So you have this great idea...

It's going to be the next big thing in the **insert market here** world. You've assembled a team, hammered out business plans and have come up with a buzzword filled name for your future success of a company. Whiteboards are filled with ideas, your engineers are cranking out code left and right, and the UI is a work of art. Everyone is excited. They want to scream from the rooftops about this ground breaking idea, the amazing team they have assembled, and the future of the market. But they can't.

You are in Stealth Mode.

You are hiding from the world so that no one can steal your precious snowflake of an idea. Your product isn't as "complete" as you'd like so no one can have it. Before you know it you're a year into your idea and you haven't shipped anything. You & your team are burnt out. You're starting to lose interest. Not shipping creates a feeling of not accomplishing anything, even though you may have achieved a lot behind the scenes.

MVP

If you've done your homework and understand your potential customers' needs then your product is still valuable with a very simplistic set of functionality. Getting it out in front of people as early as possible is key. Get eyes on it, get feedback, and iterate. You'll never anticipate how your customers will use it or all the feature requests they have in mind so don't try to. Launch it as a beta, charge nothing or a fraction of what you plan to charge, and focus on what people really need instead of what you think they need. This is something that I wish a previous startup I was a part of would have done. We focused too much on being perfect instead of actually shipping and ended up getting passed by "inferior" competitors. Don't repeat those mistakes. Ship.