

Startups in stealth mode need one piece of advice. - jaf12duke
http://www.humbledmba.com/startups-in-stealth-mode-need-one-piece-of-ad

======
us
I can't keep count of the number of people who I talk to on a daily basis
online or in person, at networking events, etc... that acts as if their idea
is so revolutionary that they must keep it to themselves. This is utter
bullshit.

In all the time I've been an entrepreneur (over a decade), I've built many
successful businesses, sold my companies, etc.. I've never had the problem of
anyone stealing my idea except on one incident. And that guy didn't even
understand the nature of the business fully or where the vision ended up and
gave up after a few months.

Let's be clear about a few things. Your company WILL pivot whether in a small
way or big way. Your overall mission and vision WILL change. Anyone that
thinks they got everything figured out from day one deserves to be called a
retard. Not telling people about your idea has more negative consequences than
sharing it with the world.

I can't keep track of the number of times I've received valuable insights,
advice, help, connections, etc etc... telling people (including strangers)
about what I'm doing. The feedback and help I received in return help me make
valuable pivots as needed. Thinking you should hide your idea means you should
really look closely in the mirror and reevaluate yourself.

While I believe there are some things you should keep secret, the general idea
itself is not one of them.

Side note: Those who use Facebook as an example, please be realistic. Had the
Winklevoss Twin and their friend continue, do you realistically believe
Facebook (by any other name) would be where it is today? Most of the later
innovation that kept Facebook the leader it is today is base on the current
Facebook team, not some concept that the idea originated from.

~~~
Travis
I'd go even further and suggest that the current plaintiffs have proven they
could not have made FB. Their focus on "getting credit" signals that they
wouldn't have been as focused as Zuck on "making something cool".

From the posts on their engineering blog, it sounds like (esp in the early
days) that was clearly the focus -- make something cool, get people to play
with it.

------
krschultz
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
development and engineering, but nobody did that.

Sure, we kept bits of information private like our negotiations with future
partners or plans for the next version, but it really didn't matter that much.

Now I work in the defense industry. What we do on a daily basis is a thousand
times more secret than your "stealth" startup and we can still talk about it
in more general terms than most "stealth" entrepreneurs talk about their
project.

So I call bullshit on the idea that anyone needs to keep a business idea
stealthy, unless you are talking the nitty gritty details of the
implementation's secret sauce, you will gain far more from sharing and making
connections/partnerships than you will from secrecy.

~~~
asmithmd1
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

~~~
megamark16
But by that point they are on to version 2, which is way better and which they
can be somewhat more secretive about, if they so choose.

------
niyazpk
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 differences in the way we implement stuff that can get us an
advantage over the competition.

    
    
        >> Execution is more important than the idea
    

I like this slogan as much as the next guy, but its implications may not be
what you think they are. What if execution is (mostly) a function of money you
have? What if someone with double the money we have can execute in half the
time? What if they can copy your "execution" just because they can iterate
faster since they have enough money in the bank?

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

But losing to competition is also a likely outcome. Isn't it?

    
    
        >> First mover advantage is just silliness
    

We've got a little funding from VCs. Some of our competitors are more than
well funded. Investors are looking for proven entrepreneurs to enter this
emerging market and they will get well funded too. There is a serious first
mover advantage to be made especially when VCs are ready to drain money just
to get the first mover advantage.

    
    
        >> You desperately need real feedback
    

This is orthogonal to going public with your idea.

Also, most people in our team are very good and have proven track records. If
we are not in stealth mode, it will just draw unwanted attention. We don't
want that at this point.

Again, as I said this is just part of the reasons why we are in stealth.
Almost all of our competetors are public with the idea, and of course we don't
know about any stealth competitors :)

This article assumes that all startups go into stealth mode just because of
the fear of someone copying the idea. While this may be the case for many
startups, this is not true at least in our case. [Our biggest reasons for
being in stealth are people related. Sorry cannot expand on that]

