Do Stealth Startups Suck?

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?"

Comments

They're good work if you can get it...

[aborchers]

I spent about a year working for a consulting company that was developing the presence for one of these "stealth start-ups". They were certainly not counterevidence to the thesis.

They spent millions, much of it on our programming fees, as we went through endless iterations of design-as-you-build. We tried repeated to reign them in, get them on a rigorous development process, and convince them to get a basic system live and build from there. They insisted on dotting every i and crossing every t, and rolling out from day one with ridiculous bleeding edge multimedia features that had nothing to do with their business model, before ever revealing the site. All the while we billed them T-and-M. They went broke and dark within a month of their actual debut on the Web.

It was stupid, frustrating work for a stupid, frustrating client, but the paycheck sure was nice...

Increase your chances of being bought

[strongmace]

Be open and perhaps a larger company will buy you. This could open up all sorts of opportunities now that you'll have a larger resource pool (assuming you are still included in the project of course). However, you do have to have a quality deliverable. While being open is very nice, being available for public scrutiny while your product or service is still in its formative stages may be a bit much. You have to draw the line somewhere and balance is important. While getting constructive criticism is great, opening up your project too early could lead to ridicule and hurt your future growth.