I'm not going to tell how you should run your business, or how much privacy you should give up. I've run both closed and open door businesses, and they both have advantages for your business. But since I have quite a bit of experience in keeping my identity hidden when running startups, I thought I would be helpful in assisting you if you need to keep your venture closed-door.
As I mentioned in a comment yesterday:
Your business can be completely legitimate and honest, and still be closed-door style.
There are a number of reasons to run a business closed-door:
- Sometimes you're working on a secret project that could have nasty repercussions if your boss found out
- Some software companies will "own" anything you build in your off-time, in assumption that you built it using their intellectual property (I've heard)
- You need to keep privacy for your family's safety
- You don't want the attention
- You need to keep the appearances that you are a large company in order to build customer trust in the solidness of your company
- You need to keep the appearances that you are a large company in order to leverage business deals
The closed method is a spectrum, with degrees of how much information you give out. I'll be giving advice on protecting your privacy using the closed door option from time to time, since I've had experience with it.
A few of the many things I'll cover to help protect your privacy are special private methods of:
- domain registration
- setting up a phone number
- getting a real mailing address
- keeping your story straight
So please be patient and I'll get to them over time. I don't want to bore others with 2 weeks worth of posts about it. So I'll interweave them in the postings over time, tagging them with the make yourself look big tag.
Are you going closed door? If so, what are your reasons? You can comment below and post as Guest.
Next post: choosing an optimal business name