~~~
jorangreef
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.

~~~
chopsueyar
The story of the v-8 engine is a bit different.

From "Think and Grow Rich"...

 _Early in the age of the automobile, Ford decided to produce his now famous
V-8 motor. He chose to build an engine with the entire eight cylinders cast in
one block, and instructed his engineers to produce a design for the engine.
The design was put on paper, but the engineers agreed, every one of them, that
it was simply impossible to cast an eight-cylinder gas engine block in one
piece.

Ford said, “Produce it anyway.”

“But,” they replied, “it’s impossible!”

“Go ahead,” Ford commanded, “and stay on the job until you succeed no matter
how much time is required.”_

------
keiferski
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 two years before we shut it down with
almost no revenue achieved. Shocking, I know._

Going stealth is more worth it if your idea isn't in the same universe as ye
old web 2.0 social network/web analysis/etc. tool. Hint: these aren't real
businesses. This is especially true if your idea is simple to implement
technically, but not necessarily simple to implement on a whole.

And the idea that "someone is already doing it" is far from a truth. There are
plenty of HUGE problems that no one is working to solve - most likely because
they aren't problems with technical solutions. The notion that "ideas are
worthless" is really only valid if the idea isn't all that original in the
first place.

~~~
Silhouette
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 being able to handle
running costs for long enough to establish the product.

The biggest risk in our business plan is that we are relying to some extent on
time over money, because we're self-funded. We know of no-one making a similar
product to us, but there are businesses making other kinds of products that
would naturally compete for the same money from the same customers, which
makes us mutual threats. If one of them heard what we were planning, they
could throw way more money than we currently have into moving sideways, and
potentially sabotage our network before we reach critical mass, even if they
didn't then establish an equivalent product themselves.

Given the nature of the markets involved, there is a very real prospect of
that happening. If you were in our position, would you not keep things quiet
until that window had passed?

~~~
jdp23
No, I wouldn't. If your network of people and resources is your key
competitive advantage, then you want to maximize it -- and you can do this a
lot more effectively if you're discussing things publicly. Alternatively if
your network is so easily sabotaged, well, that'll happen in any case after
you launch, so better to work through the issues now.

~~~
Silhouette
> If your network of people and resources is your key competitive advantage,
> then you want to maximize it -- and you can do this a lot more effectively
> if you're discussing things publicly.

Why? We are building our network as fast as we are able, much of it via direct
personal introductions within a relatively exclusive club. I don't see how
letting other people outside that club know what we are doing gains us
anything useful.

Also, if there are lterally only a few people in the world who can provide
what you need and you can get most or all of them to sign up to your idea,
your network is unassailable. If someone who has contacts with the network
from other dealings gets in there first, you're in trouble. So it doesn't
follow that a network that is highly vulnerable now would still be so after
launch.

------
jrussbowman
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 share with their kids.

The worst thing that could happen is someone steal those ideas and execute
them so well that I use it instead of building my own. I don't think
entrepeneurism is about chasing the dollar, it's about building something
worthwhile. That's why I dumped stealth mode a long time ago.

~~~
dominostars
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.

~~~
jrussbowman
That's pretty similar to what I was thinking for fanatastic. It's on hold
right now, the site that's up is probably 2 years old now with no fresh data..
anyway the idea is users would be able to sign up and pick their favorite
teams. They would then have a customized page of all the news, twitter and
facebook streams for their teams.

I'd then allow digg style voting up of stories in order to bubble things up to
the top page of the site. The social aspect comes in when the news stories are
tagged by teams. I'm a big NFL guy and a Redskins fans, well a story about a
Redskins/Cowboys game would show up on both Cowboys and Redskins fans pages.
That could spark entertaining dialogue, if for example you've ever tailgated
at a game and seen how things go there.

The challenges are the news gathering initially, once it matures users may
feed the site news themselves. Also moderation will be a big issue. It will
probably be the factor that causes the site to succeed or fail.

