Asking people who are used to getting free business advice whether they think not sharing free business advice that works is a good idea, is not a good idea. Hence the comments here.
I think STFU is brilliant advice and I do it myself. A metaphor:
In 1866 a young shepherd named Erasmus Jacobs found a small white stone on the bank of the Orange River in South Africa. It turned out to be a 21 carat diamond which they named "Eureka" and it kicked off a diamond rush in the area that centered around Colesberg Kopje. Turns out that this little hill was an old volcanic pipe filled with diamonds and every prospector for thousands of miles descended on the place and started digging.
Every prospector had their own pulley and own demarcated area they were allowed to dig.
So if you were digging in, what is today called Kimberly's big hole, and started finding way more diamonds than anyone else, what would you do? Start giving everyone around you advice about how and where they should dig?
Sadly, business is largely a zero-sum game because customers and their money that we compete for are finite.
Business is largely a zero-sum game with your direct competitors.
But the only reason capitalism works is that it's a clearly positive-sum game overall. New competitors are mainly worth investing in because they figure out a way to create more value for customers. That in turn makes both customers and producers richer.
Silicon Valley does so well partly because there's a great culture of sharing information here. I agree with the main article: if you're raking it in and it isn't obvious, you shouldn't crow about it. But sharing techniques isn't a problem; money fountains like Google share open-source software and publish papers all the time.
You can't avoid fast-follow competitors by keeping your mouth shut; eventually people will notice your success no matter what you say. The best you can do is avoid it for a little bit.
It isn't even a zero-sum game with your direct competitors much of the time. For many software businesses, almost all of your marketshare will be stolen from competitors with names like "email" and "scribbling on pieces of paper." Similarly, for a small community newspaper, the biggest existential threat to your business is neither the other local papers nor any of the larger newspapers in the area — it's public apathy toward the whole product category. If you're in a market like that, and the other guys go out of business, that is not really good news for you.
For many businesses, "a rising tide lifts all boats" is the most accurate description of the field.
Compete easily with your direct competitors by "changing the game"
I guess the most understandable example (if maybe not 100% correct, and not even in the book) is Mac vs PC. If you want to compete in the PC market, it's a fierce competition. In the Mac market, there's only one seller (the Mac market is 'The Blue Ocean' created by Apple).
If STFU were really brilliant advice, you wouldn't need a few paragraphs of historical metaphor. The article writer wouldn't need to give a personal guarantee that publicizing your success will lead to troublesome clones. You and he could simply point to examples of web services that publicized their financial success, then got surpassed by clones.
Where are they? I'm not convinced that STFU really is brilliant advice. I'm not convinced that big companies with lots of resources will jump at the chance to clone an idea just because someone has shown it can generate enough profit to make an individual financially comfortable. I'm not convinced that small companies with the skill to execute well on a clone will choose someone else's idea over one they come up with themselves.
Clones do happen, but if there's a connection between publicizing financial success and getting eaten by clones, please show me. As far as I can tell, you get clones when you get popular, regardless of information you publish.
OK, that makes sense when an idea can be so easily cloned.
The original article now has a parenthetical note: (edit: if your 'trick' can be easily cloned)
I agree with the updated article and with your example. If mmaunder also conditionalizes his comment on the idea being easily cloned, we're all in agreement.
Sometimes STFU is brilliant advice, sometimes it's not.
In the semantic technology space I've seen some pretty astonishing stuff in the last few months, but almost all vendors have the problem that they're a few years ahead of where their customers are. It's like they're selling rocket fuel to people who drive Fords.
In a case like that, success for the individual might be a matter of optimizing the ecosystem (bigger pie, faster) rather than aiming for a bigger slice.
but I guess those vendors are not (yet) making out like bandits like the people the OP references. If your product is simple, profitable and easy to copy: STFU
Gives an interesting alternative to business as a zero sum game. Bob Young, founder of Red Hat:
"The challenge is to focus on market size, not just market share. When consumer demand for bottled water grows, Evian benefits, even though many of those consumers start with a bottle other than Evian. Red Hat, like Evian, benefits when other Linux suppliers do a great job building a taste for the product. The more Linux users there are overall, the more potential customers Red Hat has for our flavor.
The power of brands translate very effectively into the technology business. We have evidence of this in the Venture Capital investors who have recently invested in several Open Source software companies. The one common denominator between all of the investments to date have been that the companies or their products have great name recognition, and are recognized as being quality products. In other words, they have successfully established a brand."
Advice is like a band aid. Being successful is a process or a machine. It is nice giving and taking advice but in general i t it only serves mostly social purpose. I can't remember on what blog I read - most people aren't genuine when giving advice, but rather distort the story to serve as a badge of pride. It is better to give sounding advice rather then honest one for the advice giver.
As such only to find successful way to "dig" is to try it personally and find out your own way.
Advices are like recipes might be nice starting points since they give you some confidence that someone invested some time into them and in the end you have to make them your own.
Digging doesn't always apply to informational markekets - internet, software etc. As those shift so fast that anything is outdated before you ever know it.
Advice can be good, remember it - if it is a good story. Retell it, it might lead to some informal contact(anecdotes anyone?). Often other part of business is being well known - to be acquired / get new contacts / support.
And all good ole' Erasmus would've had to do is figure out everything to do with the diamond industry on his own! Easy game, right?
But seriously, if you stumble into a diamond mind worth a couple billion that does all the work for itself maybe you can find a way to keep all that money to yourself. But I'm willing to bet you're talking about 1% cases here, not the standard type of story that is brought up on HN.
Well if this shepherd didn't know anything about the mining industry, what about owning property?
He could have bought the mineral rights to the land, have a survey taken, realize there are billions in diamonds in them's hills, and have complete control of the entire mining operation and its profits.
Notre sure if the example is relevant, as I'm largely basing it on US law. But your argument doesn't really stand as an excuse to tell someone else.
I think STFU is brilliant advice and I do it myself. A metaphor:
In 1866 a young shepherd named Erasmus Jacobs found a small white stone on the bank of the Orange River in South Africa. It turned out to be a 21 carat diamond which they named "Eureka" and it kicked off a diamond rush in the area that centered around Colesberg Kopje. Turns out that this little hill was an old volcanic pipe filled with diamonds and every prospector for thousands of miles descended on the place and started digging.
Here's what it looked like:
http://historyproject.ucdavis.edu/marchandslides.bak/brantle...
Every prospector had their own pulley and own demarcated area they were allowed to dig.
So if you were digging in, what is today called Kimberly's big hole, and started finding way more diamonds than anyone else, what would you do? Start giving everyone around you advice about how and where they should dig?
Sadly, business is largely a zero-sum game because customers and their money that we compete for are finite.