Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 27, 2011

Where Stealth is Good – There’s a lot of discussions on the web about whether startups should be stealthy before they launch or not. My general rule is that it’s good to be stealth in the early days while you’re building your product and testing your market. Most people totally advise against stealth.

Early Stage 380

Early Stage Stealth Marketing Startup 380

www.frozennorth.org

SEPTEMBER 16, 2011

The Customer Service Survey. Gourmet Customer Service. Stealth Mode Startup. Ideas dont have a lot of value by themselves, they tend not to be unique, and by staying secret a startup gives up the chance to get valuable feedback from prospective customers and partners. This is my personal blog. My professional blog is.

Stealth 40

Stealth IP NDA Startup 40

news.ycombinator.com

SEPTEMBER 16, 2011

Hacker News new | comments | ask | jobs | submit login Startups in stealth mode need one piece of advice. I work for a stealth startup. The idea is just a very small part of the reason why we are in stealth. If we are not in stealth mode, it will just draw unwanted attention. niyazpk 215 days ago | link.

Stealth 41

Stealth Technical Review Startup Software Review 41

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 31, 2011

Every time I hear about a new startup that is in stealth mode, I wonder what problem they are hiding from whom. I believe stealth makes sense for large companies who can be sued for “pre-announcing” a new product to stall the market or kill a competitor. “No Time is your biggest enemy, and customer feedback is your biggest ally.

Stealth 252

Stealth Startup Incubator Engineer 252

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

SEPTEMBER 25, 2012

Stay in stealth mode until the last minute. You don’t need the distraction of customers clamoring outside your office while you’re still refactoring your NoSQL database structures. That means you can’t talk to potential customers either, because people talk! Customers literally can’t afford not to buy it.

Stealth 309

Stealth Database Software Founder 309

Gust

OCTOBER 7, 2012

Every time I hear about a new startup that is in stealth mode, I wonder what problem they are hiding from whom. I believe stealth makes sense for large companies who can be sued for “pre-announcing” a new product to stall the market or kill a competitor. “No Time is your biggest enemy, and customer feedback is your biggest ally.

Stealth 131

Stealth Entrepreneur Incubator Engineer 131

The Startup Magazine

FEBRUARY 2, 2023

Type IIA is popular due to its low weight and stealth. Customers can choose the category, color, and many other parameters. It is not visible to others and can protect against certain types of pistols. However, melee weapons can cause significant damage to the user.

Vesting 144

Vesting Stealth Technical Review Security 144

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 9, 2019

We recently invested in Osano , which is led by the very talented Arlo Gilbert and is currently in stealth mode. By contrast, MOON is going to launch soon and is not in stealth mode at all. We went with the stealth mode approach prior to our launch, as I’ll reflect on at the bottom of this lesson. I could waste no time.

Stealth 48

Stealth Cofounder Los Angeles Technical Review 48

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

And because I wanted Ethan to be able to attract a great team, build & iterate a product, test it with initial customers and refine his strategy before having to take the wrappers off of his company. It’s nice to finally not be in stealth mode! I told him that this had been a big theme for me for some time.

Southern California 359

Southern California San Francisco CTO Hire SEM 359

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 5, 2017

This is an emerging theme in the past decade as investors learn that customers assign more value and loyalty to business owners who display this attribute. The result is a win-win-win situation for investors, entrepreneurs, and customers alike. More value delivered and success for all. Extraordinary commitment to a chosen path.

Technical Review 152

Technical Review Stealth Lean Social Media 152

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 5, 2023

Identify customer executives who need your solution. Many savvy entrepreneurs are able to convince high-potential customers that investing early in a high-value solution, perhaps through an advance on royalties, is in their best interest. Reach out to your biggest fans for investor leads.

Angel Investor 246

Angel Investor Stealth Bootstrapping Early Stage 246

Version One Ventures

JULY 20, 2017

As Ada Support launches its automated chat platform from stealth and announces an impressive $2.5 The immediate thing that came to mind was customer support, and so they began to tackle the problem. They’ve developed a chat platform that uses proprietary AI technology to provide automated responses to inbound customer support requests.

Artificial Inteligence 151

Artificial Inteligence Silicon Valley Stealth Term Sheet 151

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 22, 2020

Identify customer executives who need your solution. Many savvy entrepreneurs are able to convince high-potential customers that investing early in a high-value solution, perhaps through an advance on royalties, is in their best interest. Reach out to your biggest fans for investor leads.

