Stealth vs Hype: strategies for startups

02/03/13 21:08:00    

By Michael Mealling

The recent spate of articles(1 and 2) completely missing the point on asteroid mining brings up a problem many startups have regardless of their industry: when and where should you be on the “so stealthy you Mom doesn't even know” vs “buying Super Bowl ads” spectrum?

At Masten Space we started off trying to get as much hype as possible. We were there during the early days of the commercial side of the industry so we had to fight to get anyone to listen to us. Very few understood the business or the opportunity so much of what we talked about was what we could do if we executed technically. Much of what we talked about was what we were actually building. In the industry at that time bending metal was huge and needed to be talked about.

Planetary Resources, on the other hand, was in stealth mode as Arkyd Astronautics for almost two years before it emerged very publicly. PRI could do this because it didn't need funding. There was nothing to be gained by being public. Deep Space Industries, on the other hand, needs to find investors. By hyping the company early there is some hope the company can attract the investors that were (almost literally) throwing money at PRI. PRI has the funding necessary to execute its plan regardless of what mainstream media thinks of the industry. DSI could be doing damage by making claims it can't deliver on to early.

That same set of issues applies to any startup. Pushing a PR plan has to serve some specific business need. If you can build the first version (even if its an MVP) without funding then yea, hyping that up makes sense since you are looking for your initial customers and investors to help you to start executing.

If you can't build anything until you find funding then you are in a very dangerous position. Any PR you do to try and attract investors runs the risk of looking like puffery and vaporware. You may have done all of the customer discovery necessary and have discovered a great business model. But if you can't get it off the ground without large amounts of money then you need to investigate other bootstrapping methods (crowdfunding small steps comes to mind).

So think very carefully about where you want to be on that spectrum. You can do irreparable harm to your brand if you aren't careful.