There's a real trap in the 'stealth mode' playbook. Keeping everything under wraps until launch day sounds smart in theory—minimize competition, control the narrative, avoid early criticism. Except reality doesn't cooperate. Projects built in silence often just stay silent. They never ship. The momentum dies, the team gets scattered, and suddenly three years pass with nothing to show.

Meanwhile, the stuff we shipped publicly? Different story entirely. Yeah, you get exposed to feedback early. Yeah, people poke holes in your roadmap. But you also build momentum, attract collaborators, and iterate based on real signals instead of assumptions. The friction becomes a feature, not a bug.

It's counterintuitive but the data keeps pointing the same direction: transparency breeds success; secrecy breeds graveyard projects.