Stealth 434

Stealth Startup Angel Investor Bootstrapping 434

K9 Ventures

JANUARY 26, 2016

“ US Navy Sea Shadow stealth craft ” by US Navy employee – [link]. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Stealth is overrated. Today, I have seen it enough times from companies in my portfolio and others that are not in my portfolio that have utilized the “We’re in stealth mode” line.

Stealth 48

Stealth Silicon Valley Cofounder Portfolio 48

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 13, 2021

Major innovation, with major payback, requires real change, addresses a major pain point, and hits a large customer segment who can pay. Many entrepreneurs are reluctant to expose their idea to others early, often called stealth mode, for fear of it being stolen. Two heads are better than one.

Stealth 406

Stealth Startup Metrics Viral 406

ReadWriteStart

SEPTEMBER 14, 2010

Being in "stealth mode" is, as Wilson argues, often seen as a bad idea for startups. And perhaps most importantly, you can get vital feedback from customers to help you better build your product. So why stay stealth? How do you define "stealth"? You need all of these people to bake the cake."

Stealth 118

Stealth Startup Conversion Naming 118

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 4, 2012

For no good reason, this process seems shrouded in mystery, when in fact it is nothing more than a final integrity check on all aspects of your business model, team, product, customers, and plan. A good investor can do a lot to help a company, but can't make customers buy products. Market need and size validation.

Technical Review 237

Technical Review Due Diligence Intellectual Property Private Equity 237

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 21, 2014

It’s popular these days for startup founders to operate in stealth mode, meaning no details about the idea or progress are shared with anyone until the big reveal and rollout. Entrepreneurs talk to customers and competitors talk to each other about the new trends and technologies they see. Demonstrate a minimum viable product (MVP).

Stealth 252

Stealth Startup Early Stage Social Media 252

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 3, 2021

Today, with the Internet and social media, if you aren’t visible in a positive way to everyone, including customers, your leadership efforts will be lost. You need to be visible in marketing efforts, viral videos, and interactions with key customer segments. Online it may be time to take a formal position via blogs and interviews.

Stealth 362

Stealth Leadership Viral Social Media 362

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 11, 2016

Angels are most interested to help you scale the business, once you have real customer traction and ready to break out. Remember that angel investors are buying equity in your business, so they are not impressed with a customer presentation. Assemble a team with the requisite expertise and experience.

Angel Investor 120

Angel Investor Intellectual Property Accredited Investor Angel Groups 120

BeyondVC

JANUARY 3, 2019

First check leads in 5 founding teams, all in stealth. congrats to Fortress IQ on its $12mm Series A led by Lightspeed and a stealth co on their $13.5mm Series A led by Bessemer Venture Partners. Smallstep , Clay , Dark , and Windmill emerged out of stealth. First check to Series B?—?congrats First check to Series A?—?congrats

Stealth 79

Stealth Advisory Board Cloud Virginia 79

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 30, 2015

Demonstrate a concentrated focus on customers early on. Investors look for entrepreneurs who are customer-centric, rather than technology-centric. Even before you build a product, you should be interacting with potential customers in person, and through social media.

Intellectual Property 120

Intellectual Property Entrepreneur Preferred Stock Stealth 120

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 27, 2015

Let me summarize the advantages of this to your startup: Immediate real customer feedback. Startups which insist on operating in stealth mode in fear of competitor response miss the more important customer response. Time to train and prepare staff to deal with customers.

Hockey Stick 120

Hockey Stick Startup Stealth Agile 120

ReadWriteStart

MARCH 28, 2011

They explained they were building it "stealth". Interestingly, very active angel and COO at Square , Keith Rabois weighted in on Quora in response to the question: "What are some concrete reasons for *actively* stealthing a startup?" Saying you are a "stealth" company with no details certainly doesn't leave much to go on.

Stealth 126

Stealth Deal Flow Reputation Lean 126

VC Adventure

APRIL 8, 2010

Recently Dan Frommer over at the Silicon Alley Insider wrote about the reemergence of “stealth mode ”. We launched with a large number of customers and an active marketplace – we were just selective about who we told what we were up to. Tags: stealth. To be clear, we weren’t completely secret about it.

