Virtually every tech startup that I met with during my years as a consultant/blogger/media analyst wanted me to help them articulate how they were different from everyone else out there.
That was an obvious need because in order to get funding from VCs and adoption by the public, these companies needed to make a case compelling enough to get people to take that first step — which usually was that first click.
After that, it was a matter of a good enough user experience to attract repeated usage, hopefully massive repeat usage as in addictive behavior, a willingness to spend money, and communicate to others in a way that attracted still more usage.
But truth to tell, most of them did not have the kind of unique idea that could be fully differentiated from their competitors. Rather, they tended to be poised at the edge of a new consumer or business trend along with several other groups and probably only one was going to succeed in becoming the category-killer.
My work in these cases involved helping to forge their story. And when I think back on it, my contribution in all cases was only as good as the story they actually had to tell.
The groups I worked with fell into two broad categories — for-profit startups and non-profit institutions expanding online. Those are seemingly radically different creatures but in fact they have a lot in common.
Resources — both financial and human — are in short supply, at least at the quantity needed to sustain a major launch. They all had competitors. Most had visionary founders or leaders. Some of them were trying to fashion sexy founding myths.
As a journalist, writer and editor, I could improve their use of language, advise them strategically on positioning and help shape their story. But I couldn’t help them create a founder story on the basis of a fiction.
Their stories had to be true. And the product or service they were offering had to deliver on its promise. Due to that irrevocable state of play, my help was only as successful as their truth allowed.
In this case, what is true in business is also true in life.
(I wrote this in 2022.)
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