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Personally, I think that you should be worried if you think that secrecy is your best chance at a successful business, at least on the technical side of things.

by rcoder 19y ago

Personally, I think that you should be worried if you think that secrecy is your best chance at a successful business, at least on the technical side of things. Unless you really, truly employ the best programmers in the world, chances are that you haven't come with anything truly novel, so thinking that you have some "secret sauce" that no one else could replicate is just going to make you complacent and slow. The things that turn a technically-competent team into a bunch of ass-kicking code-ninjas are good tools, a nimble process (not necessarily XP or "agile programming"), and deep knowledge of the problem domain. None of those are particularly dependent on secrecy, and in this day and age, there's a strong argument to be made for the marketing, recruitment, and simple bogofilter potential of transparency and peer-review.

jamesbritt 19y ago
> Personally, I think that you should be worried if you think that secrecy is your best chance at a successful business, at least on the technical side of things. Sure, but that's an obviously untenable extreme. Assuming you do not expect secrecy to save your ass, what's the business advantage to choosing to reveal information? And is all information equal? For example, if I tell people I'm using Haskell for my startup, I don't expect it will alter my prospects much. However, if I believe I've located a niche market that is under-served, I hope I won't be so naive as to think no one else is thinking the same thing, but announcing that fact seems unlikely to reduce possible competition. Why would I volunteer that information or not try to keep it secret?
- pchristensen 19y ago
  Good point. I think that for practical purposes, the opposite of secretive isn't broadcasting, just ignoring. For instance, for a web startup, the city you're located in isn't anything worth keeping secret, but it's also not very valuable to reveal either. With pretty much any aspect of a startup, you can ask "Do I benefit from keeping this secret?" and "Do I benefit from broadcasting this?" If neither of those are yes, then just move on.
- rcoder 19y ago
  I think we're agreeing more than disagreeing here. My assertion was that business domain knowledge and internal workflow were far more important than programming languages or algorithms as a determinant of business success. Revealing the market niche you hope to fill isn't revealing your secret weapon -- not in the Viaweb/Lisp sense, anyway -- it's giving away free copies of your business plan.

by rcoder 19y ago

jamesbritt 19y ago

> Personally, I think that you should be worried if you think that secrecy is your best chance at a successful business, at least on the technical side of things. Sure, but that's an obviously untenable extreme. Assuming you do not expect secrecy to save your ass, what's the business advantage to choosing to reveal information? And is all information equal? For example, if I tell people I'm using Haskell for my startup, I don't expect it will alter my prospects much. However, if I believe I've located a niche market that is under-served, I hope I won't be so naive as to think no one else is thinking the same thing, but announcing that fact seems unlikely to reduce possible competition. Why would I volunteer that information or not try to keep it secret?

pchristensen 19y ago
Good point. I think that for practical purposes, the opposite of secretive isn't broadcasting, just ignoring. For instance, for a web startup, the city you're located in isn't anything worth keeping secret, but it's also not very valuable to reveal either. With pretty much any aspect of a startup, you can ask "Do I benefit from keeping this secret?" and "Do I benefit from broadcasting this?" If neither of those are yes, then just move on.
rcoder 19y ago
I think we're agreeing more than disagreeing here. My assertion was that business domain knowledge and internal workflow were far more important than programming languages or algorithms as a determinant of business success. Revealing the market niche you hope to fill isn't revealing your secret weapon -- not in the Viaweb/Lisp sense, anyway -- it's giving away free copies of your business plan.