a stealth mode startup, private until launch

why document in stealth

if you're building in stealth, the diary can be private too, and it should be. the footage of the quiet period is the one thing that cannot be made later.

everything works as normal, nothing leaves

underway records you from today, once a day, exactly as it would if you were public: the same interview about the day you had, the same numbered episode, the same cut, the same archive. the only difference is where the finished episodes sit. in stealth they go into your vault, on your account, seen by nobody unless you share them. every episode has its own switch, and any episode can be held back permanently whatever the rest of the series does.

going public is two decisions

nothing is ever published on its own. going public is an explicit action, and it is two decisions on purpose. first you go public, which claims your address and lists the series; you can save the address earlier and nobody else can take it. then you release what is in the vault, oldest first, with episode zero at the top as the place to start. a feed cannot carry a forty-episode backfill, and a compilation throws away the detail people who care about a build actually want. so the vault lands whole on the surfaces built for an archive: your public page and the podcast feed, with a youtube playlist keeping the run in order as you post there.

every released episode carries the date it was filmed, not the date it went out. posting months-old footage undated next to today's would be the first genuinely dishonest thing in the product, so the vault is season zero and the public series starts at season one on launch day. a cold viewer is never in doubt about which episode is the current one.

the pitch is retroactive footage

on the day you go public you have the origin story on camera, in order, in your own voice: the day you were sure the pricing was wrong, the week it nearly died, the first customer. no competitor, no budget and no amount of hindsight can reconstruct that afterwards. a launch thread written from memory is a summary. the archive is the thing itself.

how to market a startup in stealth mode

how to market a startup in stealth mode sounds like a contradiction. it is not. stealth means not saying what it is. it does not mean saying nothing. a founder who has been visibly building for months, without saying what, launches to people who were waiting. a founder who was silent launches to nobody, and has to start the audience and the product on the same day.

so the job in stealth is to be seen working without the work being seen. that splits cleanly into what you can say and what you keep back.

• say that you are building something, and roughly who it is for, in the words you would use to a friend.
• say what is hard, described as a problem rather than a feature: the supplier who went quiet, the pricing you cannot settle, the thing you cut.
• say what the work is like: the hours, the doubts, what you learned this week, the decision you are circling.
• say when, if you know: a season or a month is a promise people can follow.
• keep back the name, the product, screenshots, customer names, numbers a competitor could use, and anything under an agreement.

teasers in your own words, reviewed before they go out

underway writes the words that go with every episode from your transcript, the same way it does for a public series. for a stealth series the article and the captions can say what you are working towards without saying what it is: anticipation without revealing anything. they are made of what you said, never invented, and nothing is posted on its own. read every one before it goes out and change any word you like. the review rule matters double in stealth, because the entire point is that nothing leaks.

the teaser you post comes from an episode that stays in the vault. the audience sees the post; the footage behind it waits for launch day, dated, in order.

record everything privately, launch with proof

the marketing asset a stealth founder most often lacks on launch day is proof of the work. record everything privately and on the day you go public there is a run of episodes, a launch trailer of about a minute cut from the vault's own episodes for the one post the feed gets, and a page to point that post at. if you tick feature my launch when you go public, the series appears on underway's launches page with how many episodes were waiting and how long you documented in private.

before launch, share the vault privately makes a watch-only link to every finished episode for an investor, an advisor or a first hire: only named people if you like, a password, an end date, nothing listed and nothing downloadable.

what it costs, and what does not change

none of the privacy costs extra. every series on underway is private until you choose to publish, on every plan, free included. releasing the whole vault on launch day, oldest first, with episode zero as start here and every filming date kept, comes with any paid plan, and so does the trailer cut from it. 14 days free first, with a card and nothing charged until day 15, and the raw footage is downloadable on every plan, free included, because it is your own face and voice.

the interview does not change in stealth, and neither does what it knows. it still reads the day from the places it happened, still keeps a private memory of what you said you would do, still starts each episode where the last one stopped. the only thing a stealth founder gives up is an audience for the period, and that is the thing they chose to give up anyway. what they keep is the record, which is the part that cannot be bought back.

if the diary should stay private until launch: private video diary app.

the footage from today is the only footage of today there will ever be. document daily. publish when it's worth it.