Peer reviewed startups

In academia the paper is the product. In startups the idea for the startup is not the product, but the execution is. And how <i>good</i> the execution is, well that's determined by how successful the startup is. Life is the ultimate peer review.

If you already have a version 1, why not just submit it to the market for judgement? That's who ultimately judges it anyway.

Unless you are doing something truly unusual or something that requires a lot of investment in time and capital, you should just tell as many people as you know about it and see what happens and reiterate based on feedback.<p>Consider some YC companies that are still fine-tuning their product. They've been reviewed by the likes of pg and co and had the benefit of their advice for 3 months as well as the benefit of experience from the large pool of YC alumni. But even they need to fine tune based on what the larger market thinks.

This seems incredibly dangerous, a bunch of smart, tech-savvy people are exactly the last people I want seeing my site.

I think this could be really valuable, although I wouldn't really restrict it to 3 random people.<p>Flickr for example, have groups that require you to comment on the previous 2 photos to post in that group. That doesn't mean all photos in the group have only 2 comments, many have much more because it creates a culture of critique.<p>As much there has been talk about "Not going dark" for programmers I think this is equally true of businesses. If you believe in what you do enough to tell other people about it then they can help keep you going in the right direction. If you stay in stealth mode forever you could be digging your own grave without knowing it.

I thought that posting here for feedback on your startup already accomplished this?

I think people choosing to invest or not invest in you is probably the best form of peer review in business. The fact they are committing their own money forces honesty and helps to ensure that the quality of insight is high (mainly as bad investors will,eventually, stop investing, while good ones will invest more).<p>I hope I am wrong and what your looking for can be developed. It really would be an excellent service.

On a similar note:<p><a href="http://vertonghen.wordpress.com/2008/06/25/i-have-an-idea/" rel="nofollow">http://vertonghen.wordpress.com/2008/06/25/i-have-an-idea/</a>

So... you're suggesting what's currently called Closed Alpha.<p>I guess the innovation here is creating a randomized pool of alpha-testers.

if it were a prototype or demo, it would be even better. i'm trying to figure this out right now.. <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=243760" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=243760</a>

Startups often start in "stealth mode" for a reason.