
Why Do Startups Do This? - ringmaster
http://asymptomatic.net/2012/07/26/2969/why-do-startups-do-this
======
mgurlitz
> The big logo-y thing at the top of your blog page? Yes, the one that
> currently links to your blog? Right, that one. It shouldn't link to your
> damned blog! Link it to your product's home page instead.

Every time I have to manually cut the /blog/ out of the location bar I wonder
how many users were lost by requiring that little bit of extra effort.

~~~
iaskwhy
This. I got downvoted the other day for saying that about Kicksend:
<http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=4159367>

Maybe because it was not on topic but it does get on my nerves.

~~~
dsrguru
On a very similar note, if you want people to upvote you on another HN thread,
you should really probably link to news.ycombinator. _com_ instead of . _org_
so people like me won't have to sign in again. :)

~~~
recursive
I'd argue that .org is better so people like me won't have to sign in again.

~~~
geon
Since you are on the same site already, use a relative url.

------
ed209
Same goes for newsletters / emails that I joined via a splash page or holding
page. At the very top of the email tell me:

    
    
        1. You're receiving this email because you joined XXXX's beta waiting list on xx June 2012
    
        2. XXXX is a product that helps you do ....
    

Basically remind me what you do and how you got my details.

~~~
ringmaster
Better yet, don't launch until you've actually launched. On the list of
startup behaviors that drive me crazy, right after the two in my post, comes
"Sign up to be notified of when (hah, IF!) we actually do something" pages. To
paraphrase Yoda: Launch or launch not, there is no sign up to be notified.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
I couldn't disagree more. Pre-launch signups give you a way to measure
interest, a group to communicate with about features, betas and the like, and
a crowd to talk to when you do launch. otherwise, you are developing in a
black hole.

~~~
ringmaster
Then it is important that the emails that are collected are then used for
doing that. I have yet to receive anything more than a "verify your address"
email based on submitting mine to any of these pre-launch email collection
sites. Nobody has communicated with me about features, or tried to use my
interest to help develop their brand. Perhaps if that were the case, I'd look
upon these pages more favorably. But my thought in general still stands: If
you don't have anything to share, you possibly should reconsider collecting
emails until you do.

~~~
adetayo
I agree, pre-launch sign-ups are important but there needs to be engagement
with the emails collected until the product is ready. Fab did a great job with
this by creating a mood board that allowed folks to post stuff they like
before their actual service launched.

------
jiggy2011
I hate it when people decide to slap a blog section on their website and it is
completely disjointed from the rest of the site.

Usually this seems to happen because they have used some customised system to
build their website and then just slapped wordpress or something on to use as
the blog.

So as mentioned in the article you hit the blog page and "home" now takes you
back to the home of the blog even though the site looks like the rest of the
site.

Even worse when it's a tumblr or something and you have now ended up in a
completely seperate Silo.

I can't imagine this is good for SEO purposes either.

The number of time this sin is committed by companies selling _design_
services boggles the mind.

~~~
stephengillie
When starting O2O Trade to sell HDMI & USB cables, we included a blog because
it was "one of the things successful startups do". None of us knew what to put
into the blog, and most entries were a measly paragraph. Even so, our blog
entries showed up in Google searches more often than our static product pages.
Searching for our company leads people to these little stubs of text instead
of our products.

Adding a blog seems like a "good idea at the time", but unless you have a good
blogger on your team, it'll just be an afterthought-task that gets shuffled
around because nobody wants to do it. Don't let a blog waste your time and
steal focus from the rest of your company.

~~~
jiaaro
sounds like you just don't know what to do with the traffic to your blog posts

------
sopooneo
This all boils down to a rule I have for myself whenever addressing a large
audience: start by stating the obvious.

This does two things. First, it gives people an easy mental on-ramp to follow
the thread of what you are saying. And second, it forces you to back way up
and cover the ground that is so central to your world you would probably
forget to say it, even though it is completely unknown to most of your
audience.

~~~
astrofinch
Yep, people tend to assume that everyone knows what they know by default. See
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/kg/expecting_short_inferential_dista...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/kg/expecting_short_inferential_distances)

------
debacle
The "Tell me what your product does on every blog page" is one that Atwood is
great at. The SO byline is very unobtrusive, but I would also assume
informative to anyone who doesn't know what SO is.

It was so simple, and it has probably brought SO a ton of first-time viewers.

