I, for one, disagree with almost every claim in this article. I think the positions the author takes are too open to controversy to reach the top of somewhere like hacker news.
They don't need to tell you the full story. But saying- we are trying to solve how people discover new products that their friends buy. We should have a product out in the next few months. That's a lot better than saying we are stealth. You didn't give away anything.
The problem is the response to that is almost always "Oh you mean like ______?". The answer to that is almost certainly no, but you can't really say or explain why unless you reveal too much about your startup at too early a stage. Then people get the impression you are working on some stupid idea that has already been done.
There are a lot of reasons not to reveal what you are working on exactly, but giving the industry isn't necessarily the best thing to do either. A lot of experienced founders will also do this because they don't want wild rumors flying around about what they are building / working on next from a one-liner that they mentioned without wanting or being able to get into the details about it with some stranger.
Agree perhaps, from a psychological standpoint I say stealth all the time because I am plain sick and tired of telling every person whom inevitably asks the question, "so whats your startup working on". I'd rather think of the code I need to write the next day or just talk about macro economy and other things. My life is 24/7 startup already. And may I add: seasoned entrepreneurs don't ask THAT question they either wait for you do talk about it yourself or don't pester you with it because they have all been there too.