Marketing would have to be a bit more old fashioned. I'd go after people at
the games, they're the ones who spend so much money to see their teams live,
get them hooked and the others will follow. Big signs, free t-shirts/hats,
even a free stand passing out water bottles to people walking towards the
stadium would be great in a lot of cities.

Out of all my ideas I think this is the one I think would be the most fun to
work on, from development to marketing. But I'm a big sports fan.

------
OasisG
Depends on what you mean by "stealth".

If stealth means spending over a year and a boatload of cash developing a
product without ever getting any feedback from any potential customers, then
yeah, that's likely a dead end.

If stealth, however, means meeting quietly with a small (but representative)
group of potential customers while you work the kinks out of your project
before launch, then I think that is a smart strategy. There's nothing wrong
with giving yourself as much of a head start as possible.

As a general rule, I don't talk about my ideas/project with other developers.
I especially don't discuss it with industry people who may be my future
competitors. What I might discuss are things like the overarching problem I'm
attempting to solve. I may even describe some of the very basic mechanisms, or
ask questions that _hint_ at the philosophy behind my approach.

I know HN can be fiercely against the notion that ideas matter at all, but
most successful businesses have their "secret sauce" and it's not smart to
just give it away before you're primed to leverage it to your benefit. I mean,
front page today is an article about Coke's secret recipe; sometimes, the what
really does matter as much as the how.

------
ivankirigin
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!

------
jonnathanson
Very good points all around.

One thing I'd add: IP- and idea-defense isn't _always_ the strategy behind the
stealth tactic. Oftentimes, companies are stealthy just to generate hype. It's
a marketing ploy, plain and simple, usually correlated with an invite-three-
friends beta a few weeks after some tantalizing tidbits about the company are
"revealed" on TechCrunch.

That said, marketing gimmicry like this often makes me wonder what the
company's trying to hide. A half-baked product? Timing delays? A lack of total
confidence in the product's superiority to all alternatives on the market, or
about to hit the market? It certainly raises more concern than interest, at
least in this user.

~~~
Travis
When I think a company is limiting invites to generate buzz, it totally turns
me off.

OTOH, when I can tell it's because they don't want to overload their systems,
or are still clearly building something, I don't mind. It's really just that a
"beta" is now a marketing ploy; my paragraph above is really discussing what
used to be an "alpha".

So to me, beta = marketing, I hate it. Alpha = testing, I love it. I'm not
very good at telling them apart, tho, b/c they both call themselves beta (damn
you gmail!)

------
robryan
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.

------
MrFlibble
Hell, feedback is constantly helping me shape my project, usually (I hope) for
the better.

It is not who builds the best product, it is who markets it the best, who gets
the publicity, who convinces the world that their version of the thing is the
best.

You could build the best product on Earth but if only a handful of people know
about it while a few million know about the second-best product, it isn't hard
to guess which one wins.

------
dave1619
While I agree with most of the article, I also think it's important who you
choose to get advice from. Some people just don't get it. They'll discourage
you without giving real constructive advice. Though I've never met PG in
person, it seems like that's PG gift - the ability to give good feedback and
direction on a product. But not everybody has that gift. My preferred path is
to talk with tons of people to brainstorm thoughts that could lead to real
product. Once you got a good product idea, brainstorm and start building it
with a team. Then, get some good advice. you don't need to go totally public,
but you need some good advice. Keep iterating. There will be a time where you
go public and get feedback from lots more people. Also, I think it depends on
the product. Sometimes you'll incubate a bit longer, sometimes shorter.
Sometimes you'll need public feedback quicker, sometimes later. Early advice
and feedback doesn't always means advice/feedback from everybody you meet.

------
jheitzeb
Impossible to apply general advice like this to every situation. As usual,
reality is "it depends"

Here's a legitimate reason to keep your product or service stealth: when
you're in customer development mode and you have plenty of customers to
represent your possible target markets and therefore plenty of feedback, and
therefore more feedback and exposure would be redundant and likely mean
disappointed customers. Why burn through a lot of potential customers when
you're not ready presenting them with a bad first time impression.

------
Dylanlacey
I totally agree with his point that stealth mode is a pointless waste of time.

But some of his reasons only apply if what you're after is to be "The [Well
Known Digital Property] Guy", ala Mark "The Facebook Guy!" Zuckerberg. For
instance, if all you want is to get an independant company going selling
enough units to building companies to help them manage their inventory of
nails, so you don't have to work for someone else, having a small market is
_fine_.

Secrecy is just as unimportant, but for different reasons.

------
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.

------
Brushfire
Never doing soomething is rarely a sound strategy.

Just like all other aspects of business, there can be solid reasoning behind
staying stealth mode. I'll agree that this USUALLY isnt the case for most
people who go stealth, but to say that it is ALWAYS poor strategy is
simplistic and trivializes the idea of having any business strategy pre-
launch.

------
alain94040
_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 ideas has someone today, obsessing full-time
to make it a reality. _

(source [http://blog.fairsoftware.net/2009/03/11/the-great-startup-
id...](http://blog.fairsoftware.net/2009/03/11/the-great-startup-idea-that-i-
cant-reveal-yet/) )

