Bullshit of the Month: "We're in Stealth Mode"

On LinkedIn, I see founders declare publicly what they are doing with their time without providing any product updates. “We’re building in stealth”, they say, trying to make it sound like they are behind enemy lines to save the world, or keeping a beautiful innovation pristine and clean from human eyes until its completely formed.

Newsflash: Nobody is waiting. Nobody cares.

And that’s what founders are trying to fight against while unarmed, without money and with finite equity. In the quiet, they feel the knife twist as the manufactured hype disappears into the void.

The truth is, “stealth” usually isn’t about secrecy. It’s about survival. It’s the shield you hold up when you don’t yet have culture, when you’re trying to conjure energy out of nothing, and it feels easier to say “hidden” than “empty.”

I get it. Creating culture from zero is brutal. You’re asking people to show up when the room is bare, to believe when the scoreboard reads zero. That’s not cowardice—it’s the hardest work of all.

But culture isn’t magic. It doesn’t appear out of thin air because you’ve got a clever idea or a flashy logo. It’s built in cadence. You show up every week, even when there’s nothing dramatic to announce. You share the vision, celebrate tiny wins, find common ground, create real venues for connection. You grind. You do the work.

And slowly, people shift. They stop showing up out of curiosity and start staying because it feels like a mission. Even when their equity is technically worth nothing, they carry the weight with you—because the culture you built gave them a reason to.

So if you’re tempted to hide behind stealth, remember this: it won’t save you. The only thing that will is the discipline to show up in the open, again and again, until the fire catches.

At Startup Oasis, we build loud, move together, and then take the throne.