31–40 of 93 posts
It is their execution that is in stealth mode not the idea itself and Details of an idea is part of execution.
Having an idea for a better mousetrap, as a trite example, isn't by itself worth much. It's only valuable if you can build the better mousetrap, build it at a profitable pricepoint, convince the world they need a better mousetrap, etc.
But if you're already in the mousetrap business, the information that a new competitor is planning to launch a better mousetrap might be very valuable information.
Prominent recent example: ipad 2010. It was rumored alright, still I bet it led to significant constipation at Plastic Logic, Microsoft, or Amazon, not to mention all those netbook builders. To think that Plastic Logic thought they could get away with a price point of more than the iPad's 500 USD for a mere reading device... Now they are scrambling, and perhaps they will find a viable strategy in the future, but still, they are all "behind the curve", and that has as much to do with Apple's execution as with the fact that Apple didn't announce its plans for the iPad 18 months before introduction.
If I was a high profile entrepreneur working on a top secret project, I still wouldn't do a private beta. Instead I would block IP's belonging to tech savvy states like California and countries like China. Actually I think it is a good idea to block all of Asia. The majority of clones of my apps are created by people in China.
It may sound a bit boastful but I know I can find lots of good idea. I keep writing them everywhere. I see new apps coming out with idea I had years ago. And since I realized that, I don't care anymore talking about them. Talking about ideas actually make them better since you learn if it was really that great.. or you only thought it was great but it's just bad. Last thing, you start with an idea.. but as you work t…
So sometimes stealth mode is a good idea in order to make yourself get developing, rather than in order to keep the idea itself from the outside world.
The PR value of launching a complete product can be higher than trickling out iterations on an idea. "Today we're announcing we think we know how to build a faster database" vs. "Today we're announcing we've built a database that benchmarks 10X faster than MySQL" -- which one gets more headlines? Of course you could trickle out ideas and then launch, but that risks being regarded as "old news" when you finally do rel…
You bring up a good point, but is that really the reason most stealth startups choose the stealth route? Isn't it more common due to them not wanting competitors to start working on their idea?
When people say that, they are usually referring to an untested bare idea. That is worthless (or has negligible worth) because it has not been tested. If a startup is in stealth, then maybe their "idea" has been tested, or they have proof it's worth something. But a random idea by default is not worth anything because it requires proper execution to test for its worth.
So let's say I told a guy hey I got this cool idea for a website that let's people upload videos and share them. Let's pretend no element of this idea has been tested, that, there has been no indication in society that people like to watch videos. Let's say I did this 10 years ago. To some untrained person, there's no difference between that idea and an idea where people can share photos of their underwear. To a sufficiently untrained person (let's say the average person is sufficiently untrained), both ideas are equally worthless because no element of either idea had been tested at the time. So if two ideas have the same starting point whereas no element of the idea has been tested to be potentially successful, then both are worthless at that point.
However let's say I have another idea, and it revolves around letting people video chat with each other online. So in this hypothetical universe, watching videos has no predetermined usefulness, however it turns out people like to chat with each other. So the element of this idea revolving around chatting with strangers has established value, but the part pairing it with video is new. So it has some possible value now, unfortunately it's common knowledge people like to chat with each other, so because of the ubiquity of that idea element the value drops back down to zero. But let's say it wasn't common knowledge that chatting was popular, and instead through some tests we discovered that. Now the idea has value because we've proved it has value but only we know about it. We would probably proceed to stealth mode to implement such a thing to take advantage of this discovery.
I think there are a few rare cases where keeping your idea close to the vest makes sense, but overall I think it's delusional to think your ideas are worth protecting. Think of it this way: most, if not all ideas have already been thought of by somebody else. Are you damaged by those people having thought of the idea first, or are you damaged by them having executed it first? If they don't execute, then it's just an…
Of course, once you've answered all those questions you now have more than just an "idea." You have a plan of attack, a strategy, market research, design concepts, historical data, etc. In other words, you actually have something worth protecting. So, are you effectively saying that the answer to the opening question is that startups in stealth mode aren't really protecting ideas, but are protecting the plan of attac…
As usual, I'll give Patrick of Bingo Card Creator as my example. He has been completely transparent with us guys about what he's doing and how he's doing it. We have a complete blueprint for how to compete with him. None of us are going to bother, because it's a very small market opportunity and Patrick's business relies upon generating lots of data, lots of inbound links and the Googley momentum that comes with it.
Imagine if his position was slightly different. Imagine if Patrick had discovered that a very specific group of people were prepared to pay him good money for very trivial software. There are plenty of examples if you go looking for them - software that took days or hours to develop but that sells for serious money because it solves a real business problem in a low-tech industry. The value in the business is the domain knowledge needed to identify the market need.
If you're selling a web app to nerds, then stealth mode makes no sense. You need to engage with your market as quickly as possible, and chances are that someone is developing the same product anyway.
If you've spent good time and money on researching potential market opportunities, you'd be a total idiot to give away the results of that effort just because it's the done thing. I love getting to see the innards of so many businesses, but it makes me cringe at the stuff people will make public.
I don't think many of us realise that the rest of the business world considers our culture of openness to be absolutely fucking crazy. Just look at Apple - not even Jony Ive is allowed to speak freely. We see that as weird and Orwellian, but the rest of the business world calls it "not blabbing all our trade secrets to the press".