Starting a company from scratch is hard. Communicating what you’re building is harder.
You are the founder and build what’s in your mind. You see the end product that no one else has experienced yet. You see a future that will exist one day, but that no one can see yet. You see all the facets of that finished product and future that shine and sparkle like countless facets of a beautifully cut gem. You want so badly for the world to see what you see, and so you describe those facets, every single one of them. And therein, lies the problem.
I realized today that I’ve been going about it wrong for the past year of my startup. Here’s a list of what I’ve learned so far:
Founder Voice vs Startup Voice
What’s the difference? Well, when I’m describing the product I’m building in my voice, the founder’s voice, I’m talking about all the cool things that interest me as the developer and product guy. This is primarily features and the technical implementations of them. How I’ve hacked something so that I can make it do something it wasn’t built to do. I can deep dive into any of these features and why they’re so cool…to me.
You see, a startup is not the founder, because customers of the startup don’t care about any of that. Customers are not even sure if you they care about your product at all. Instead, they want to know what problem of theirs you can solve. If it’s a problem they care about, then they’ll dig in for some more info.
Like Nothing Before
If your startup is copying an existing product, it’s easy to describe. Sure, you have to think up new and differentiating value prop, but people know what you’re selling. (See my old consulting company website to see what I mean. We all know what dev shops do, but why should they choose MY dev shop.) However, if you’re trying to build something new, people have no idea what you’re talking about because they’ve never seen anything like it before.
Imagine trying to explain a human to someone who’s never seen one. “It’s got 2 balls of flesh that see you. It has appendages that can feel you. It can uses the same orifice to eat, breathe and communicate.” Sounds pretty scary, right? Well, that’s how we come off when we’re trying to describe our “never before seen” product.
Now that our product is in beta, we have videos of it in action. It’s so much easier to show people a video than try to describe it. They appreciate it, because we live in a video world.
Emotions vs Features
You think the features are what’s going to sell your vision, but it wasn’t features that made you start the business. I didn’t say, “It would be really cool to be mesh multiple technologies to create a fun AR experience.” Instead, I asked, “Can I recreate the joy of playing toys with my cousin when we were little kids?” I miss those days. I miss those emotions. I miss my younger self. If I can somehow pull my current self, back to those days and feel even a smidge of those emotions again. I’d give anything for that. In fact, I’ve sacrificed every thing I have to do just that. It was worth every penny. Emotions drive customers but more importantly, they drive founders. We forget that and think it’s the product details that’s most important. It’s not though.