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Comment by michaelabe | Hacker News Reader

for anyone who wants to know my startup or other things email me at fffseek@gmail.com, thank you.

You had my sympathy till this post. Why on earth not to just drop a link to your website, or, if the company doesn't use one, give name, location and such?

I can only hope it's business is not something too questionable to state it openly...

It's possible that he just has that founder mentality that he doesn't want the secret sauce to be out so early and wants to remain stealth. Perhaps misguided, but truth be told, a lot of folks start out with that mentality.

Dude, if that's the case, there are a number of reasons why that doesn't make sense. There are probably hundreds of other people working on the exact same thing as you around the world. Secrecy will not help you compete with those people. What you need is exposure, not secrecy, to really get moving in most cases. Only in very rare cases do you want to keep secrecy. Based on statistics alone, you probably want exposure, not secrecy.

I am not like that at all, I gave my email below to show the product. I wanted secrecy because if I showed the product publicly people will know who I am because my name is all over the product and I just didnt want people to know certain things about my life (like physical abuse) so I prefer staying anonymous. I push my product all the time I dont believe in secrecy, stealth, etc for your startup.

In that case, it might have been better to ask for advice without including the personal info you aren't really comfortable with. (I am pretty open about the crap I have been through. I'm not successful, financially/business-wise, so perhaps it is wiser to keep the two separate, I really don't know. I just think you have created an awkward situation for yourself that could make it difficult to keep the two things separate in the future.)

Said with the absolute best of intentions and in no way intended to be snarky. I realize "good intentions" are well known to pave the way to hell. I apologize in advance if that is the case here.

HN has great SEO you don't necessarily want this thread to appear as one of the first results...

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