

Stealth Startups, Get Over Yourselves: Nobody Cares About Your Secrets - edw519
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/19/stealth-startupsget-over-yourselves-nobody-cares-about-your-secrets/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+(TechCrunch)&utm_content=My+Yahoo

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pxlpshr
TechCrunch likes to stir the pot and create controversy, but I do get tired of
them acting like they do no wrong. Maybe it's just me but I rarely see them
mocking themselves. As mentioned in the comments by another entrepreneur:

 _When I launched OtherInbox at TechCrunch50 in 2008, being “stealth” was a
requirement for participation. We had to be launching something new that no
one had heard about and secrecy was so important that we were told that we
would be kicked out if anything leaked.

Maybe this should be reconsidered for 2010?_

However, I do partly agree with the article. Some people are wayy to tight
lipped about what they are working on, there's rarely a reason why someone
can't speak in generalities about their project without going into exact
details.

~~~
wheels
That's a sign of a maturing media outlet. Wouldn't it be bizarre if the New
York Times never had differing opinion pieces?

(Note: I'm not putting TC and the NYT in the same bucket, but this is a bad
point to call them out on.)

~~~
pxlpshr
Good point. My comment was also in regard to other stories I've read there, I
just opted not to go into too many details for the sake of staying on topic.

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zaidf
The smartest guys give the illusion that they are very open. But that is only
because they have so much to share, they can keep talking(without being
boring) and yet not get to the stuff that can really hurt them. That has been
my experience.

Make no mistake, even the biggest preachers of being open withheld
information. I'd like to see a more nuanced discussion about what to share and
what not to.

~~~
newhouseb
I fall largely into the bucket of "if you can give away your idea in one
sentence, then you're toast" but I personally break down my projects into
three parts:

1\. The idea itself in the way you'd present it to the layman

2\. The engineering problems you face in implementing the idea

3\. The solution to said problems

You can come off as being "open" by disclosing only the first part. If another
person overhears (1) in your discussion, in order to implement the idea they
first need to figure out (2) what makes it hard before even (3) devoting
resources to solving the problem. And how you approach (2) and (3) in addition
to just (1) is what determines success (read: execution). Note that I am
making an assumption that whatever you're working on requires actual
engineering.

So for the example of Google,

1) A search engine that lets you find stuff

2) Relevance is really freakin' hard

3) PageRank

None of this of course applies to negotiations with VCs, where the rules turn
on their head and you don't want to make yourselves look like you are
effortlessly delivering solutions. And unless you're looking for a certain
type of leverage, acknowledging the fact that negotiations exist to other
people is probably a bad idea too.

~~~
gruseom
Great comment, as is the parent. But I'd question your Google history.
PageRank was talked about from the beginning. The list went more like this:

1\. Hey everybody, check out this new search engine with a genius algorithm
called "PageRank" that returns much more relevant results!

2\. ?

3\. ?

In other words, Google is a prime example of what zaidf is saying. PageRank
was a huge marketing hit. Over 10 years later, it's still the first thing
anyone mentions when they talk about Google's competitive edge, yet this has
been a fiction for ages and may largely have been so from the beginning. How
much of a technical edge was it really, compared to the other things Google
did right? That remains totally obscure (see 2 and 3 above).

~~~
zaidf
With PageRank, I think google gets a lot of leverage from misinformation,
which can be as important as the information.

Few people really know much about PageRank beyond the _general_ idea. In
Google's case, I think they talked about PageRank more because they had
written a paper on it and it was already public whether they talked or not.

But if you observe, beyond the original paper, little is known about PageRank
from Google. There are plenty of guesses--right and wrong--that can be pieced
together to form a narrative of the changes and evolution in PageRank. But
nothing official from Google. And probably for a reason.

~~~
gruseom
Yes, and not only PageRank: they've done the same thing with BigTable, GFS,
etc. They're masters of selective disclosure. Two things one often hears about
Google is how open they are and how secretive they are, and what's remarkable
is that both are true.

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pg
The most dangerous part of being in stealth mode for a long time is the long
time, not the stealth mode.

If you launch fast, as you should, the question of how secretive to be before
launching shrinks in importance.

Our advice is generally: you can tell people about some of your plans, and
others you should keep secret, but above all, transform them into actions as
soon as possible.

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icey
I'm not sure why, but this seems funny to me in light of all the Crunchpad /
joojoo shenanigans going on.

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tonystubblebine
To provide some balance, does anyone here have any positive experiences with
being in stealth mode?

I have one. We launched Twttr in a stealth private beta for at least a few
months. I think the period coincided with the period it took to get an
official SMS short code. During the stealth period we were serving SMS traffic
out of an SMS modem attached to an office laptop. We got the normal benefit of
polishing the product that you'd get from a private beta. Plus we got to
develop the product without any public scrutiny. But we were very conservative
about who we let know about the project, basically close friends and family
who didn't work for a major internet company.

I think the hardest part about changing your product strategy is going back on
your promises (in our case we'd promised customers, investors, and employees
that we were going to build a world-changing podcast product). I don't know if
it would have been fatal, but it definitely would have been uncomfortable to
be accused of abandoning our initial product before knowing we had a success
(and contrary to some statements, there were a big chunk of internal users who
knew we had something important from the first day we used it).

