Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Do Stealth Startups Suck?

Posted by timothy on from the so-secret-we-ourselves-do-not-know dept.

glinden writes "In 'Stealth Startups Suck,' Bloglines CEO Mark Fletcher argues that 'stealth mode for a web start-up is the kiss of death.' He says that moving quickly and getting feedback from early users is much more important than protecting the core idea or trying to launch a perfect product. Is there any good reason for a web startup to not be open about what it is doing? What about other kinds of software startups? What about hardware startups?"

7 of 219 comments (clear)

  1. Lets see how well it works for comments. by Rei · · Score: 4, Funny

    This comment intentionally left blank (for now - come back later!)

    --
    The War of 1812... the good 'ol days when the federal government actually tried to save New Orleans.
    1. Re:Lets see how well it works for comments. by Hogwash+McFly · · Score: 2, Funny

      It's a shame you can't post images, because then you could have that flashing yellow digging GIF and it'll feel like 1996 again.

      --
      Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
    2. Re:Lets see how well it works for comments. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      That's a potential downside to releasing things early - before they're shiny and pretty - full of features

      That's what rigged demos are for.

  2. Your ideas intrigue me and I wish to subscribe... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...to your newsletter. Put me down for $100,000.

  3. Re:I somewhat agree with him by Foolomon · · Score: 3, Funny
    While I agree with him in general, one thing you need to be aware of is: Be careful that advertising before your product is ready doesn't tarnish your company's reputation. While such a thing can be turned around later, it can easily kill your company early on.

    Well, I keep spending $49.95 on my pre-release, pre-advance version of Duke Nukem Forever in hopes that it'll come out sooner, so maybe advertising your product (wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyy) before it's ready isn't such a bad thing after all.

  4. obquote by sshore · · Score: 3, Funny

    I'm reminded of a quote:

    "Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats."
    -- Howard Aiken

  5. Re:How 1999 can you get? by Ingolfke · · Score: 2, Funny

    And if you tell people you're "in stealth mode", there's less likelyhood that they'll look at your idea and mention how bogus it is

    I totally agree... most of the companies I've dealt w/ that are in "stealth mode" have some really lame ideas and they're run by complete morons. My new venture, on the other hand is really taking off. We're using tried and true investment tactics to diversify our portfolio of products in order to hedge ourselves against a single market's decline or unforseen technology advancement. I can't talk about all of the details but let me tell you that some of the products include nanotechnology, multicasted multimedia, tahitian noni suppliments, space elevators, and a compression scheme that has a consistant output size of 1-bit regardless of the size of the input data. It so sad, but so true... most businesses just aren't as technically or fundamentally sound as my new startup is.