Re:Ask HN: Is it sane to keep your business plan secret?
by otoburb on Monday July 23, 2012 @07:57PM
(#4283630)
Steve Blank and Eric Ries might say that, on the whole, it's not sane to keep your business plan a secret.
Their reasons are that by not sharing your business assumptions with anybody (especially potential customers/users), then you're violating the fundamental principle of Customer Development and Lean Startup by cutting yourself off from early and valuable feedback which you could be using to rapidly iterate better versions of your product. In other words, you'll be secretive, but (probably) slow and operating completely in the dark, often to your detriment.[1]
However, you may be confusing instead the need to keep secret your long-term plans for world domination if you read/listen to Peter Thiel's CS183 Startup class notes[2] (kindly provided in essay form by Blake Masters), which espouses that coveting instances of certain classes of secrets help drive startups to success. I can't do the essay justice, so I highly suggest reading it to get a better answer to your question.
[1] Search for those terms - they are highly SEO'd
Their reasons are that by not sharing your business assumptions with anybody (especially potential customers/users), then you're violating the fundamental principle of Customer Development and Lean Startup by cutting yourself off from early and valuable feedback which you could be using to rapidly iterate better versions of your product. In other words, you'll be secretive, but (probably) slow and operating completely in the dark, often to your detriment.[1]
However, you may be confusing instead the need to keep secret your long-term plans for world domination if you read/listen to Peter Thiel's CS183 Startup class notes[2] (kindly provided in essay form by Blake Masters), which espouses that coveting instances of certain classes of secrets help drive startups to success. I can't do the essay justice, so I highly suggest reading it to get a better answer to your question.
[1] Search for those terms - they are highly SEO'd
[2] http://blakemasters.tumblr.com/post/22866240816/peter-thiels...