Stealth 81

Stealth SEM Portfolio Operations 81

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 22, 2010

For no good reason, this process seems shrouded in mystery, when in fact it is nothing more than a final integrity check on all aspects of your business model, team, product, customers, and plan. A good investor can do a lot to help a company, but can't make customers buy products. Market need and size validation.

Technical Review 225

Technical Review Due Diligence Intellectual Property Private Equity 225

VC Cafe

JANUARY 24, 2021

Disclaimer: we have three portfolio companies in the consumer mobile space, still in stealth). In a world without cookies, we’ll see smart alternatives to targeting that avoid cookies altogether: contextual targeting, time-based targeting, and using syndicated and custom audiences, according to the 2021 media trends and predictions by Kantar.

Technical Review 207

Technical Review Audio Forecast Social Media 207

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 13, 2016

It’s still popular these days for startup founders to operate in stealth mode, meaning no details about the idea or progress are shared with anyone until the big reveal and rollout. Entrepreneurs talk to customers and competitors talk to each other about the new trends and technologies they see. Meet investors before asking for money.

Stealth 120

Stealth Startup Early Stage Social Media 120

Hearpreneur

JANUARY 2, 2022

Ultimately, I am proud of the many, many small businesses that did not have to close their doors because their fellow LeTip members passed business referrals that led to new customers. As a business, we place a high value on giving people a chance to succeed and earning our customers' trust. Thanks to Teo Vanyo, Stealth Agents ! #20-

Entrepreneur 125

Entrepreneur Jordan Employee Revenue 125

Version One Ventures

NOVEMBER 9, 2021

EnPowered Payments links business customers (such as large electricity users like manufacturing facilities, hospitals, hotels, and greenhouses) to a market of lenders. The customers pay for their energy project on their existing utility bills using savings from the project. To learn more, visit www.getenpowered.com or @GetEnPowered.

Stealth 148

Stealth Vertical Portfolio Finance 148

Steve Blank

MAY 30, 2016

Understanding the left-side of the mission model canvas ( activities, resources , partners , and costs) forces all teams to ask, “Are we building a product for a DOD/IC customer only or do we have a “dual-use” product that could be sold commercially and get funded by venture capital?”. This post is a continuation of the series.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley San Diego Technical Review Incubator 120

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 19, 2020

At a tactical level, companies can improve their customer segmentation and personalize marketing and sales experiences. IKEA now has a home solar offering that enables customers to generate their own renewable energy; it also shifted to renewable plastics and offers sustainable, healthy food in its restaurants. Image source ).

Software Review 105

Software Review Advertising Stealth Campaign 105

Gust

NOVEMBER 14, 2011

For no good reason, this process seems shrouded in mystery, when in fact it is nothing more than a final integrity check on all aspects of your business model, team, product, customers, and plan. A good investor can do a lot to help a company, but can’t make customers buy products. Market need and size validation.

Technical Review 152

Technical Review Due Diligence Intellectual Property Private Equity 152

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

If you are a practitioner of Customer Development, ESL was doing it before most us were born. By 1961 its customers now included our intelligence agencies. The “customers’” contracts funded the company. The “customers” in Washington had never seen anything like it. There were no venture investors.

Silicon Valley 171

Silicon Valley Stealth RSS California 171

Version One Ventures

MAY 17, 2022

We’re very excited to announce our investment in Inflection.io , as the company comes out of stealth with a $5M seed round. In years past, the B2B customer experience and buying process were owned by sales. Inflection is the only marketing automation solution purpose built for B2B product-led companies.

B2B 107

B2B Product Stealth Marketing 107

Sophia Perl of Wisdom

AUGUST 11, 2010

I always go back and forth about whether stealth mode is good or bad. I guess that I should back up and explain what I mean by stealth. When someone has a business idea, she may choose not to disclose what the idea is about aka stealth mode. knowing the customer pain and how to execute). Back to the idea of stealth mode.

Stealth 51

Stealth IP Angel Investor Engineer 51

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 10, 2010

Every time I hear about a new startup that is in stealth mode, I wonder what problem they are hiding from whom. I believe stealth makes sense for large companies who can be sued for “pre-announcing” a new product to stall the market or kill a competitor. “No Time is your biggest enemy, and customer feedback is your biggest ally.

Stealth 229

Stealth Startup Incubator Engineer 229