A stealth startup is a startup that carries out a majority of its operations under the radar of the public. They usually operate in stealth for some time until they’re ready to open up services to the public.

Startups remain in stealth for many reasons, ranging from less pressure to protecting ideas from potential competitors. In this article, we look at the pros and cons of stealth startups, how to track stealth startups, entrepreneurial talents, and current employees, and Identify Investment signals with Proxycurl.

The Pros

1. Lesser pressure: Startups in stealth mode can build and iterate without external pressure to deliver to the public. It helps them drown out the noise with a focus on delivering a finished product.

2. Avoidance of regulation: Startups can perfect their consumer protection and other regulatory requirements in stealth before launching their product to avoid regulatory punishments.

3. Idea protection: Building in stealth allows startups to protect their ideas from the potential and established competition, while they perfect their penalties.

The Cons

1. Lack of feedback: Startups in stealth cannot perform user research and gather feedback. They are left to build with theories that might not find product market fit.

2. Small customer base: Due to lack of publicity stealth startups have a small customer base and usually have to increase their marketing budget to gather more customers.

Discovering Stealth Startups With Proxycurl

Proxycurl provides tools and data to discover the wealth of stealth startups. The Finding Stealth Startups tool by Proxycurl helps track the movements of entrepreneurial talents and follow current employees and their activity between jobs.

Proxycurl also provides an Investment Signal tool to help get alternative investment data to identify hiring velocity, track the rate of change of employees within a company, and identify and track prospective founders.

Check out more about Stealth Startups for more information.