
Yes, but what does your startup do? - edent
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2017/11/yes-but-what-does-your-startup-do/
======
majewsky
This applies to websites of open source projects, too. I remember when I
visited docker.com for the first time because someone told me it's the latest
shit and I just wanted to know what it is about. I browsed their website for
10 minutes, and summarized the experience to a coworker like this: "As far as
I can see, it's the best thing ever and I'd be stupid not to use it, but I
still does not know what it actually does."

Since then, whenever I make a website (or a README.md) for my open-source
projects, I always make sure that it starts with

1\. a short description of what the project is/does in one or two sentences,
and

2\. a longer explanation of the how and why in one or two paragraphs.

Representative example:
[https://github.com/sapcc/limes/tree/master/README.md](https://github.com/sapcc/limes/tree/master/README.md)

~~~
protonfish
Even more informative could be mentioning what problem it is intended to
solve.

~~~
spyspy
Thank you. No one ever describes why anything was written in the first place.
And they almost never go out of their way to list the pros/cons of their
system. Although I've never even used it, I loved that the BoltDB project
mentions other key/value DBs and why you'd pick one over the other, right
there in the readme.

~~~
j_s
Any mention of alternatives is anathema to open source READMEs. This is why
the "awesome list of " directories wind up being so useful.

Edit: Useful as in "knowing is half the battle". Being able to make an
informed choice is worth something, even if it takes extra effort to filter
back down.

~~~
gedrap
Maybe I'm just unlucky but the vast majority of all 'awesome lists' that I've
seen are just massive dumps of links, of extremely varying quality (I mean the
links themselves), which isn't that helpful.

~~~
lstyls
You're not unlucky, but there are some gems out there. For someone like you
who is experienced in the area and can tell garbage from good stuff, it's
worth digging around to find the gems.

This doesn't help someone who is completely new to the list topic though. Even
worse they're probably going to get bad information.

~~~
xkcd-sucks
Maybe an Awesome list of Awesome lists could help

~~~
nerdponx
I'm pretty sure there is one already.

------
whalesalad
Reminds me of [http://n.io](http://n.io) – their homepage is almost an homage
to HBO's Silicon Valley.

Notable catch phrases: human ingenuity, interoperable connectivity, universal
intelligence, distributed intelligence, Chip-to-cloud, unconditional
interoperability, ...

"nio provides the technology to unleash your imagination"

~~~
ryandrake
Come on, that web site _has_ to be a parody, even down to the dogs on the
"Team" page.

If it's actually a real company, my best guess is they are a custom
engineering software consultancy. Although on the other hand, they seem to
have some sort of product you can download, but I can't tell what it does.
It's all so confusing. Perfect example, whalesalad.

~~~
mitchty
I think... its real, go to their blog page and they describe how to put nio
into a rpi.

[https://niolabs.com/blog/baking-nio-into-a-raspberry-
pi/](https://niolabs.com/blog/baking-nio-into-a-raspberry-pi/)

~~~
junkcollector
Perhaps it started as a joke and mistakenly became a business, like the fellow
who got elected in Australia?

~~~
eitland
Also known from dhmo who's been mistaken for a legitimate source of
information.

------
danvoell
Please take this advice to heart all you startups. I can't tell you how many
times I have signed up for a new startup waitlist and then 6 months later I
get an email from some ambigious startup name - "Your wait is up, time to join
Uprocket" with no additional information. Wait, who is this, I don't really
care anymore. I know its obvious to you but its not always obvious to others.
Just add it to your signature for crying out loud. "Uprocket - We help
startups solve the problem of people not knowing what they do by adding an
email signature which tells people what they do"

~~~
pc86
> _Uprocket - We help startups solve the problem of people not knowing what
> they do by adding an email signature which tells people what they do_

