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Startups in stealth mode need one piece of advice.

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Re: Startups in stealth mode need one piece of advice.

#31

Post by Silhouette »

something wrote: post #29
Silhouette wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking similar things all the way through the article. We have a start-up in the works. The technical side is fairly easy, and many people could do it. Our value is built on the non-technical stuff, which relies on a network of people and resources that have taken years to develop. We've also done our homework, discreetly, so we really aren't worried about having to pivot dramatically on day one or about not…

That question is impossible to answer. We don't know what you are trying to do. We can't know what your position actually is.

I've told you that:

1. the biggest risk we have identified in our business plan is being squished by a sideways-moving competitor that has decided to invade the part of the market we are attempting to take;

2. they are only going to be able to do this for a certain period of time before we hit critical mass and can defend ourselves;

3. by implication, we do not believe that they will do this without knowledge of both our vision and the fact that we are working on it right now; and

4. we believe there is a real danger that they would take this action to defend themselves if they could.

Perhaps I wasn't clear, but from our point of view, that is all the justification we need to keep things under wraps for now.

Re: Startups in stealth mode need one piece of advice.

#32

Post by keiferski »

Silhouette wrote: post #28
keiferski wrote: post #21

While execution > idea most of the time, I think it's become a little too accepted, for its own good. Ideas are worthless when they're another spin on a web 2.0 site, or rather a spin on something that already exists. From the link: Oh, and what was the company? It was yet another Web 2.0 flavor of a question-and-answer, poll-your-friends site with a distant revenue model and no user acquisition strategy. Ran if for…

I was thinking similar things all the way through the article. We have a start-up in the works. The technical side is fairly easy, and many people could do it. Our value is built on the non-technical stuff, which relies on a network of people and resources that have taken years to develop. We've also done our homework, discreetly, so we really aren't worried about having to pivot dramatically on day one or about not…

I'm in a very similar situation: building a startup that's not technically complicated and has no real competitors (only substitutes).

I'm trying to stay semi-stealth; avoiding talking about it to startup/techies/online but still asking friends, family, and potential customers.

Re: Startups in stealth mode need one piece of advice.

#33

Post by Vivtek »

NY_USA_Hacker wrote: post #17

Gee, it must be fun to call entrepreneurs silly. My view is that the article is 99 44/100%, fresh, soft, still steaming, and actually destructive, BS. The whole post is based on what is apparently deliberately both an obscure and even ambiguous use of the word 'idea'. So, with such deliberate obscurity and ambiguity, all he has is a way to insult entrepreneurs so that all he has is that steaming pile. Details: So, at…

Totally unique ideas don't make it. You can't build a business on being ten years ahead of the market - you'll have a 0.0001% response rate. To be a successful entrepreneur, you have to be fifteen minutes ahead of the market - and that means that, yes, there are other people with ideas very, very close to yours who are working on it at the same time.

(Edit as afterthought: sometimes you can be way ahead of people and still make it big, and these quantum leaps make history. It's just that it's poor strategy to assume you're going to win that lottery - and the people who aren't actually ready to start a startup tend to underestimate the length of the odds. Hell, we all do, it's what makes H. sapiens so much fun to watch.)

The larger point here is that in starting a startup, you're not really working on an idea so much you're working on assembling a team of people to implement the idea, learning how to build a business, how to manage customers, marketing and sales, technical support - all that stuff. The idea is just the irritant that gets the pearl going.

Re: Startups in stealth mode need one piece of advice.

#34

Post by Vivtek »

keiferski wrote: post #23
markkat wrote: post #22

I now share my ideas openly. If I am not doing it at the moment, someone else is. If I am doing it, well, I want people to know about it.

If I am not doing it at the moment, someone else is. You're assuming that # of people with an amazing idea = # of people with the tech skills/knowledge to make it happen. Don't forget that the vast majority of businesspeople (very, very successful business people) are significantly less technically-inclined than a HN-reader.

And the vast majority of technical people (very, very clever technical people) are useless in terms of execution.

Re: Startups in stealth mode need one piece of advice.

#35

Post by arrel »

niyazpk wrote: post #30

I work for a 'stealth' startup. The idea is just a very small part of the reason why we are in stealth. There are some other serious reasons why we don't want to go public right now. Unfortunately I can only talk about the stuff related to the idea itself. Our idea is boring and not revolutionary. We already have some competitors in the vertical and while there is no point in trying to hide the actual idea, there are…

I assume you have some new take on what you're doing - otherwise you wouldn't be doing it. The main takeaway of the post is that you almost always need feedback to execute new approaches properly.

