Stealth Mode is Stupid
You have an excellent idea for a business that you’re sure is going to catch on, bigtime. As you launch your startup, conventional wisdom advises you to keep your idea under wraps. You must only share this idea with your most trusted advisors because some unscrupulous bastard might steal your idea and profit from it.
So you get some funding and work on your idea, which you’re convinced is brilliant. There are competitors that keep you looking over your shoulder, but you’ve got a team of “rock stars” and everyone who signs an NDA for the privilege of witnessing your demo tells you it blows their freaking mind.
Then the pandemic hits, the scope of your project shifts, you lose a key contributor or two. A competitor’s inferior product is first to market, swiping the momentum of narrative economics out from under you, and you’re left with an impressive prototype, no customers, and the consolation prize of your sense of superiority.
That, as far as I can tell, is how stealth mode works. I’ve seen several failed startups go through some version of this process. And I have yet to meet anyone whose brilliant idea was stolen and developed by someone else, though it’s true I’ve never met the Winklevoss twins.
I’ve had a few meetings recently with guys who I suspect think I’m being too profligate with my ideas, namely for a platform called the World Integration Loop. These men (they’re always men) seem to operate under the assumption that the path to the world embracing their best ideas is to hide their best ideas from the world. I don’t get it.
I’m reminded of a great piece of advice that one of my grad school instructors, Maria Flook, gave me about holding a reader’s interest with fiction: mystery comes from information, not lack of information.
I get it; stealth mode just sounds badass, like something Snake Eyes from GI Joe would do. “We need you to sign this NDA, we’re in stealth mode.”
I’m coming to believe that stealth mode is overrated, misguided, precisely the wrong way to launch a startup, and an overtly masculine way to start a business.
For starters, stealth mode is an admission of your lack of originality. If you’re so confident that your idea is truly unique, then you know you’re the only one who can follow it through. Stealth mode makes a certain amount of sense for a company that seek to elbow their way into an existing market. It makes zero sense for innovators who seek to invent a market.
Your attitude about stealth mode depends on whether you think of your company as a team or a collection of bands. Teams are in stealth mode because they define their success in part by the elimination of competitors. Bands never go into stealth mode, because they recognize that sharing ideas makes everyone around them collectively stronger.
When I was in a band in high school in the late eighties, we got to open for a band from Tacoma called Seaweed. They were so much better than my band, which both inspired us and challenged us to get better. I bought their 7-inch single and learned to play their killer song “Just a Smirk” on guitar. A couple years later, my forehead appeared in Charles Petersen’s moshing crowd shot on the cover of their album “Weak.” I’m telling you this because I am duty-bound as a Gen-X Seattleite to take every opportunity to expound upon my grunge roots.
Stealth mode relies on fear. Being afraid of not making as much money as you think you might be able to make is a stupid source of motivation. And fear is the innovation killer. Fear means ensuring safety and safety means fewer taking risks and limiting your range of positive influence.
By being generous with your ideas, you build a network of people who don’t just marvel at them, but challenge and improve them. You find the right, talented people to work with. Far more importantly, they find you.