You could probably get a cool half million in seed money for this.

~~~
dsr_

       To: all-employees@company.com
       From: elpresidente@company.com
       Subject: email signatures required.
    

Starting immediately, please use an email signature of the following format on
all email messages, inside and outside.

    
    
       -- 
       Name McNamerson - Official Title
       Official Group Name - City, State, Country
       https://www.company.com/
    

Don't put anything else in. If you have trouble getting this set up, IT has
put together a page for all our supported mail clients at
[https://www.company.com/internal/signatures](https://www.company.com/internal/signatures)

Thanks!

    
    
       -- 
       Edgar L. Presidente - Director
       Human Resources - San Francisco, CA USA
       https://www.company.com/

~~~
tossaway1
Edgar forgot the comma that was mandated to appear between his state and
country.

~~~
dx034
Not a good culture fit.

------
slap_shot
A lot of companies can't explain what they do either due to a lack of focus or
poor writing, but this particular company's offense can be explained in one
line from the post:

> It's important to remember that no one cares about your startup!

That original email was written with a tone of someone who expected the
recipients to know who the company is, what they do, and expected the reader
to care or be excited.

No one cares about your start up. Your customers might not even care - they
just want a problem to go away.

------
j_s
Recent example 2 days ago:

I'm Joining Report URI |
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15599906](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15599906)
(2017Nov:160points,64comments)

>skrebbel: _I don 't get it. What does Report URI do?_ (top comment)

~~~
pyronite
Troy Hunt's post details what Report URI does in the first paragraph but it
didn't explain to Skrebbel how they accomplished those things.

~~~
skrebbel
True! It even starts with the classic "what if I told you.." and then goes on
describing something that seems _fantastically magical_.

I learned something that day though. It's very cool that browsers can report
CSP violations. HN is good for stuff like this.

------
natch
Same thing goes for open source projects. I can’t count the number of times
I’ve seen an announcement along the lines of “Flurboska 2.0 is released!” and
then when you follow the URL there’s no info about what it does, and if
there’s an About link it often just has a list of release notes for various
versions. Each entry says vague things like “stability improved” which doesn’t
reveal much.

~~~
stephengillie
My comment from a recent thread about Sway:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15508993](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15508993)

 _/ s/_Flurboska _/ GenericPhrase

"New version of Pandora Nexus released."

Great - is this any relation to the 2 Pandoras or the several Nexuses? Does
this play music on my phone or move assets into a VM? Neither, it syncs
bookmarks between browsers._

------
trgv
Meanwhile, in marketing school, there's a teacher writing on a whiteboard:
"Never ever tell anyone what your company does."

~~~
inthewoods
That's a bit reductionist. What the marketing person would say is you need to
lead with the benefit or value that you provide and then explain how you do
that.

So say you're making software for car washes. Don't lead with the fact that
you make software. Instead, show the benefit by saying something like "Book
73% more car washes" and then say "Car wash booking software to increase
revenue."

Marketers are often consumed by showing the company's "Why" \- but the
challenge in that is it often gets too abstract and generalized and may make
you sound like everyone else. A great example of this is that many companies
make software that, in the end, is designed to improve end-user experience.
You might be, say, a testing company. The end goal is definitely improving
end-user experience, but if that is all you say, then it won't be clear how
you do that, or how you're different from, say, a UI optimization tool which
also improves end-user experience.

~~~
Twirrim
>So say you're making software for car washes. Don't lead with the fact that
you make software. Instead, show the benefit by saying something like "Book
73% more car washes" and then say "Car wash booking software to increase
revenue."

