
Perceived Legitimacy: How to Visually Prepare Your Startup for Fundraising - aleberry
http://aleberrycreative.com/swag/perceived-legitimacy/
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MichaelBurge
Make sure you stock the employee fridge with La Croix. It shows the investors
you're cutting edge, and every company I've been at has been bought within a
year after they started stocking the stuff.

If you stock Coke or Pepsi, the investors will interpret that as a sign you
come from a poor family.

Coffee is a safe bet to have around, but won't make you stand out.

Tea is a good gambit, but you have to sip it in a way that conveys social
class. Make sure you have glass teacups.

Don't stock energy drinks: Having early 20s software developers around gives
off that fresh hipster vibe, but only teenagers will drink a can of Monster
and that will drive off the investors.

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bluejekyll
While you joke, about the drinks etc. Percieved legitimacy may actually be
even more important for customer acquisition. A lot of the rules they mention
here are even more important for customers.

On additional thing customers want some way to get a sense of, is that before
they buy they believe you will still be there in a year or two years, etc.
Especially if there is a long integration process.

~~~
caseysoftware
In that regard, I look for a semi-active blog, preferably with technical
topics. A few times a month is fine, weekly shows some steady progress.
Talking about customers is a start but I also want to see how they're applying
their own product to different use cases, industries, etc.

I also look for mentions on Twitter. Not a specific number but if they're
getting tech support questions, are they responded to?

My reasoning is simply: "I'll need help at some point, are they willing & able
to provide it?"

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riebschlager
"Perceived Legitimacy" would be a great title for the future book about the
end of the current tech bubble.

~~~
latenightcoding
My thoughts exactly, because who needs a minimum viable product when you have
a nice bootstrap landing page

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irl_zebra
otoh often even having a viable product requires appearing legitimate to get
funding.

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tajen
This is a fun tutorial. Only the outline. It seems very simple, so much that I
wonder why we still need humans for that ;)

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CPLX
An impressive application of Poe's law.

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dang
Surely almost none of this is necessary. If I ever try to fundraise again it's
going to be plain, plain text.

~~~
hkmurakami
Of course, it behooves a design agency to push the need for heavily stylized
decks. ;)

(We used plain black text on white background and had no issues)

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cjcenizal
I nailed most of this list but didn't have, you know, users: atomicarmies.com

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nikanj
JS scroll magic took my tab down twice, gave up after that.

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asimuvPR
Strange how the website did not render properly on mobile for me. Is a
responsive website part of perceived legitimacy?

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aleberry
What device are you using? We definitely made it responsive and tested. Will
fix the glitch. Thanks for letting us know!

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DonHopkins
Does "responsive" not include responding to printers? When I try to print the
web page, the first page has the header, but the next 16 pages are blank.

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aleberry
We're about to add a link at the top to download as PDF. This was originally a
talk given in PowerPoint & uploaded on Slideshare. Here's a link in the
meantime. [http://www.slideshare.net/aleberrycreative/perceived-
legitim...](http://www.slideshare.net/aleberrycreative/perceived-legitimacy-
fundraising-strategy)

Cheers,

~~~
DonHopkins
Thank you!

BTW: Select All, Speech => Start Speaking works great!

