To Stealth or Not to stealth
What’s Stealth Startup? To some it sounds super powerful, something that will come out of nowhere and change your world forever like an attack from a stealth fighter jet, but hopefully in a good way! Something that will blindside the competition and obliterate them on day 1. To others, it’s the dumbest thing they’ve ever heard; it’s a waste of money as you’re building a product in a silo without any real customer or market validation, no buzz building, lots of secrets, NDA’s, etc. They think that you should be talking to others about your idea, your business, make sure you’re going about things the right way, build some buzz, get feedback, and so on and so on. But where’s the fun in that? So if you’re starting up a new company or product, which route should you go?
As some of you know, I’m currently working on a startup bittr.ly. Obviously, since I’m saying this, I’m not in stealth mode. My boss at my day job knows about it, I’ve announced it several times to the Extreme Programming & Agile meetup that I organize. In fact, I told the group about it after I spent one night working on what I thought could be a minimum viable product for it. Does this mean that I don’t believe anyone should be in stealth mode for a startup? No! There are certain situations where being in stealth mode makes sense. With that said, there are certain situations that it may make sense to be in stealth mode and others where it doesn’t.
Reasons to be in stealth mode:
You’ve had a successful exit before or have been successful in helping a startup grow
In this case, you’ve probably learned a lot from your past experience about what it takes to be part of or run a startup. A lot of the beginner stuff, you’ve already mastered. Your abilities have been validated and it’s a matter of execution. You know what you’re doing because you’ve done it before. Investors trust you because of past experience. In this case, success is still not guaranteed, but the probability is higher. In fact, if this is you, you’re probably not reading this blog post, but if you are, I’d love your input in the comments!
You have a truly disruptive product for a market that has lots of crappy competition AND you are THE expert in the field
This is an interesting situation. The fact that your product is truly disruptive and there’s lots of crappy competition may mean that there is little or no market demand. It could also be risky to be in stealth mode because if your product is so disruptive, early market and customer validation is important since the market would have to drastically change their behavior in order to use and accept your product. However, in this case, if your competition is complacent, being in stealth mode may give you a huge competitive advantage. The fact that you’re THE expert in the field gives you at least some compensation for not having market validation early and it will also make it easier for you to raise money if you need to do so.
Reasons to NOT be in stealth mode:
You’re new to the startup game
This one is simple. You have no idea what you’re doing. You have no idea what problems can arise, you don’t know what the market needs, you don’t have enough connections. Talk to people, validate, network, learn from other’s mistakes, talk to people who may have tried to solve the same problem you’re solving, talk to potential customers to learn their needs, and build a board of advisors This doesn’t mean you should yell ALL of your plans from the rooftops, there are certain things you may want to keep quiet; certain competitive advantages you may want to keep in your back pocket; those are fine to be tight lipped about, but you NEED validation! Also, it’s tough to network and meet people if you don’t share. Those that are in the startup world will, undoubtedly, think less of you if you say “Hello, I’m Jim Joe, but I can’t tell you what I’m working on because I’m in stealth mode. Can you please sign an NDA?”
You think others will steal your idea
The reality is that if you try to make everyone around you sign an NDA, you’ll get nowhere. Nowadays, most people you’ll meet in the startup community are so busy on building their own thing that they probably won’t care to copy your idea, and others you talk to don’t have the capacity, skill set, or inclination to build copy. It’s safe to talk about it, go ahead. Also, this is a good way to fail fast and learn from your mistakes. If you talk to people early about your idea and everyone tells you many reasons of why you’re going about something the wrong way, or why your assumptions are wrong, it helps you make sure you build the right product, or maybe not even build it at all… who knows!
You’re afraid to fail
This one’s a bit tougher to grasp for some, but it’s probably one of the most common reasons people stay in stealth mode. You’ve got an idea, you’ve never succeeded at building a startup before. You know you’ve got something special, but your confidence isn’t very high. The last thing you want is for people who you respect and that respect you to think of you as a failure in the event it doesn’t pan out. You’ll look like a fool if you talk about your next big thing and then you fall flat on your face. The reality is that your loved ones will love you no matter what. You’ll probably gain respect from people for even taking the risk in the first place! If you fail, which I have, it sucks for sure! But you need to learn from it! I failed with My Grocery Buddy, but I moved on to bittr.ly. No one around me said anything bad about me for making that move and failing with MGB. In fact, I think those around me think more highly of me BECAUSE, I was able to move on from something that was clearly not working out and onto something they thought was a much better idea. Additionally the fear of failure will delay you. Don’t let it consume your thoughts! You will want to perfect every aspect of what you’re building…. DON’T!!!! put something out there and get feedback! The Bittr.ly iphone app is available for download on the appstore. It’s not perfect, it doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface for what our plans are, but by putting it out there and getting initial feedback, we can focus on the right improvements to make, not just the ones we assume are the right ones.
I hope this helped at least one person as for a while, with MGB, this decision consumed my mind. I’ve learned from it and have a clearer direction in this regard. Go build your business, go meet people, validate validate validate! But first, please let me know what you think about this post in the comments below!
Finally, as a shameless plug, go download the Bittr.ly iPhone app and please tell let me know what you think about it; We’re not in stealth! If you have feedback, please email me at gboruk@gmail.com or gboruk@bittr.ly. We need validation for our startup!
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