The idea is just a very small part of the reason why we are in stealth. There are some other serious reasons why we don't want to go public right now. Unfortunately I can only talk about the stuff related to the idea itself.
Our idea is boring and not revolutionary. We already have some competitors in the vertical and while there is no point in trying to hide the actual idea, there are differences in the way we implement stuff that can get us an advantage over the competition.
>> Execution is more important than the idea
I like this slogan as much as the next guy, but its implications may not be what you think they are. What if execution is (mostly) a function of money you have? What if someone with double the money we have can execute in half the time? What if they can copy your "execution" just because they can iterate faster since they have enough money in the bank?
>> The most likely cause of failure is your incompetence,
not losing to the competition.
But losing to competition is also a likely outcome. Isn't it?
>> First mover advantage is just silliness
We've got a little funding from VCs. Some of our competitors are more than well funded. Investors are looking for proven entrepreneurs to enter this emerging market and they will get well funded too. There is a serious first mover advantage to be made especially when VCs are ready to drain money just to get the first mover advantage.
>> You desperately need real feedback
This is orthogonal to going public with your idea.
Also, most people in our team are very good and have proven track records. If we are not in stealth mode, it will just draw unwanted attention. We don't want that at this point.
Again, as I said this is just part of the reasons why we are in stealth. Almost all of our competetors are public with the idea, and of course we don't know about any stealth competitors :)
This article assumes that all startups go into stealth mode just because of the fear of someone copying the idea. While this may be the case for many startups, this is not true at least in our case. [Our biggest reasons for being in stealth are people related. Sorry cannot expand on that]
So, you have some obscure reason for being in stealth mode, but can't tell us more than that, other than that the original poster is completely wrong in your case. You show this by giving completely generic arguments to one line sentences from his post.
In my opinion you are not really contributing to the discussion. Just stop.
If 2x the money wins the race, then get 2x the money. A good idea has a case that can be made for it and, at least, an expectation of the value you will create. That is what you (and others) invest against. There shouldn't be such thing as "they have more money" for an idea that you expect to generate well more than that investment. There is only "they were willing or able to get more money". This isn't trivial - believing in the projections and selling your passion and networking to find investors are all really hard.
Losing to the competition is a possible outcome, but not necessarily the "likely outcome". Anyway, the way to manage that is still to execute better. Competition helps teams that need competition to rise to the occasion, but rising to the occasion is what is needed. Without it, losing is the likely outcome whether there was competition or not.
Seems like the argument for 1st mover advantage is: first mover = funding = success rather than first mover = success. sure, I do believe that funding can lead to success -- any resource advantage leads to success. Yet, I do think first mover advantage has some more important benefits. Things like taking most of the market out of the gate (why would we need a second brown fizzy sugar water?) or defining the landscape (oh, a good carfax score is what tells you a used car is good). I think certain circumstances make first movers better and others make 2nd, 3rd or later-movers better, but an absolute is pretty hard to prove.
I would say you need customer feedback or maybe expert feedback. Some sort of feedback always helps. But, so does vision. However you get to a good product is how you need to get to a good product. You just need to know and do that. The reason feedback - specifically from actual customers - is usually chosen is because it is more on the science side than the art side, but I surely can't knock those people and teams that can deliver product excellence due to vision, luck or art.
Re: "What if someone with double the money we have can execute in half the time?"
See Henry Ford working, by himself, after work, late into the night, for years and years, on his prototype car, while others with more money were doing the same thing. His quote on the subject, "no amount of finance will cure mismanagement". His friends at General Electric said he was wasting his time on the gas combustion engine because the world was going electric.
Early in the age of the automobile, Ford decided to produce his now famous V-8 motor. He chose to build an engine with the entire eight cylinders cast in one block, and instructed his engineers to produce a design for the engine. The design was put on paper, but the engineers agreed, every one of them, that it was simply impossible to cast an eight-cylinder gas engine block in one piece.
Ford said, “Produce it anyway.”
“But,” they replied, “it’s impossible!”
“Go ahead,” Ford commanded, “and stay on the job until you succeed no matter how much time is required.”
Similar example; the Wright brothers refused funding from the aviation financiers at the time, funded their own work and solved the problem of powered flight in a much shorter time than others had been fruitlessly working on it.
I assume you have some new take on what you're doing - otherwise you wouldn't be doing it. The main takeaway of the post is that you almost always need feedback to execute new approaches properly.
It sounds like you're assuming that your execution will be flawless, even something to be copied by competitors, but how can you know without testing it on the customer? If you're in a market like pharmaceuticals, where all user testing can be done in a lab, execution in a bubble makes sense, but if your startup is a web product it sounds like hubris.
For reference, Steve Blank has a great set of posts about needs of different types of startups:
http://bit.ly/if6Okn
The idea is just a very small part of the reason why we are in stealth. There are some other serious reasons why we don't want to go public right now. Unfortunately I can only talk about the stuff related to the idea itself.
Our idea is boring and not revolutionary. We already have some competitors in the vertical and while there is no point in trying to hide the actual idea, there are differences in the way we implement stuff that can get us an advantage over the competition.
I like this slogan as much as the next guy, but its implications may not be what you think they are. What if execution is (mostly) a function of money you have? What if someone with double the money we have can execute in half the time? What if they can copy your "execution" just because they can iterate faster since they have enough money in the bank? But losing to competition is also a likely outcome. Isn't it? We've got a little funding from VCs. Some of our competitors are more than well funded. Investors are looking for proven entrepreneurs to enter this emerging market and they will get well funded too. There is a serious first mover advantage to be made especially when VCs are ready to drain money just to get the first mover advantage. This is orthogonal to going public with your idea.Also, most people in our team are very good and have proven track records. If we are not in stealth mode, it will just draw unwanted attention. We don't want that at this point.
Again, as I said this is just part of the reasons why we are in stealth. Almost all of our competetors are public with the idea, and of course we don't know about any stealth competitors :)
This article assumes that all startups go into stealth mode just because of the fear of someone copying the idea. While this may be the case for many startups, this is not true at least in our case. [Our biggest reasons for being in stealth are people related. Sorry cannot expand on that]