They don't need to tell you the full story. But saying- we are trying to solve how people discover new products that their friends buy. We should have a product out in the next few months. That's a lot better than saying we are stealth. You didn't give away anything.

Ya feel me?

The problem is the response to that is almost always "Oh you mean like ______?". The answer to that is almost certainly no, but you can't really say or explain why unless you reveal too much about your startup at too early a stage. Then people get the impression you are working on some stupid idea that has already been done.

There are a lot of reasons not to reveal what you are working on exactly, but giving the industry isn't necessarily the best thing to do either. A lot of experienced founders will also do this because they don't want wild rumors flying around about what they are building / working on next from a one-liner that they mentioned without wanting or being able to get into the details about it with some stranger.

Agree perhaps, from a psychological standpoint I say stealth all the time because I am plain sick and tired of telling every person whom inevitably asks the question, "so whats your startup working on". I'd rather think of the code I need to write the next day or just talk about macro economy and other things. My life is 24/7 startup already. And may I add: seasoned entrepreneurs don't ask THAT question they either wait for you do talk about it yourself or don't pester you with it because they have all been there too.

I agree with this tactic 100%. It is much more meaningful and honest.

Sounds arrogant or ignorant to me. You've got your solution so well figured out that you can't bother to talk to people about it and gauge their reaction? Sounds like a path to failure.

That's a little harsh. I've been using the term on LinkedIn because we haven't filed our paperwork for our S/C Corp yet. I'm perfectly willing to tell you what the general field we're working on but we're nowhere near ready to go live yet, or make promises about what we're going to ship.

I have other friends who are also working at "stealth" startups who don't want to tip their hands specifically because they're backed by relatively famous people in the space. If they start talking they're going to get a lot of unnecessary and unmerited attention just because of _who_ they are and not _what_ they're going to build.

Why exactly? Once you have convinced yourself and your team about the idea you are working on, it can reach a stage where talking to more people adds very little value. You can go back to people once you reach a stage in your development cycle that you are comfortable with.