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Lots of successful startups spend time in stealth mode.

As another commenter pointed out, it's a lot more nuanced than writers want to
let on. Writing is about drama and hyperbole. Real life is about finding
balance.

~~~
davidmurphy
Personally I like nuanced writing, too, though.

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j_baker
I think another big factor is that a lot of startups simply might not _know_
exactly what they want to do. They don't say anything to the outside world
because they themselves don't know.

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joshuabaer
Most startups aren't an invention like electricity. Many new companies these
days are pretty easy to re-create once you have a working model to look at -
ie. a less competent programmer can probably recreate your site in less than
half the time it takes you to make it the first time.

Hopefully you have some other competitive advantages besides just having a
good idea. It's those things combined with great execution and some luck that
will make you succeed. If its that easy to rip off your idea and do it then
being first isn't going to that much of a difference compared to execution and
some kind of marketing advantage.

What's more interesting to me as an angel investor than the idea is what
problem you are trying to solve. Your first idea of the perfect answer is
probably wrong, but if you're trying to solve a valuable problem, you're
smart, and you have some other competitive advantage then I might be willing
to bet that you'll find the right answer.

With OtherInbox we were in 'stealth mode' for 9 months. We had about 200 alpha
testers during that time, but our learning accelerated much faster after going
public. In hindsight, I think we would have been better off being more open
about it right from the beginning.

Note: Just because you're not in stealth mode doesn't mean you have to drop
your pants and tell everything. Every company has confidential information and
trade secrets.

~~~
eru
> Many new companies these days are pretty easy to re-create once you have a
> working model to look at - ie. a less competent programmer can probably
> recreate your site in less than half the time it takes you to make it the
> first time.

I agree about re-creating the site. But not about re-creating the company. You
say yourself:

> We had about 200 alpha testers during that time, but our learning
> accelerated much faster after going public.

You have to re-create this learning experience, too. Otherwise you may be
cloning accidental complexity, but miss the spirit.

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10ren
_Another good reason to be in stealth is if a company is built around a
technology or idea that it hopes to patent but has not yet filed._

I think this exception can be generalized to pure technology development, even
without the patent legal requirement of non-disclosure. It applies if you are
developing a new technology that already has a known market; or an entirely
new technology (in which case you are more an inventor or scientist than an
entrepreneur). So, Edison got his light-bulb working well enough; Birdseye
discovered the freezing rate for fish that worked well enough.

Of course, most internet startups are not pure technology. They're mostly
about market development, and at best, applying technology to that new market.

A final factor is that, even for pure technology, it helps if you can discuss
it with someone. So it's good to have a team. This is one benefit of working
in a big corp lab.

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jasonlbaptiste
Being stealth is seriously a detriment most of the time, if not all. Get out
there and start getting feedback while meeting awesome people who are
interested in what you're doing. You never know who you will be connected with
or who will share your passion. You can only meet those people by putting
yourself out there. It's not like you have to put your source code, algorithm,
and five year road map out there for everyone. Even if you did do that... what
are the odds that someone is interested in the same thing, has the same
vision, is competent enough to execute on it, and most importantly actually DO
IT? The odds are a number somewhere very very close to zero, whereas the odds
of putting yourself out there and meeting someone who can help you are very
very close to one-hundred.

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vaksel
stealth doesn't mean you don't show your product to anyone, stealth means you
don't show your product publicly until you have the bare minimum ready.

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bretpiatt
Summarized real well on Twitter:

@GeorgeReese: The real reason that stealth mode is daft is that there's no
such thing as a unique idea.

@GeorgeReese: If your idea is unique, it's very probably a stupid idea.

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baguasquirrel
Saying that you're stealth is actually a great excuse to not have to spend
half an hour yakking to people when you actually want to code.

~~~
Goladus
Yeah that was my first thought after reading that cartoon.

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DaniFong
While I think this can be great advice in the internet space, there's a pretty
big difference between having a consumer product pre-vc funding which you can
bootstrap to a release, and a biotech or cleantech based startup post-funding
with roughly a dozen serious potential customers.

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bjelkeman-again
Well, stealth has its place. But in the end, you need all the marketing you
can get.

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vlad
The headline does not do the article justice.

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Mz
_If you’re competing with the big guys and are worried about them stealing
your ideas, it’s the same story—it boils down to execution. As Eric Reis says,
“If a startup can’t innovate faster than a much larger competitor, stealth
isn’t going to make the difference —they’re toast”. It may also be that fear
of big companies is overblown: those who have worked for one know that it’s
incredibly hard to get a manager at a big company to do something new, even if
your goal is to give your ideas away._

I really don't worry that someone will steal my idea(s). I don't think it is
stealable. But even if I did, I wouldn't worry that a big company would steal
it. As I understand it, Bill Gates got rich doing something IBM basically gave
away to him.

The only worry I have about big companies is a paranoid fear that stuff I do
on the web might some day get me fired from my current job before I am ready
to support myself via my off-hours activities. So I try to not do any of the
things that have gotten other people fired from big companies over online
activities (like talk trash about the company I work for).

