Stealth startups are missing out on receiving feedback from the market - Bird Lovegod

Last week I posted this on LinkedIn, word for word: “Here’s a business model from the near future: like Netflix, but the content is films, videos, live streams, of humanitarian and environmental interventions.

“Pay your £10 a month and watch the millions of pounds a month being used to heal people and planet at scale.

“Choose to watch lives saved in Asia or animals saved in America or environment transformed in Europe. Educational, real, moving, heart warming, heart-breaking, transformative.

“That’s the future. Run by business, not charities.”

This is an idea for a business that could be worth billions, and change lives at massive scale, it could change the world. A huge impact business, a hybrid of subscription media and subscription charity giving.

What happened next?

A total of 386 people saw it, and two people responded with a like.

That was it... apart from one other person, who contacted me directly and we began a conversation, including 40 minutes on Zoom getting to know one another.

This person is an IP specialist, ironic because I chucked this piece of intellectual property into the LinkedIn audience in the hope of someone, anyone, picking it up and running with it.

Just talking with him helped the idea to form, and rather than it taking £1m to launch I now estimate a micro version with 10 interventions can be achieved for around £30,000.

After the call I put together a four-page document expanding on the idea, explaining it in more detail, and sent it to him.

Next week I’ll put another post on LinkedIn, giving more details, and see if anyone else is interested in being involved in any way.

They call this strategy ‘building in public’, and like many acts performed in public, it’s a bit embarrassing. Building in public means sharing the process openly, from the beginning.

It’s like removing the curtain between you and the market, and saying here’s what I’m doing, or trying to do, and this is how I’m trying to do it.

Here’s my attempts, here’s what I learned last week, here’s the mistakes I made, here’s a little bit of progress.

It’s the opposite of ‘stealth mode’ startups, whereby everything is under wraps and no one is allowed to know or see anything.

Stealth mode startups will even try to get investors to sign NDAs, Non Disclosure Agreements, before sending them a pitch deck.

Build In Public startups will post their pitch deck, and everything else, on social media. I’m not saying one way is better than another. Actually I am saying that.

Stealth startups are missing out on receiving feedback from the market.

They’re missing out on all the possible outcomes that could happen by being transparent, in exchange for one thing, privacy from imagined competition.

It takes trust to build in public. It feels counter intuitive, because at any time anyone can decide to copy and compete.

But in reality this just doesn’t happen. Everyone is already eyeballs deep in their own startup, project, or job. And a project like Hyper Ethical (as it is now called) requires a team with some particular skill sets, as well as being somewhat unique and futuristic. Right now it’s nothing, just an idea, so really I have nothing to lose.

So next week I’ll post another update on LinkedIn, and share the business model I created today. And maybe two more people will like it, or maybe something else.

Building in public. I’ve never done that before. Anything, or nothing, could happen. Let’s see.