My Startup Exhibitionist Fetish
Just read When in Doubt, Make it Public, that linked to an old Jason Kottke piece. Both discuss the somewhat counterintuitive fact (at least for me) that making information public often turns out well for all of the parties involved. It stoked my open book startup fantasy. When I'm thinking about things, I like to imagine doing the exact opposite of my gut reaction or what most people would do. I'm a private person by nature and hold most things, especially business information, close to the vest. While building Slicehost, I developed this weird fantasy to reveal everything - right down to customer counts, overall growth and accounting details. If someone asked, we'd answer, publicly. A business exhibitionist fetish if you will. I think it started with the waitlist post. People were upset, we were at wit's end and laid everything out. The response was great. Public companies reveal their financials quarterly, but I'm envisioning something more frequent and informal. The upside would be complete transparency with customers and possible suitors, the downside would be competitors (current or potential) getting a look behind the curtain. Then again, maybe nobody would care and it would be a geeky case of TMI. The Dropsend sale comes to mind as a related example, if you know of any others let me know.
