Fallacy of the Non-disclosure Agreement

It is my understanding that NDA's only protect propietary and unique information in a very narrow scope, It does not protect things that could be found by others in the public realm or that are readily known by others in the space.

So the general idea then would not seem to be protected. Only things like algorithms, some source code, some processes, and very unique customer lists are protected. For the most part almost every NDA I've seen is too broad in scope to be truly enforceable.

In my opinion you walk a fine line by trying to get people to sign the NDA and in the end you turn a lot of people off if you push too hard. It seems to me that the only people really hung up on NDAs are the people who are sharing things they shouldnt be sharing in the first place.

Note: I'm not talking about NDAs in M&A situations or in employee company relations and partnership agreements for established companies...things like these actually do hold weight. Essentially I'm agreeing that the NDA is often focused on too greatly by early stage companies