Hacker News Reader

While most of the time people overvalue secrecy, if you're entering a market where a competitor could quickly move in on your target market and make your entrance more difficult there are definite reasons for keeping quiet.Also if your launch strategy hinges on a unified PR campaign you need to keep everything below the radar.

View on HN

Im thinking I agree with you. Startup founder here preparing for a secret launch for number of reasons. 1 to gain most market share right away. 2 our idea is easy to imitate. Do you have any consulting with bringing a working product to a VC without testing the market?

It's really hard. You need to have a personal relationship or well-known brand for a VC to invest in a product without any market data. There are ways to get stealth data, you can mask the product or give targeted beta codes to users that will pay. Depending on the product/cost you really don't need that many paying customers to provide proof of concept. Free sites it's nearly impossible, they will want to see traction.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com