Ah yes this discussion. As always, I will chime in saying what I always say.
While it's true that you need to begin the iteration process with real customers sooner rather than later, you still have to actually build something for them to use. This is still going to be very hard work.
Yes, don't build features nobody has asked for yet, but do completely deliver on at least one core feature that actually makes people want more. Also, if you're a small team, and you crank out sub-par and not very well understood foundations, you're running the very real risk of having it all fall apart from underneath you when the first thing goes wrong. Again, don't go full k8s if you don't need to, but it's still very important to have a solid grasp on every aspect of your system.
You can't just skip the hard parts and get to the money printer. Or maybe you can, in which case, consider me jealous!
And when the hype curve gets ahead of your development speed, the internet can be very cruel.
There's a fine line between an MVP and chumming the waters.
Stealth Mode is meant to give you some buffer against competitors who agree with the kernel of your idea and want to copy it. If the idea is obvious, someone else might beat you to market while you're faffing about. If there is no danger of a competitor having the same idea, then customers might not 'get it' either, at which point waiting has cost you a fortune.
I can agree with that for the most part. The only point I don't exactly agree on is putting too much weight on being first to market.
Like you said, being first to market comes with the burden of having to educate the market about what the offering even is, whereas having competition means the market exists already and you won't have to do (as much of) this work.
In the end, there are plenty of examples of best-in-market beating first-to-market, and vice versa. And here we are trying to predict the weather :p
I'm not a big fan of first to market myself, but it does seem to get some people to pay attention, so I'm not afraid of dangling that carrot if it suits me.
Feedback is important. It's not the only thing that's important, but it's important. Sitting on a bunch of dark code means you won't get any feedback, and when you do get it, it won't be usable (too late to reverse course).
I've recently started thinking of businesses in similar terms to core game loops. Deep in the guts of every successful business there is one (or more) loops that keep the rest going. When I next try something i'll start with the loop.
While it's true that you need to begin the iteration process with real customers sooner rather than later, you still have to actually build something for them to use. This is still going to be very hard work.
Yes, don't build features nobody has asked for yet, but do completely deliver on at least one core feature that actually makes people want more. Also, if you're a small team, and you crank out sub-par and not very well understood foundations, you're running the very real risk of having it all fall apart from underneath you when the first thing goes wrong. Again, don't go full k8s if you don't need to, but it's still very important to have a solid grasp on every aspect of your system.
You can't just skip the hard parts and get to the money printer. Or maybe you can, in which case, consider me jealous!