I think stealth mode is not just for the fear of your idea to get stolen, there are a few good reasons IMHO to start quiet in the first stage:
1) You may significantly change what you are doing once you actually started working. Maybe you start with a backup company and ends with a file transfers for the masses.
2) People eventually start to get bored about hearing just words without the ability to try what you have to offer. Probably at the release there will be less excitement... so the stealth mode is a good idea IMHO until there is yet not some non-vaporware thing to show.
3) In the first strage of a startup you will likely get crazy with a lot of work. Managing the communication is a very time consuming task, it's better to delay this as much as possible, that is, when you are starting to actually have users.
4) Stealth does not mean that people should not be aware at all of your existence. Actually to have the brand, logo, and a very general idea of what you are doing (just the field: databases, social things, ...) can be good and sometimes absolutely required in order to try hiring other programmers and so forth.
Once you have a minimally viable product is definitely time to release it ASAP: users feedbacks and pressure will be invaluable.
I think then maybe I did follow the basic model you suggest. I don't think at the first "launch" my product was completely viable. It had a lot of bugs and was pretty ugly. However getting people I didn't know to look at it really drove me through the first point you made. The product and idea changed dramatically through a very organic process driven by feedback.
I am seeing the point you and the other commenter are making about product and market fit though. The other ideas I have are similar scenarios to the one I'm working on now, where the same approach basically fits. So really I may be just be over generalizing.
If you're entering a competitive space, announcing before launching gives your competitors the option of trying to neutralize you at little or no cost, by announcing that they're going to offer similar features. This clearly does happen sometimes.
It looks like YC has nailed an answer to the "stealth mode" controversy that kind of moots the question: move as fast as you can towards releasing a minimal viable product. The working concept trumps the smoke screen.
Yeah, I'd say I work in a semi stealth mode. I'm happy to discuss with people I meet and it's not exactly hidden.
But at the same time I'm not plastering it online and listing exact features, no problem competing with bigger competition but if they were to remove any competitive advantage I would have before launch it would make it a lot harder.
I think a hybrid approach is best. Talk to as many people as you need to to move the ball forward, but don't start shouting from the rooftops until you're ready.
Agreed. Talk to enough people to do the customer development and product development needed, otherwise, stay fairly mum about it. If/when you get traction, and you think the upside is greater than the downside, then start making a lot of noise.
There will almost always be a lot of people thinking about and/or working on the same ideas that one is thinking about. Others working on them might have dedicated certain amount of resources to accomplish a certain pace of progress.
If one makes their plans public, it might inpsire others to bring in more resources to increase their pace and beat you to the market. In such acase all one would be doing is provide free marketing for that product.
Of course, this is just one perspective. Going public also has its advantages, just like going in stealth mode has its disadvantages, one of them being the difficulty of attracting talent.
At the end, what matters is which option one chooses to leverage that option's advantages and what one does or can do to nullify the disadvantages of the same option.
It's not about the idea, or being the first, it's all about execution (and luck). FourSquare is killing it right now, but they were about the 5th major player into the geo check-in playing field. Online coupons have been around for a decade prior to Groupon. Facebook was late to the social networking party by about 5 years. There were hundreds of major search engines prior to Google. StackExchange & Quora certainly aren't the inventors of the online answers market.
Stealth mode is silly, because you need competition to validate your business. You need to learn from your competition and get feedback from the public to tweak your product. If you are the only one pursuing something, odds are it isn't worth pursuing.
You bother with stealth mode when you have an idea that doesn't require stellar execution to be successful. The concept needs to be pretty simple, but original and useful.
I'll say it time and time again, people who think ideas aren't valuable on their own just haven't come up with any great ideas yet.
I agree. Thats what I did. I made spotted.at and just want to get as much feedback as possible. My steath mode = My product sucks and not many people use it. As my product gets better and more people use it I guess im not stealth anymore. LOL
1) You may significantly change what you are doing once you actually started working. Maybe you start with a backup company and ends with a file transfers for the masses.
2) People eventually start to get bored about hearing just words without the ability to try what you have to offer. Probably at the release there will be less excitement... so the stealth mode is a good idea IMHO until there is yet not some non-vaporware thing to show.
3) In the first strage of a startup you will likely get crazy with a lot of work. Managing the communication is a very time consuming task, it's better to delay this as much as possible, that is, when you are starting to actually have users.
4) Stealth does not mean that people should not be aware at all of your existence. Actually to have the brand, logo, and a very general idea of what you are doing (just the field: databases, social things, ...) can be good and sometimes absolutely required in order to try hiring other programmers and so forth.
Once you have a minimally viable product is definitely time to release it ASAP: users feedbacks and pressure will be invaluable.