Ask YC: Discussing your secret weapon?
In his essays, pg intentionally draws our attention to Lisp as a primary advantage for Viaweb. It was their "secret weapon".
Would you reveal your company's secret weapon? Or only after you exit?
Would you reveal your company's secret weapon? Or only after you exit?
If PG and co sent a letter on Viaweb letterhead to their competitors describing the various and sundry advantages of Lisp, what percentage of them would've done anything but laugh?
99.999% of the time, stealth mode is a huge waste of energy.
(please assume a standard "IMO" ahead of all of the above statements)
The things that turn a technically-competent team into a bunch of ass-kicking code-ninjas are good tools, a nimble process (not necessarily XP or "agile programming"), and deep knowledge of the problem domain. None of those are particularly dependent on secrecy, and in this day and age, there's a strong argument to be made for the marketing, recruitment, and simple bogofilter potential of transparency and peer-review.
Sure, but that's an obviously untenable extreme.
Assuming you do not expect secrecy to save your ass, what's the business advantage to choosing to reveal information?
And is all information equal?
For example, if I tell people I'm using Haskell for my startup, I don't expect it will alter my prospects much. However, if I believe I've located a niche market that is under-served, I hope I won't be so naive as to think no one else is thinking the same thing, but announcing that fact seems unlikely to reduce possible competition.
Why would I volunteer that information or not try to keep it secret?
Revealing the market niche you hope to fill isn't revealing your secret weapon -- not in the Viaweb/Lisp sense, anyway -- it's giving away free copies of your business plan.