Founders in stealth / pre-launch - why? (+ dinner in SF!)

It used to be fashionable to be "in stealth," but then our collective wisdom shifted to "launch early and launch often." In my experience, there are two good reasons for this:

The first reason is that it's often more important to figure out whether people want what you're building than it is to figure out whether you can build the best possible version of it. Launching early gives you the opportunity to either pivot or iterate quickly. Launching is learning.

The second reason is that competition just isn't as dangerous as we tend to think. The quote "idea maze" metaphor is apt here. Startups aren't a race. They're a marathon in an idea maze, and you're far more likely to reach a dead end and kill your startup that way than you are to be crushed by a competitor.

Okay, so if launch early and launch often is the 90th percentile advice, there are still cases where it makes sense to stay in stealth later. Also, when you're really, really early, it takes a little bit of time to build a minimum viable or minimum lovable product that you can launch.

I'm curious how people at the early stages are thinking about this!

If you haven't launched yet or you've consciously delayed your launch, are you delaying it intentionally or because you still feel the product isn't ready? Or is there something that you're worried about with launch that you're trying to address before you launch?

Also, if you're in San Francisco and want to connect with other stealth / pre-launch founders, I'm doing a dinner with @Rho (banking + finance for startups) on May 1st, and there are a few spots left! Comment below and I'll reach out.