In the early stages of a startup, founders often socialize their business plan and some details of their ideas to receive feedback and further refine them. A startup will also share information to attract or recruit other team members, investors, advisors or early adopters of the solution. While it is necessary to have these discussions in order to achieve business objectives, disclosure of highly confidential plans and ideas is often awkward and uncomfortable. Will the other party keep your confidential information confidential, or will they go ahead and use the idea for themselves? Also, an unwary entrepreneur may not realize that publicly discussing a solution may adversely impact available IP rights. To mitigate this risk, every startup needs to have a plan on how to approach such discussions and what steps to take prior to disclosing confidential or IP related information.