~~~
humblest_ever
> community for software developers to share revenue

is kindof tempting to do, though

------
slee029
I think when deciding the go stealth or not you should decide what you have
more confidence in: you or your idea. In general be positive and have
confidence in yourself and your team. You know that your first idea won't be
your best idea. If you find there's no competition and you are all alone your
idea probably doesn't work and you will find something better eventually. If
you meet competition, you just validated the market anyways and grew the whole
pie. At that point its about believing that your team can out execute the
competition.

------
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.

------
orky56
The first milestone in the success of a startup is getting the product out the
door and the second being getting revenue. Stealth mode and empty
signup/landing pages are just there to create hype and buzz. If you ask anyone
in the valley what matters, it's execution.

So let's leave all these empty promises and expectations at the door and bring
transparency and openness to the table. That's where startups get people, like
users and investors, listening and contributing in a big, big way.

------
Helianthus16
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.

------
samlittlewood
"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.

------
jaaron
Stealth mode is no fun. Though it may make sense when you have a strategic
partnership that requires silence until release. Of course, that's a very
different kind of startup than most of the "my web 2.0 of the day" ventures
often touting stealth mode.

------
grammaton
"This is a hard lesson if you're not the one that will do the building,
because it means that your contribution is not as valuable as you thought."

For this one quote alone I'd love to meet the author and buy them a beer.

------
markkat
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.

~~~
keiferski
_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.

~~~
markkat
And you're assuming my ideas are amazing. ;)

Point taken. But, I like to give one thing my full attention, so that goes
into the decision too.

------
NY_USA_Hacker
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 the beginning of his post, to him an 'idea' is something worth
protecting as intellectual property.

There actually are ideas worth protecting: Sometimes they are protected by Top
Secret in the US DoD, via the USPTO, and by trade secret law. In research, the
first person with a really good idea can win a valuable prize, e.g., a Nobel.
Flatly, protecting ideas is not all just foolishness.

Then during his post he bends his idea to mean just some general description
from 100,000 feet up that would need no protection and likely could not get
any from, say, the USPTO.

So, by the end of his post, to him an 'idea' is something as vague as, say,

Facebook but for dog lovers, "with nearly all romantic angle", and, to keep
quality up, need an invitation to get in.

Yes, for such an 'idea', to quote J. Doerr at KP, "execution is everything"
and for a good reason: The idea is trivial; anyone could think up such ideas
at a rate of one a minute for most of an hour.

Now we come to the real weakness in the author: He's missing the standard, old
'paradigm' of an entrepreneur with a good 'idea':

Start with a problem that millions, maybe hundreds of millions, of people have
and would very much like to have solved or at least solved much better than at
present.

