I think people are generally way to over paranoid about this. In my field of quant finance this is particularly acute. People refuse to talk about even what markets they’re trading for fear that their competitors will steal their edge.

I’ve seen enough to know, that your secret sauce probably isn’t as secret as you think. Even in the ridiculously tight-lipped world of quant trading, it turns out that everyone’s mostly doing the same few basic ideas with not much more to distinguish than a few peripheral variations here and there.

In general execution ability, not having the best idea, tends to be the main driver of which teams win. If a third party does think your idea is brilliant, then stealing it from you is a pretty moronic way to capitalize on it. You’re creating a motivated competitor from day one who by definition has a lot more domain expertise.

It’s much simpler to just cut the guy a check for equity in the company.