How do you define "stealth"?

Is stealth really a matter of locking yourself and your team away in the proverbial garage, working in utter isolation into the day you launch your product? If that's the case, then it's difficult to make an argument that stealth mode is anything but a bad idea.

But as Trada CEO Niel Robertson argued in a blog post earlier this year, there may be situations when companies can and should be stealth. Robertson argues that not being a public player doesn't mean that companies aren't getting customer input.

He writes, "In the beginning there are three basic things every startup needs: experts to give you input on your product as you're building it, users to help you beta test your product in a real-life setting, customers who will give you real money for what you're building and take real risk in doing so. You need all of these people to bake the cake." Can you gather enough of these beta testers and beta customers without blogging about it? "If yes," he argues, "you don't need to talk publicly about what you're doing."

As Robertson notes, once you do talk publicly, you need to be ready to devote the necessary resources to that. You need to be prepared to engage in conversation, not simply broadcast your message. You need to have the infrastructure, the resources, and the processes to deal with inquiries.

Engineers aren’t perfect. Flaws in software and hardware design are only natural in the tech industry. But what is not commonplace is knowing how to effectively deal with the fallout when engineering flaws become known.

Apple’s “Antennagate” is the most recent high-profile product flaw at a tech company, and one that, so far, has left Apple (mostly) unscathed. Their example offers startups a prime example on how to adroitly handle a product-flaw crisis.

Eric Dezenhall, a highly regarded Washington, D.C.-based crisis management expert, begins his analyses by reviewing three questions the public asks when high-profile mistakes are made:

• Was the sin episodic or chronic?
• Has there been sufficient repentance?
• Do we like you?

The public will weigh the responses to the above questions and then render a judgment as to whether the mistake is forgivable. When it comes to Antennagate, it’s instructive to analyze how Apple was able to frame their response around these questions. The result offers three lessons for smaller tech startups that don’t have the resources Apple does to address a product flaw.

Too many startup execs place too much emphasis on the big stage launch.  There are many problems with this:

Your chances of being selected aren’t great - When you are selected you share the stage with 49 other companies (in the case of TechCrunch50.  It is a great show but would be 10x more valuable if it were TC20) - Most people pay attention to the first 5 companies.  Maybe 10.  By company 22 it’s hard to remember what any of them did. - Journalists don’t know enough about your company before the show, don’t have time for proper research, and you will be competing for their time afterward with 49+ other companies that want them to write about you - If you’re Yammer, Mint or RedBeacon (all winners) you’re knighted with wonderful coverage.  Many other great companies are not. - So I’ve always advised people that if they do launch at a big show, the most important public relations work they do is after the conference.  Use the fact that you were on an anointed list to build credibility when you eventually approach journalists (and VC’s, customers, employees)