Since some millions of people have the problem, the 'idea' of solving the
problem is obvious. In that case, just why is the problem not solved?

Simple: No one knows how to solve it.

The classic example is one pill taken once to cure any cancer. And, that's not
the 'idea'. Instead the 'idea' would be how to make the pill, and that would
need protection. In terms of entrepreneurship, the pill is the 'secret sauce',
and the word 'secret' is well chosen.

So, the author is deliberately confusing a trivial idea, one pill to cure
cancer, with a difficult idea, how to make such a pill. Silly author with a
silly post.

Q. But your example is from biomedical. The article and HN are concerned with
software.

A. Oh, poor one: There are plenty of big problems that can be solved by
software and a good idea where the idea is quite difficult to construct but
much better than anything else available or obvious.

So, the big problem of the author is that he does not understand the
possibility of such ideas.

So, he has

1.) Execution is more important than the idea

For a trivial idea, yes. However, if the idea was actually how to make a one
pill cure for any cancer, then the idea was all that was important and,
believe me, "execution" will be only very routine.

2.) Someone else has the exact same idea.

Nonsense. Absolutely 100% total nonsense. I've published papers in the peer-
reviewed research literature where the standard requirement is "new, correct,
and significant". Note the "new". And I got a Ph.D. from a good research
university, and there the main requirement was "an original contribution to
knowledge worthy of publication". Note the "original".

3.) Totally unique ideas generally don't make it

Nonsense. What he means is, say, a new product, of a very different kind in
all respects, e.g., one that requires customers to do something quite new, for
a new need for new customers in a new market generally doesn't make it. Right.

But a one pill cure for cancer, which would be "totally unique", would have to
fight customers off with rings of guards, literally.

4.) The most likely cause of failure is your incompetence, not losing to the
competition

Yup, insult the entrepreneur again.

5.) You desperately need real feedback

Yup, insult the entrepreneur again.

6.) First mover advantage is just silliness

Nonsense: A first mover advantage is just that, an "advantage" and not
"silliness".

Net, the author wants to insult entrepreneurs and doesn't understand what a
really good 'idea' actually is.

~~~
Vivtek
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.

~~~
NY_USA_Hacker
Your "ten years ahead of the market" is not very well defined or meaningful.
If a business idea is poor, then there have to be better objections than that.
If that's the only objection, then it is not very serious.

There can be many reasons a business can fail; being "ten years ahead of the
market" is not a meaningful description of any of them.

Again, for an extreme scenario, if you see how to make a pill so that that one
pill taken once will safely cure any cancer, then you will have a very
successful business. And, with irony, at this point one might guess that the
pill was "50 years ahead" of the state of the art, the rest of medical
science, or something or other, maybe your "market", and all that will matter
not at all. Instead you will literally have to hire guards to keep the
desperate customers from knocking down your door.

"Ahead of the market" is just next to irrelevant.

The challenge in the one pill is just understanding how to make it. That
challenge is similar for many products that would obviously be very valuable
to have. The reason we don't have the products is that no one has the
understanding to know how to make the product. As soon as someone does
understand how to make the product, then they will have a successful business
and 'behind, equal, or ahead of the market' will be irrelevant.

For your first paragraph, I addressed essentially exactly your content in my:

"3.) Totally unique ideas generally don't make it

Nonsense. What he means is, say, a new product, of a very different kind in
all respects, e.g., one that requires customers to do something quite new, for
a new need for new customers in a new market generally doesn't make it. Right.

But a one pill cure for cancer, which would be 'totally unique', would have to
fight customers off with rings of guards, literally."

