development.

easy-nda-ecosystem.gifWhile there are expensive systems on the market to handle things like this for mega-corporations, the target audience here is the small to medium business.

For now the service is available for free but going forward you will still be able to use the system at no cost to receive, execute and store NDAs. Otherwise, to produce and send EasyNDAs, you can purchase an individual subscription for $4/month, $19/month for a team of six or $79/month for a team of 25.

The latter plan allows you to also use your own NDA if you so choose.

Users

Price

More Details

Single-use receive & sign

Free

Store and upload signed NDAs

Single-user send

$4/month

Unlimited sending

6 team members

$19/month

Add inside or outside counsel as administrator

25 team members

$79/month

EasyNDA converts your PDF-based NDA to an e-NDA

If you’re wondering why his name sounds familiar, Crick was Co-founder and EVP Strategy and Business Development at Ribbit, the trailblazing programmable telephony network purchased by BT. The service offered “features” used to create customized “communications enabled” business processes and consumer business services. In some ways this is similar to GENBAND’s Kandy today.

It will be interesting to see if Crick can turn this new company into the industry-standard for NDAs. If he does, I Agree to Disclose it to you at some point in the future. smiley-laughing

    Leave Your Comment


     

    Loading
    Share via
    Copy link
    Powered by Social Snap