[homecoded]

You can always try an NDA. It won't keep anyone from stealing but with a bit of luck you have a bit more meat if you want to take legal actions after someone stole your idea.

In the end, it boils down to "an idea isn't much worth. It's the execution that matters." Just try to be quick.

One thing that we did was, we gave all the people who started our company a small share. With this, everyone involved in the early stages had a good reason to keep quiet about our prototype. Worked for us. May not be the best for every start-up though. Especially if you want to hire people abroad.

[us]

An NDA means almost nothing these days. It's more of a scare tactic than something tangible and certainly not very enforceable (at least in California) and most people wouldn't find it worthwhile to do so. That said, there is less and less value in an NDA among several different parties, depending who you talk to.

The correct answer should be, assuming you already have your company entity formed, is to get an attorney to draft up what is called a Confidentiality and Invention Assignment Agreement. This agreement basically states that any and all work done for the company belongs to the company. The draft is different for employees vs contractors but can be made for each type of person you are hiring. In it, you can detail what exactly is being done to avoid it being stolen (IP and all). It basically has a built in NDA but goes further in length to protect what you need.

I do agree execution is where its all at but don't worry too much about your idea getting stolen. If it's easily ripped and you can't defend it better than the people who steal it from you, you got bigger problems. I find that sharing ideas to the public are often better than hiding them. I can't keep count of the number of people and number of times I've received valuable feedback, resources, etc... for sharing what I'm working on with random people I've met at networking events, etc... only to gain more insight than before. Learn to let go of the fear of sharing what you're doing to some degree. Only some things are worth keeping private. The general premise of the idea however, is not one of those things and you certainly don't need to map everything out to your developer you are hiring up front to get them to build a prototype.

As for abroad, you might as well forget it. International legal battles are fruitless unless you're talking about monumental amount of money involved and high power. Chances are, you're definitely neither of those and you're not going to be suing someone overseas. If you're that worried about your idea being stolen, you got bigger issues than it actually happening.