
Stealth mode and other brilliant strategies - spatten
http://blog.asmartbear.com/stealth-mode.html
======
smacktoward
_Steve Jobs didn’t work constantly, Bill Gates had lots of hobbies, Mark
Zuckerberg wasn’t tethered to his laptop, and Tim Ferris really did become a
best-seller by writing and then promoting his book only 4 hours a week._

Yeah, but Steve Jobs was kind of a legendary asshole who broke his
relationships with his friends and loved ones into tiny little pieces, and
Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are both talked about by their contemporaries
as if they were aliens who'd been deposited on Earth by a wayward space
Greyhound.

Is there no way to lead people to success without asking them to check their
humanity at the door?

 _Startups don’t require obsession — that’s an unhealthy rumor perpetrated by
all 300 startup founders ever interviewed on Mixergy. They’re all lying — they
actually lead healthy, balanced lives. They don’t want you to know their
secret, because this keeps potential competition at bay._

Or the startup founders interviewed on Mixergy know that startup culture is
macho and youth-oriented, so they tell tales of epic all-night code sprees and
laser focus on the business in order to burnish their image as True Startup
Heroes among their peers.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't work hard at your business. It just annoys
me to see examples like these held up as the One True Way To Success. Some
startup founders who cut everything out of their lives but The Work will
succeed, but most will fail, because most startup founders _of all types_
fail. Even the Jack Dorsey-style "of course I can work three shifts a day
without any negative consequences" _übermenschen_. And the ones that fail will
not only not have a business, they also won't have a life as well, because
they threw it away in pursuit of the dream.

~~~
vhf
I _think_ you missed something : the whole post is plain sarcasm. Maybe not
obvious to you, but still.

~~~
larrys
Understanding it was sarcasm requires taking the time to do more than just
skim the article. Or knowing Jason in particular. I made the same mistake of
taking it seriously. The assumption that the overwhelming majority of people
seeing this post would assume and know it is sarcasm really detracts from
using HN as a useful part of one's day.

People expect a video link to be labeled as such, why not "sarcasm" as part of
the subject? (Answer, might not get as many points or people who know it's
sarcasm won't be able to laugh at the "fools" who were taken by it?

What if the article had been about best practices in security programming and
the person reading it was new to the game? What if it dealt with hashing of
passwords and gave the wrong info? How would you expect a beginner to
necessarily know that? Where do you draw the line.

A few things:

"Stay in stealth mode until the last minute."

That's his opinion. Nothing screams out if this is his first statement that
this is obviously bogus as a strategy.

"You need your sleep!"

That's actually true.

"Steve Jobs didn’t work constantly, Bill Gates had lots of hobbies, Mark
Zuckerberg wasn’t tethered to his laptop"

From popular culture the above is contradicted.

But how do you expect someone who hasn't been following all of this for many
years to know that and how do you know if Jason read something that just
recently came out (that you didn't) that claims that Bill Gates had lots of
hobbies?

~~~
mulya
The biggest sign is this sentence: "Once you launch, then millions of people
will know about you, including competitors".

------
ChuckMcM
I thought it was hilarious. Especially the bit about not talking to anybody
about your product, they will know soon enough how great it is :-)

Of course the interesting question is whether or not the sarcasm comes
through. Sadly I suspect there are people out there reading the blog and
saying "Yeah, this guy really gets it!" In a way this totally screws that up
because it might actually reinforce the wrong beliefs.

~~~
phleet
Poe's Law: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poes_law>

------
moocow01
This is horrible advice...

A startup will for the most part only be successful if...

1) You work 20 hours a day 7 days a week (give or take - the less sleep the
better)

2) Release a product immediately (who cares if you end up pissing off early
adopters - they'll see it through and be your biggest champions)

3) Ask people if they will pay for your imaginary product (if they tell you it
looks great - its a guarantee they'll go right home and sign up for the
monthly plan)

~~~
mulya
4) All you need is a .io or .ly domain 5) Don't hire a designer, just do
bootstrap (with bootswatch)

~~~
RileyJames
We decided not to pay $10k for dragonf.ly and instead went with
dragonflylist.com.

And we're looking for a designer...

It's like I want us to fail...

------
dabent
Can anyone think of an exception to the stealth mode rule? A company that was
actually a big success, but spent the first few months intentionally under
wraps? I think in general stealth mode isn't a good strategy, but there must
be exceptions to the rule -- I just can't think of any right now.

~~~
adunk
Not sure if this is true (and not sure if this counts as a big success), but
from I've read [1], it appears that Android Inc was in stealth mode when it
was acquired by Google in 2005. Would be great to hear more about the early
history of Android Inc., if someone here has more insights.

[1] "Little was known about this company even within its own industry: in
fact, all that was available in terms of description was it was 'it developed
software for mobile phones.'", from [http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-
communications/mobil...](http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-
communications/mobile-phones/a-complete-history-of-android-470327)

------
fitandfunction
I think you could easily tack on "Read more advice rather than execute and try
to apply advice." Anecdotally, just about every combination of characteristics
has survived / succeeded at least once. This leads to a wide range of maxims
being spouted about startups. But, none of it is "worth much" until applied
and put into action.

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moonsoonmenu
Sometimes we just need to hear the opposite to do the right thing. :-)

------
engtech
Let's try to avoid at least half the unnecessary comments on this article:

<http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3A+sarcasm>

~~~
DanWaterworth
If you hadn't pointed out that the article was being sarcastic, I wouldn't
ever have know. (See what I did there?).

~~~
TheSOB88
Please don't make comments like this. You haven't made any points about the
post itself; you're just trying for a laugh. HN is not meant for that sort of
thing; it's a slippery slope that leads to less intellectual discussion on the
site.

~~~
Smudge
<http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/slippery-slope.html>

------
uvTwitch
I'm really glad that everything posted on the internet is both truthful, and
also good advice. Life without critical thinking is much easier.

------
255martyn
I almost didn't realize this was sarcasm :)

------
msie
Sarcasm was great for the first 100 articles I've read, but that was years
ago.

------
mulya
What kind of sold off the sarcasm for me was this sentence: " Once you launch,
then millions of people will know about you, including competitors," yea,
right, they all wait in line, just one techcrunch article / hacker news front
page and the millions will flow. So being that obviously sarcastic, if someone
reads it and doesn't get the sarcasm and follows the "suggestions", then,
well, I guess, no harm done and they just deserve it.

