Asking an Investor to sign an NDA - Good Idea or a Bad One

I half agree, half disagree with you...

When I was looking for investment, and if I was to do it again I never sent an NDA for the first one or two meetings. From my point of view I wanted to interview my potential investors as much as they wanted to interview me. If I'm going to be in bed with these people I better like them. IMO, when you are a 1 or 2 man shop, your first investors will essentially be investing in you as much as your idea. So I never gave away my secret sauce before in the first meetings. I just gave them enough to get them interested. As such, I never sent them an NDA.

Once there was interest from an investor and they want to know more, I approached them with the confidentiality question. Those that wanted to see a demo better understand our secret sauce, read the patent docs that we wrote (but didn't have $$ to file), and/or get to see an in-depth demo had to agree to keep in confidential.

There are ways to tell someone how you're going you're different or going to be better without divulging your secret sauce.