Startups in Stealth Mode - Just Stop
Posted by Max Dunn Sat, 24 Sep 2011 14:25:00 GMT
(Advice from Jason Freedman)
Startups in stealth mode need one piece of advice. Stop doing your start-up. You’re not ready.
Let me a share a few reasons why you don’t need to be in stealth mode:
- Execution is more important than the idea.
This is the easiest lesson. Your ability to create a product is far more important than your ability to think up a product. This is a hard lesson if you’re not the one that will do the building, because it means that your contribution is not as valuable as you thought. - Someone else has the exact same idea.
The adage is that if you have a good idea, there are 5 other people already doing it. If you have a great idea, there are 15 other people already doing it. One of the reasons you’re foolishly in stealth mode is probably because you haven’t done enough market research to realize that people are already working on this. - Totally unique ideas generally don’t make it.
If you have a 100% totally unique idea, you’re either too far ahead of the market or you’ve picked a market so small that no one cares. Either way, you’re in for trouble. - The most likely cause of failure is your incompetence, not losing to the competition
Start-ups are really hard on so many levels. The likelihood that you execute beautifully but then lose out to someone that stole your idea is so incredibly low, you shouldn’t think about it. The likelihood that you build a product that missed the mark, is an almost certainty. Optimize around the problems most likely to shut you down. Paul Graham always told us to focus on the one enemy that matters: the back button. - You desperately need real feedback
Perhaps the biggest reason not to be in stealth is that you’re robbing yourself of great feedback. Most companies miss the mark on the first product. The great companies learn quickly and iterate. Skipping the learning part by being secretive just reduces the time you’ll have to iterate before running out of money. - First mover advantage is just silliness
The obit has been written on first mover advantage. It rarely helps. Facebook wasn’t the first to social networking, Google wasn’t the first to search, YouTube wasn’t the first to video, yada yada. First mover advantage was a flawed theory that helped pre-product internet companies raise billions of dollars in the 90s.
I could go on, but this is a fool’s errand. If you’re reading this and don’t agree, you’re probably just not ready to do a startup and all the rationalizing in the world won’t help.