------
omgsean
I think some people want to blog without it seeming like one big advertising.
Sometimes I read articles on startup blogs and think "why are they even
writing about this" until I get 2/3rds of the way through and realize I'm
reading an infomercial.

~~~
nollidge
Seriously, just put your product link at the top-left (like OP says) and
_throw the tagline right next to it_. I'm not going to be offended that I'm
reading a branded blog.

------
dredmorbius
Wholehearted agreement with Owen's post.

On point #2: describe your product _in clear, what-it-does language_.

Mistakes I see are emphasizing: _how_ it does it (C, Java, OO, Rails, REST,
...), _where_ it does it (PC, mobile, Mac, Cloud, ...), "ecosystems" it
integrates with (Social, FB, Oracle, ...), _who_ your investors or team are
(VC, founders, investors...) etc. All of which may or may not be particularly
relevant, but ... they're not key to _me_ understanding what _you_ do. Tell me
these things, but focus on the _what_ first.

Use direct, actionable language, _not_ vague or nebulous terms. It's a "NFS
file security permissions auditor", not "Cloud information assets security
tool".

Describe a workflow or workflows _from the perspective of your users_. Not
developers. Not architects. Not

This doesn't just apply to startups. I use a lot of Free Software, and many of
these projects also fail to describe themselves clearly (though most,
especially over time, eventually get it right, if only because other people
can come in and rewrite idiotic descriptions). Reading through a list of
package descriptions from Debian or Ubuntu, where a pithy, one-line
description is your shingle to the world, should give a sense of good and bad
descriptions.

Even long-established technologies such as Java suffer from this.

At www.java.com we have "What is Java?": "Java allows you to play online
games, chat with people around the world, calculate your mortgage interest,
and view images in 3D, just to name a few. It's also integral to the intranet
applications and other e-business solutions that are the foundation of
corporate computing." Um. OK. open
<http://www.java.com/en/download/whatis_java.jsp>

At Oracle, we have a Java landing page with ... no description of the
technology or its components (which aren't self-evident):
<http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/index.html>

One of the best succinct summaries I've seen in recent memory is from jwz's
"Java Sucks" page:

there are four completely different things that go by the name "Java": 1. A
[programming] language, 2. An enormous class library, 3. A virtual machine, 4.
A security model. <http://www.jwz.org/doc/java.html>

Now _that_ is something I can wrap my head around (he also goes on to describe
strengths and weaknesses of each component, good essay, read it, it's still
disappointingly relevant).

Note though: the best product description comes from a critic. If you fail to
clearly define yourself, your critics will.

~~~
fl3tch
You said to describe the product from the perspective of the user, not the
developer, but then you preferred the developer description of Java (language,
library, VM) over the user description (play games, chat with people, view
images in 3D). It does seem like your average person landing on the Java page
cares more about the second list. I mean, what the hell is a virtual machine
anyway?

~~~
eridius
Seems to me that Java's users are developers. No non-developer will ever
install Java by itself, they'll only install it because something else they're
installing requires it.

~~~
dredmorbius
Which Java are we talking about?

Again, as jwz noted, it's four things:

1\. A programming language.

2\. A class library.

3\. A virtual machine.

4\. A security model.

As a systems admin, I play mostly in 3, deploying, tuning, configuring,
monitoring (to the extent that piss-poor Java tools allow any sort of
monitoring -- want a dump of what's in memory? Sure ... let's just pause _ALL_
activity on the VM for the next 25 minutes), troubleshooting, and
patching/updating the VM.

I'm also concerned with the security model, within the parameters of my other
system security concerns.

For the language and class libraries, it's largely ensuring that what my devs
need and use is provisioned on our test, staging, and production hosts.
There's also digging through some of the logging / crash / debug output to see
if I can sort out what's wrong and fix it myself, or punt it over the wall to
Engineering.

So no, it's not just developers.

------
porterhaney
Same could be said of this blog:

Asymptomatic There must be intelligent life down here

Doesn't tell me very much about who the author is, what he typically writes
about.

~~~
dcosson
Was going to say the same thing - presumably your goal is that I will like the
blog post and by extension you, and if so I'll be curious what you do, what
your area of expertise is, etc.

I can only hope the irony isn't lost on him - maybe Owen (whoever he is) is
purposefully giving us an example of how annoying it is to not explain what
you do on your blog.

------
frankphilips
While I do agree that the product link should be obvious on the blog page, I
don't think it should be overly pervasive. A logo on the sidebar is more then
enough. The main purpose of the blog is to write engaging content that
correlates with your product. Startups should stop trying to use the blogs
just to increase SEO rankings, rather focus on creating conversations and
build relationships with potential customers and users.

------
hansy
Thank you. It's irritating when the blog link is blog.companyname.com and I
have to manually replace the "blog" part with "www."

~~~
rhizome
Generally I think that's a side effect of outsourcing. They point a subdomain
of their domain at wp.com or whatever blog host and leave it at that. Of
course the blog host is going to make it a default that the corner link go
back to themselves. Traceroute to the blog and I think you'll usually see that
it's a separate host than their www.

------
francov88
Both very good points. I've even been guilty of it here and there... the trick
is in making sure that the call to action is simple, present and not being
deterred by anything else.

Having friends review is great, but sitting an intelligent stranger down and
asking them to perform certain actions is what most startups need.

------
alttab
Many a time I've posted on HN comments something to the effect of, "that's
great, but I have no idea what Your product is." it's extra lethal if your
company or product name doesn't describe anything at all to those not familiar
with "FooBarlr".

