One exception is if direct competitors get a whiff of your upcoming killer, differentiating feature.
A smart competitor will try to cut you off at the pass. For example, they may decide to offer the same thing before you do. Or they may prep their argument to customers & the public as to why your feature isn't good. And it will light a fire under the competitors ass regardless.
This is typically relevant to direct competitors. For example, the free storage wars between Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo Mail.
If you have an idea for a newfangled iPhone todo list app or whatever, yeah, nobody's gonna steal that.
This actually happened to me a few months ago. The field only had a few competitors and I followed the usual advice of getting at least 'something' out there. The problem was, I did too good a job of showing off how much better my product would become.
The main competitor updated their product and website to list all their new features, clearly inspired directly by my product to the point of even using the same copy in the feature descriptions!
Stealth mode does have some benefits when dealing with smart competition.
A smart competitor will try to cut you off at the pass. For example, they may decide to offer the same thing before you do. Or they may prep their argument to customers & the public as to why your feature isn't good. And it will light a fire under the competitors ass regardless.
This is typically relevant to direct competitors. For example, the free storage wars between Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo Mail.
If you have an idea for a newfangled iPhone todo list app or whatever, yeah, nobody's gonna steal that.