Sometimes building a startup feels like being part of a nuclear state during a Cold War. Each company is a State, and clients are the citizens.
In your State you do things your way, with your values and patriotism. You want to be vibrant. You want that every one of your citizens around you is happy, users and colleagues all being happy and rich and successful. You build products, sell them, improve them, even produce some artsy stuff!
But your competitors are doing the same, and their users and team also look happy, and they seem to be growing.
Then there’s your nuclear program. You have a couple of next-gen projects that keep pushing the envelope. They’re not so much projects, they’re more like ideas. Big as news. Make a loud bang stuff. No one knows how many of these nuclear subs you got. They’re always underwater and not one is 100% alike, so no one knows what they can do or where they’re heading. Everything is very hush hush, mostly things are whispered between founders and a couple of engineers. Sometimes they surface and people see “ok this is where they are”, but people really only see the periscope, sometimes the conning tower. But they submerge again, moving with the tide of the world’s deepest dreams and fears, under the splashy waves. And you keep bidding your time, observing, learning. Planning.
You plan because you think you might really go nuclear. You might have to be radical and annihilate others. Open source it all, make your product available at zero cost and make money somewhere else, launch a partnership with a juggernaugt. Scorched earth, napalm, dr. Strangelove shit. Launching such an attack will disrupt everything you built until now too, your partners will be puzzled, even your own leadership. It was just a theory, they say. Not to you. You kept thinking about it. If its done properly, then this project will become the best weapon ever built. And then maybe it’s worth to put it to use.
Aim it to the heart of those bastards.
No. Founders worry more about their own options than their competitors. It’s expensive to make many crazy moves. It’s risky too. There must be a purpose. Even dialing up the paranoia from 50% to 90% could crush us. You feel that, and it feels good because it means you’re not actually insane. Better to keep improving on the idea slowly in your mind, launch it later when you’re ready. Maybe some other time, some other product.
You move with caution. Alas, your oponents can do it too. It would be mutually assured destruction.
So you send notice to submerge and keep things quiet for now. Use your ideas and the tech for something useful. Obey the rules, let the industry flow, be aggressive and make money, do another trip around the globe, refuel, and keep pushing.
Your competitor will fall on their own.