Remember, planning is a tool that only works in the presence of a long and stable operating history. And yet, do any of us feel that the world around… - Eric Ries

If a competitor can outexecute a startup once the idea is known, the startup is doomed anyway. The reason to build a new team to pursue an idea is that you believe you can accelerate through the Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop faster than anyone else can. If that’s true, it makes no difference what the competition knows. If it’s not true, a startup has much bigger problems, and secrecy won’t fix them. Sooner or later, a successful startup will face competition from fast followers.

The goal of a startup is to figure out the right thing to build — the thing customers want and will pay for — as quickly as possible.

This is one of the most important lessons of the scientific method: if you cannot fail, you cannot learn.