Ask HN: Is it sane to keep your business plan secret?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4283603

by hymloth • 14 years ago

3 4 14 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Some say that if you don't reveal your startups's business plan equals to having no business plan. But if one exists and you feel that it's a great one, while there exist also enough competitors that could steal your idea, is it sane to keep it secret, at least in the early steps?

otoburb• 14 years ago

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

[2] http://blakemasters.tumblr.com/post/22866240816/peter-thiels...

neilwillgettoit• 14 years ago

No. It is not sane. It means that you are afraid that you do not have the tools, team, or talent to execute on it.

blacklooksgreat• 14 years ago

People say a lot of things. You need a business plan, and you need customers. It's ridiculous to think you'll get customers interested in you if they don't know what you're doing. But I think the question is do you do this under NDA?

Now an entirely different issue is if you have any value in keeping your business plan a secret? Most people in business and in Silicon Valley will agree that ideas are cheap and come about often, and it is mostly all about execution.

To that end, I believe that you gain little by keeping your business idea secret, unless you want to be a cool kid and have the lamers at techcrunch or whatever has replaced them with do a big splash.

I believe your best bet is to talk with folks about what you're doing, pitch potential customers and investors and competitors equally, and don't be worried about keeping anything secret.

The counter to this, is that you want your messaging to be clear. If your message is too broad, and you tell too many people too many different things, they'll dismiss you as unclear.

And as a startup you will be unclear. So only share what you're doing with folks you trust, but not because you fear competitors will steal your idea, but because you only get one chance to make a first impression, so be careful how you use that one chance.

chris_dcosta• 14 years ago

A business plan by its very nature is a document that is meant to be distributed to interested parties.

If you are talking about the fundamental mechanisms of how the thing actually works, then that is a different matter.

No company on earth will want to tell everyone how they do it, but they are happy to tell everyone what business they are in. The "how" is not the business plan.

Ask HN: Is it sane to keep your business plan secret?

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