<100 subscribers
“A head start is rarely large enough to matter, and time spent in stealth mode-away from customers-is unlikely to provide a head start. The only way to win is to learn faster than anyone else.”
— Eric Ries
Five years ago, if you told me you were going into stealth mode, I’d assume you were either overestimating your idea or underestimating your market. Most people simply don’t care enough to steal what you haven’t proven works. And yet, the myth persists: build in silence, launch with fireworks, and watch the world gasp in admiration.
That narrative is seductive, but misleading. It conflates secrecy with strategy and overestimates the power of surprise in a world where iteration, not inspiration, tends to win.
A lot of Vibe Founders build in public—but that's correlation, not definition. The vibe isn’t about being loud, it’s about being in tune. Sometimes that means working in the open; other times, it means staying heads-down until the work is too sharp to ignore. In an AI-first world, though, the bar for originality has dropped. A thin idea has gotten even thinner. If you’re not careful, your vibe can get scraped, cloned, and commoditized before it ever compels. So yes, expose yourself to feedback. But not before you've built something worth reacting to.
No website. No social. You're effectively off the grid.
Why founders choose it:
They're scared of being copied. They think they have a secret insight. They want to look legit before showing anything.
Why it fails:
You’re not testing anything. You’re not learning. You’re not talking to users. So, your big secret? It’s probably wrong, and no one’s around to correct you.
Why it works:
You’re validating without broadcasting. It’s controlled exposure. You’re getting smarter without giving up the whole story.
Where it breaks:
You can get stuck. Not visible enough to attract momentum, not focused enough to move quickly. Half-visible = half-effective.
You’re showing your work. Screenshots. Threads. Changelogs. Community.
Why it works:
You’re building in public, and people rally around the journey—that momentum compounds distribution, feedback, and even hiring.
Where it breaks:
It’s noisy. You might overfit too early hype. Worse, competitors could fast-follow your positioning before you’ve nailed the product.
AI didn’t just speed up development. It collapsed the cost of copying. Your idea, once surfaced, can be replicated, remixed, and rebranded in minutes. The marginal effort to duplicate a startup has never been lower.
That doesn’t make stealth more valuable.
It makes speed and defensibility more valuable. It raises the bar for how clearly you understand the problem. It forces you to create moats early, through data, distribution, community, or workflows that can’t be easily cloned.
And it amplifies the cost of delay. Because while you were hiding, someone else was learning. And learning, not secrecy, is what wins.
Stealth isn’t always a mistake. But it should never be the default.
Use it if:
You’re in a regulated space and need time to navigate compliance.
Your insight is deeply technical, and the build cycle is long.
You’re pursuing IP and need the legal clock to tick before the press release drops.
Your main competition is other nimble startups
You’re building a product with minimal initial moat and want time to harden the edges before the copycats show up.
In the AI era, even the thinnest ideas can look like viable startups. If you haven’t tested the problem deeply or figured out what makes you different, stealth might buy you time to do that — just don’t mistake it for a shield.
Even then, be surgical. Stay stealthy with the press, not with your users.
If you are operating in stealth—or preparing to go public—use AI to identify and reinforce your unfair advantage.
List the defensible components of my startup idea, and suggest strategies to strengthen them before launch. My idea: [your 1-paragraph description]What parts of this startup are most vulnerable to AI replication? Suggest ways to mitigate or obscure them before public reveal.Given this concept, how can I create data, workflows, or user feedback loops that are hard to clone, even with access to the public site?Stealth mode is a luxury most startups can't afford.
You don’t need to be secret. You need to be fast, exposed, and learning.
Ship fast. Talk to users. Build in public, if you can. If you can’t, know exactly why, and have a plan to exit stealth before it becomes your default state.
Because in the AI era, the real threat isn’t being copied. It’s being too slow to matter.
Vibe Founders may want to consider stealth again. We've had a lot of chatter on Stealth Mode in the channel, collected and updated my thoughts on going Stealth for VIbe Founders. https://paragraph.com/@vibefounders/stealth-mode