Startups in stealth mode need one piece of advice. • Hacker News Board

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

#41

Post by ivankirigin » Wed, Feb 16, 2011, 7:51 AM UTC

I talk about my startup ideas all the time... in person. I haven't posted them online. The reason is that the former benefits me, and the latter doesn't. The feedback I might get from, say, a hacker news comment just isn't as good as what I hear from people I talk to.

So there really is a pretty big difference in what is meant by "stealth mode". Putting up a landing page to gather emails to hear more when you're ready, and only talking in depth about the product in person to help make it better, isn't so much as stealth mode as heads-down-mode.

Not telling your friends because of fear of your idea being stolen is really quite dumb. Not just because they wont steal your idea, but more importantly they might make your product better!

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

#42

Post by Helianthus16 » Wed, Feb 16, 2011, 8:04 AM UTC

While everything posted in the first tier of comments is true, so-called stealth mode is not a inherently bad idea.

It just means you keep some things to yourself for a while.

niyazpk demonstrates an actual use of the word stealth: you've got an advantage that would be immediately obvious to someone doing the same crap as you. you don't have to do anything special to draw attention to how easy it is to do crap.

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

#43

Post by _urga » Wed, Feb 16, 2011, 8:30 AM UTC

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…

Re: "What if someone with double the money we have can execute in half the time?"

See Henry Ford working, by himself, after work, late into the night, for years and years, on his prototype car, while others with more money were doing the same thing. His quote on the subject, "no amount of finance will cure mismanagement". His friends at General Electric said he was wasting his time on the gas combustion engine because the world was going electric.

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

#44

Post by dominostars » Wed, Feb 16, 2011, 9:02 AM UTC

jrussbowman wrote: post #6

The ideas I have for products right now are things I would use. Unscatter.com will be a unified search and social client portal. Fanatastic.com will be a sports community site encouraging users to share and discuss latest sports news. I have an idea for a service, rather than product review site I am kicking around with a friend. Lastly I want to make a site people can make books filled with their personal wisdom to…

In response to fanatastic: I stream a lot of soccer games, and whenever something big happens, my first instinct is to see what people are saying about it.

Google+twitter give live updates, but it's not very conversational.

Reddit is conversational, but the format isn't quite right: it's hard to follow where new conversations are happening. This is currently my go-to.

Justin.tv has chat during a stream (almost ideal!), but only until it gets shut down for copyright infringement.

I don't know exactly what I want, but there's certainly some opportunity here.

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

#45

Post by ksks » Wed, Feb 16, 2011, 9:16 AM UTC

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…

if those businesses see values in "moving sideways", and in the process sabotaging your network, wouldn't they have taken your clients anyway, even without the benefit of breaking your company?

if they don't see the value in it, even if they know what you are doing, isn't it unlikely that they would waste money just to crush a would-be competitor?

Unless you are saying what your company is doing is so creative and valuable but yet no one has thought of it before. But IMO a main point of the article is that this is highly unlikely, and even if it is the case, your competitors aren't seeing the value in it, just like how google was in the plain sight of yahoo for so many years. i m not saying you should actively let them know what you are doing, but it probably wouldn't be a big deal even if they get wind of it.

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

#46

Post by ryanjmo » Wed, Feb 16, 2011, 10:44 AM UTC

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…

So, you have some obscure reason for being in stealth mode, but can't tell us more than that, other than that the original poster is completely wrong in your case. You show this by giving completely generic arguments to one line sentences from his post.

In my opinion you are not really contributing to the discussion. Just stop.

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

#47

Post by asmithmd1 » Wed, Feb 16, 2011, 11:34 AM UTC

krschultz wrote: post #27

For three years I worked at Bug Labs (open source hardware company). We not only told everyone what we did, we posted the source code and the blueprints online. Nobody ever stole our ideas. Think about that, people won't even steal your ideas if you give them the plans . It would make a lot of sense for someone else to just come along and build our hardware and sell our software without paying for 15 people doing dev…

If the BugLabs product started selling then competitors would come out of the woodwork.

If Apple open soured the iTouch do you think Chinese companies would

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

#48

Post by robryan » Wed, Feb 16, 2011, 12:15 PM UTC

I'm a fan of semi stealth, your happy to talk about the idea, you want feedback from engaged users who will be your primary market, what you don't want is to plaster your startup all over the internet without something awesome to show people.

You want to be able to capitalize on limited attention when you can grab the spotlight, not when you have a landing page or a buggy product with no advantage over competitors.

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

#49

Post by samlittlewood » Wed, Feb 16, 2011, 1:06 PM UTC

"The most likely cause of failure is your incompetence, not losing to the competition"

It is amazing how far you can get by not screwing things up too badly.

Whilst you keep pedalling and don't do any truly daft - competitors you once feared find novel and surprising ways of eliminating themselves.

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

#50

Post by ErrantX » Wed, Feb 16, 2011, 1:28 PM UTC

_urga wrote: post #43

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…

Re: "What if someone with double the money we have can execute in half the time?" See Henry Ford working, by himself, after work, late into the night, for years and years, on his prototype car, while others with more money were doing the same thing. His quote on the subject, "no amount of finance will cure mismanagement". His friends at General Electric said he was wasting his time on the gas combustion engine becaus…

Similar example; the Wright brothers refused funding from the aviation financiers at the time, funded their own work and solved the problem of powered flight in a much shorter time than others had been fruitlessly working on it.