It sounds like you're assuming that your execution will be flawless, even something to be copied by competitors, but how can you know without testing it on the customer? If you're in a market like pharmaceuticals, where all user testing can be done in a lab, execution in a bubble makes sense, but if your startup is a web product it sounds like hubris.

For reference, Steve Blank has a great set of posts about needs of different types of startups: http://bit.ly/if6Okn

Re: Startups in stealth mode need one piece of advice.

#36

Post by humblest_ever »

alain94040 wrote: post #9

Here are four startup ideas: a better search algorithm for the semantic web a voice conferencing system that allows multiple concurrent discussions a community for software developers to share revenue a home device that offers multi-room MP3 streaming Now, be honest. How many of these ideas did you think were so insanely great that you want to drop your own plans and jump on it? None. Believe it or not, each of these…

> community for software developers to share revenue

is kindof tempting to do, though

Re: Startups in stealth mode need one piece of advice.

#37

Post by bpeters »

I believe there is a difference between being in "stealth" mode and having people sign NDAs.

I have a startup I call in stealth mode not because we do not get feedback from users or have advisors and investors sign NDAs, but because we want to grow on our own terms. We want to get direct feedback from our target market with out opening the flood gates where noise enters into the equation.

I completely agree with your statement about NDAs are a load of shit, but stealth as something else is not always a bad thing.

Re: Startups in stealth mode need one piece of advice.

#38

Post by keeptrying »

keeptrying wrote: post #19
NY_USA_Hacker wrote: post #17

Gee, it must be fun to call entrepreneurs silly. My view is that the article is 99 44/100%, fresh, soft, still steaming, and actually destructive, BS. The whole post is based on what is apparently deliberately both an obscure and even ambiguous use of the word 'idea'. So, with such deliberate obscurity and ambiguity, all he has is a way to insult entrepreneurs so that all he has is that steaming pile. Details: So, at…

Umm actually the guys who coined the term "first mover advantage" actually wrote a paper explaining why they were wrong. They published it in the harvard business review so u should be able to find it via google.

Google for "Rethinking the First-Mover Advantage"

Re: Startups in stealth mode need one piece of advice.

#39

Post by petersalka »

Great post.

I agree that execution is everything and an idea without a proper execution is worthless. So any smart ass MBA's with "game-changing ideas" but absolutely no idea about what it takes to actually build something from nothing need to take a long hard look at themselves and stop being bullshitters.

However, the title of the post is not 100% accurate as the term "stealth mode" does not specifically relate to not launching, protecting a non-existant "IP" or being unwilling to share your ideas.

Launching a product in "stealth mode" (as in avoiding significant public exposure and media coverage during the first stages of the product's life) can in some cases be a good marketing strategy and I can see why some entrepreneurs would choose to launch to a smaller group of customers and test their ideas and implementations before contacting Techcrunch, going onto Mixergy or wasting time meeting with VC's who want a piece of the action before anyone knows what the action is.

Re: Startups in stealth mode need one piece of advice.

#40

Post by drostan »

niyazpk wrote: post #30

I work for a 'stealth' startup. The idea is just a very small part of the reason why we are in stealth. There are some other serious reasons why we don't want to go public right now. Unfortunately I can only talk about the stuff related to the idea itself. Our idea is boring and not revolutionary. We already have some competitors in the vertical and while there is no point in trying to hide the actual idea, there are…

If 2x the money wins the race, then get 2x the money. A good idea has a case that can be made for it and, at least, an expectation of the value you will create. That is what you (and others) invest against. There shouldn't be such thing as "they have more money" for an idea that you expect to generate well more than that investment. There is only "they were willing or able to get more money". This isn't trivial - believing in the projections and selling your passion and networking to find investors are all really hard.

Losing to the competition is a possible outcome, but not necessarily the "likely outcome". Anyway, the way to manage that is still to execute better. Competition helps teams that need competition to rise to the occasion, but rising to the occasion is what is needed. Without it, losing is the likely outcome whether there was competition or not.

Seems like the argument for 1st mover advantage is: first mover = funding = success rather than first mover = success. sure, I do believe that funding can lead to success -- any resource advantage leads to success. Yet, I do think first mover advantage has some more important benefits. Things like taking most of the market out of the gate (why would we need a second brown fizzy sugar water?) or defining the landscape (oh, a good carfax score is what tells you a used car is good). I think certain circumstances make first movers better and others make 2nd, 3rd or later-movers better, but an absolute is pretty hard to prove.

I would say you need customer feedback or maybe expert feedback. Some sort of feedback always helps. But, so does vision. However you get to a good product is how you need to get to a good product. You just need to know and do that. The reason feedback - specifically from actual customers - is usually chosen is because it is more on the science side than the art side, but I surely can't knock those people and teams that can deliver product excellence due to vision, luck or art.

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