------
efa
I've run into this so often; I'm glad I'm not the only one. I often have to
revert to modifying the URL just to get to their main page (change
blog.company.com to company.com) after finding no possible way to link to the
home page.

------
krogsgard
"If you're using software like WordPress or PHPBB (What that hell were you
thinking?)"

What exactly did WordPress have to do with his point?

Using WordPress for your entire product site makes a ton of sense for most
companies. You can have your blog and your product info all on the same site.
No subdomain blog. No separate SEO. It's simple to link the logo to the
product, and have custom sidebars or after-content widget areas with a call to
action. Your blog is part of your site, and feeds traffic to your product.
Everything integrated. Easy to use. What's his problem again?

~~~
westi
Owen wants more people to use Habari instead.

Habari was started by a group of ex-WordPress developers -
<http://asymptomatic.net/2007/01/09/29/whats-up>

~~~
ringmaster
Please don't misunderstand. If you want to use WordPress that's great. My
"What were you thinking" comment refers to PHPBB only, which I've seen used
more than once for the primary blog for a startup. I'll use more commas next
time or something.

That said, Habari is also a good choice for a blog. ;)

~~~
westi
Cool. I completely agree that using PHPBB for a startup blog would be
"strange".

------
BryanB55
Good points, I haven't really noticed this all that often.

I'm actually designing a blog for a new startup now and the first elements I
created were at the top of the right sidebar with a quick "what we do" summary
with a call to action button at the end. Also used the author summary box at
the bottom of the article with similar content. I think just a quick "We're
xyz company and we do [whatever benefit you offer]" and a "Learn More" button
is a quick, clean and concise way of putting that out there.

------
JonLim
Could not agree more.

Using something like Wordpress, it's not difficult to put a little box at the
bottom of every post explaining what your product is and where I can learn
more.

------
mgualt
I agree with the advice, and I offer some in return about Habari: hire someone
to make your demo video non-awful. The "muzak" and slow pacing alone were
enough to send me running away from the whole project. A production that
aesthetically displeasing is a sure sign of an unappealing
product/environment.

------
munsonbh
When you post a link to Habari at the bottom of your post, it would be nice if
the screenshot IMGs weren't broken on screenshots page. That is also annoying.

<http://habariproject.org/en/screenshots>

------
jazzychad
Yep, totally agree. I even wrote a very similar rant here several weeks ago:
[http://blog.jazzychad.net/2012/05/28/startups-fix-your-
blog-...](http://blog.jazzychad.net/2012/05/28/startups-fix-your-blog-
links.html)

------
thijser
Great advice! I just changed it for our blog, we had the big logo at the top
linking to the main page already, but I realized we didn't have a short
description of what we do. Blogger allowed this to be easily added to the
sidebar.

------
acangiano
I posted this not too long ago: [http://technicalblogging.com/5-common-
blogging-mistakes-made...](http://technicalblogging.com/5-common-blogging-
mistakes-made-by-startups/)

I cover the same two mistakes, plus a few more.

------
tsycho
To the OP: You link to your product, but when I click on the link, the images
don't work - <http://habariproject.org/en/screenshots>

------
tibbon
Similarly, a huge % of bloggers overall make it impossible to contact them via
their blog. I've never understood this unless you're intentionally being
evasive.

------
incision
I must have read about how Airbnb was "redefining the space"and taking all
sorts of problems at least half a dozen times before I had any idea what it
was.

------
benologist
I think there should be a #3 .... startups that devote their blogs to random
hn fluff about _being a startup_ rather than whatever they actually do.

------
kin
Completely agree! The extra effort to go to the actual product's website makes
me wonder if the startup even knows this is an issue.

------
bluetidepro
Anyone have a mirror or different URL? It seems to be down for me...

~~~
mike
Give it another try.. it was down for me too but seems to be back now. Or try
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sugexp=chrome,m...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sugexp=chrome,mod=12&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fasymptomatic.net%2F2012%2F07%2F26%2F2969%2Fwhy-
do-startups-do-this)

------
davidradcliffe
Amen! I've been saying the same thing:
<https://twitter.com/dwradcliffe/status/209703542192222208>

------
mindcrime
Good point. We don't currently do this very well on the Fogbeam[1] blog[2],
and I'll be making it a point to address that later this evening. Thanks for
posting this and bringing this point to the forefront!

[1]: <http://www.fogbeam.com>

[2]: <http://fogbeam.blogspot.com>

------
tudorw
I recommend excessive use of the <blink> tag around any product mentions to
really hammer things home :)

~~~
tudorw
I always thought it classy when someone took the time to write something
meaningful and share it without it just being a blatant advertisement for
their product, I am alone on this one it seems, so be it...

~~~
ianlevesque
They can write interesting architectural or business things without it being a
"blatant advertisement". Often if I read that someone is using Redis in a
clever way I'm curious what they are using it for and would appreciate an easy
way to get to their main site.

