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Cross-Startup Stealth

2010
March
14
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The Enemy is Listening I used to run a forum on zKorean, and in early 2005 I “came out” and let everyone know it was just me running the site.  Over time I wanted to jump back in to stealth mode to avoid backlash from jerky decisions and accepting criticism. So I did. And I made it look like my site had been bought and a corporation was the now the decision-maker.

Back then, I was running other startups and didn’t want them to be tainted with the privacy hole I had left, so I gave them a new company umbrella name (ReadyPrompt) and kept everything separate.  I didn’t want anyone to track me back to the other web property, out of fear that they would discover that it was just me, and link me back to the mess I had made.

If you feel you need to do this too for your startup, you’ll need to make sure you have covered your tracks:

  • private domain registration
  • a different company name
  • different mailing address
  • different support e-mail
  • separate phone number
  • in extreme cases, a separate IP for your sites (putting your sites on different servers)

This is what they call “opsec” (operational security) in the Army (I was in there).  Don’t allow snippets of your activity out because an interested party can take these snippets and piece together your plan.

What you may discover (as I did) is that there are no interested parties that care enough to put the pieces together.  You’re not Apple, ya know.

Image courtesy USDoD

Next post: Exposition on the significance of the retweet

   

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This entry was posted on Sunday, March 14th, 2010 at 10:38 am and is filed under Stealth Startups. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
  • Alexander

    I have occasionally thought about “fronting” as a start-up, by this I mean pretending to be anything other than what my business is. I am in two minds as to whether pretending you are bigger than you are is good or bad? I would be very interested to get some insight into this (or even links to decent articles if you know of any?). Personally, I just like to say how it is; i want long term relationships, and I imagine a foundation of honesty is the best way to get there.

  • http://www.startupnextdoor.com/ John Washam

    The reason I finally opened up and stopped hiding was the same as yours. I wanted a relationship with my customers. I wanted to be authentic. If you're hiding behind a company name and profile, it's hard to connect.

    Since opening up and sharing the real me and my real company (my wife and I), my customers appreciate it. And it hasn't hurt sales, in fact it may have helped because they've been steadily on the rise.

    The articles I've tagged “stealth” discuss this topic: http://www.startupnextdoor.com/tag/stealth/

    I still have quite a bit to write on this topic, so keep reading and let me know how your decision works out for you. It would make a nice interview I think.