That a product is "totally unique" is not by itself a handicap. Business
history is awash in very successful products that were "totally unique". Home
lighting? People used candles made from 'tallow', that is, fat. Next came
burning whale oil, then gas lights burning a crude natural gas made from coal,
then kerosene made from newly discovered crude oil, then incandescent electric
lights, then fluorescent electric lights, and now light emitting diodes. From
the first candle to the present, that each advance was "totally unique" was
not a handicap. Instead, each advance was better and, thus, warmly welcomed.

Electric power for a house? Suppose in 1900 you had a really nice house but
without electric power. Now what? It will be a PAIN to run the wires. If the
wires are all behind the walls, then there is a lot of carpentry to do. If the
wires are, say, in tubes or some such but visible, then you have just made a
mess out of possibly some gorgeous construction. Home electric power was
"totally unique", but people eagerly did it.

In 1950, people who traveled across the Atlantic used steamships. By 1970,
there were nearly no such steamships. Why? Boeing made the 707 that was fast,
smooth, and quiet and got people across in a few hours instead of a few days.
The 707 was "totally unique" and accepted right away. So was the Concorde, for
those who could pay for it.

The first telegraphs? Definitely "totally unique", and was a rapidly growing
business right away.

TV? Definitely "totally unique", and soon nearly everyone had to have one, and
moderately wealthy people had several. Early on the programming was suckage;
the electronics was unreliable; and the signal quality was awful; still people
bought them.

A large fraction of all the materials now used in small commercial building
construction was not even on the market 30 years ago. But each time a good,
new "totally unique" product came out, it made good progress. So, want some
long floor joists? Want to look for a 20 foot long 2 x 12? F'get about.
Instead you will likely have to use a fake wooden I-beam where the interior is
plywood and the top and bottom are glued from thin strips of wood. For
exterior sheathing? Used to use diagonal 1 x 6 or some such. Then used
plywood. Now use 'oriented strand particle board' glued up from wood scraps.

Insulation? Now commonly polyurethane foam installed with a special spray gun
when the outer sheathing is on but the inner walls are not. "Totally unique"
product.

A microwave oven? "Totally unique" and caught on right away.

FedEx overnight small package delivery? When it came out, it was "totally
unique" but caught on quickly.

The US does a census each 10 years. By about 1880 or so, it was taking longer
than 10 years to process the census data. So the Census Bureau worked with
Herman Hollerith who, roughly, borrowed from Jacquard's special loom ("totally
unique") and made his "totally unique" punched card equipment; it was used in
the next census and was much faster. That the solution was "totally unique"
didn't bother the 19th century census people at all.

During WWII, the main means of numerical calculations was just mechanical
calculators. Looking for something better, von Neumann and others built some
"totally unique" electronic digital computers. Caught on right away.

Daisy wheel printers? "Totally unique" and caught on right away. I still have
one connected to a serial port at 1200 bps with XON/XOFF and use it for typing
addresses on envelopes.

The dot matrix printer, the laser printer, the ink jet printer? "Totally
unique" and caught on right away.

In the late 1940s, Bell Labs finally was successful on what they had wanted
before WWII -- a solid state electronic amplifier to replace hot, unreliable
vacuum tubes. It was called the 'transistor' and was "totally unique" and was
very welcome right away.

Just what is it you find so difficult to accept about a good, new solution for
a serious problem? Somehow you believe that being new is a serious obstacle?
You believe that can take some average of what is in the market and then
conclude that anything much different has a handicap?

Again, the reasons for failure are much more solid than some comparison with
some chronology of some average of 'the market', which really is essentially
irrelevant.

One of the major opportunities for entrepreneurs is just to find such good
solutions. For business success, it is in some ways easier if the target
customers already know that they want the problem solved.

Still sometimes entrepreneurs also find very successful products to solve
problems people didn't even realize they had or wanted solved: Apparently
examples include iPhone, Twitter, and Facebook.

------
steveklabnik
"No deal, amateur."

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jhuckestein
Yeah, startups in stealth mode suck. Just look at Asana.

/s

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ihavetoblog
Great article, I just friended & messaged you on FB

