Market market market and early. Every time I kept something quiet and tried to pick and choose who I launched with (especially when bootstrapping) it was a fai

Market market market and early. Every time I kept something quiet and tried to pick and choose who I launched with (especially when bootstrapping) it was a failure. There are very few stealth startups that ever are successful, and even fewer that didn't already have VC or major private funding with a serial entrepreneur with a largish team, so don't fall into that trap. Everyone goes through the thought that their "competition" is out there googling for new companies and watching for the next thing etc. Because a lot of time when you are starting a company that is what you are doing to find who is a competitor or what exists in market. However, 99% of an in market company's time (if they are a real company) is spent on clients and developing their product and market, not looking over their shoulder at some early startup that has no traction or clients yet. I had a mentor tell me many times, if you didn't market before you built you are already late and behind. He also told me, if you are afraid to talk about what you are building or what you have built then you don't have a good enough product. His point was you shouldn't worry about other companies, worry about you and get your product out and talk to as many people as you can. One last point, if your company can easily be replaced by an in market competitor just spending a week on a feature, then you don't have a company, you just implemented a feature already on their roadmap. That said, sometimes that one feature is dismissed by companies and is your ticket into the market and by the time they realize you are a threat because of your growth, it can be too late for them to shift momentum (or super costly i.e. cheaper to acquire you), if you do it correctly.