That still actually tells me what the product is, which is way more than we
keep seeing for all these start-ups, open source software etc, which seem to
revolve around hippie meaningless B.S. that doesn't provide any value
proposition up front.

~~~
inthewoods
Agreed - my point was in reference to the OP who wrote: "Meanwhile, in
marketing school, there's a teacher writing on a whiteboard: "Never ever tell
anyone what your company does."

Any decent marketer, imho, would argue against not telling people what your
company does (it's usually the CEO making that case) - the good marketer just
moves the "what you do" to behind a value/benefit.

------
_Microft
Strange, these things seemed absolutely self-evident.

If you want people to do something, make it as simple as possible to do so as
the slightest obstacle can turn them away. That includes informing them what
the whole thing is about (googling is an extra step that you can remove from
the process by including the necessary information from the start). (same
applies to oneself as well, e.g.: if you want to go cycling regularly, make
sure that you do not have to carry the bike from the cellar upstairs to do so)

------
mongodude
Very classic one is x.ai or Amy or whatever they call it now. They overhyped
their capability of building a smart assistant for reading and replying to
emails and ended up being an average service that sort of works.

Earlier, they kept telling me that I have jumped their queue and will soon get
access. Now they ask me to upgrade the plan to keep using it. Complete BS!

~~~
dpcx
Average? I've used it at least a dozen times in the last month, and it's
worked perfectly every time. It may not be the _fastest_ , but it's certainly
the best... YMMV, of course.

~~~
mongodude
It's good but considering auto-reply feature of Gmail and integration with
other apps like Calendar and Hangouts, I wouldn't pay for any such solution.
Of course, assuming the organization use Gsuite else, maybe x.ai fits the
bill.

------
tnolet
In a similar vein, startups are somehow obsessed with reporting on their
"startup-dom": \- That they were in pitch event X \- That they were featured
in startup mag Y \- That they're attending startup fair Z

All inwards focussing, completely useless info to that/those which are most
important: customers.

~~~
twobyfour
Depends on whom you're communicating to. The signals those startups are
putting out are very important ones indicating legitimacy to potential
investors.

Maybe some founders are confusing what's important to signal to investors with
what's important to signal to customers?

------
adekok
If you think that's bad, I've seen presentations to angel investors where the
CEO repeats things like "we do big data analysis to help our customers
synergise and analyze..."

Q: OK, that's nice, what do you _do_? What value do you offer the customer

A: Big data analysis! Synergise!

<sigh>

Bad emails are one thing. Bad presentations to investors just reeks of
incompetence.

------
superasn
Even when you think the other person is a techie, I've seen it generally helps
to assume that he is not, to avoid this Curse of knowledge.

Also at least in my domain, I've found analogies are a great way to explain
super complicated things very easily.

Old world physical analogies work great (like a bank, wallmart, etc) but
analogies using other startups, i.e. we're the Uber of X, or we're the
blablacar for Y not so much. Because sometimes the other person may not know
what blablacar is (or for that matter Uber).

~~~
IIAOPSW
wait is blablacar a thing or did you just make it up? I'm out of the loop and
legit can't tell.

~~~
pathsjs
It is a thing, and here where I live (Italy) is pretty popular - I would say
more than Uber, for what it's worth.

It is a service to arrange long trips from one city to another with other
people, so that the driver can share the ride and get compensated from
passengers (and also have company) in return

~~~
paganel
It's also pretty popular in Romania. I have two close- and non-techie friends
who have used its services.

------
apexalpha
Off topic: I'm very glad the open banking API's are coming to the EU. Every
app can request access to your account and build services and software around
it. Think it's called PSD2 for those interested.

------
BatFastard
Was amazed when I read

"Sign-up is simple and should only take about three minutes"

If a simple signup only takes three minutes, I can't imagine how long a
complex one takes!

~~~
edent
(OP here) To be fair to them, they mandate 2FA set up. If you've not done it
before, it can be a complex and time consuming process.

------
hennsen
The first comment on the page is interesting. I believe if you have that kind
of problem, you haven’t set up proper teamwork between techs and marketers to
create such texts together. The one makes sure it’s great dor selling, the
other that it doesn’t annoy developers and give them the information they
want.

------
ThomPete
Writing copy for a tech startup is very difficult because most people who
write good marketing copy aren't necessarily very technically capable.

The way I always solved this was to get someone with technical insight write
the first version and then have the copywriter re-write it into a human.

It's remarkable how well it works.

~~~
wmeredith
Exhibit A: In your first sentence you use "isn't" when you should use
"aren't".

:D

(You could also drop both uses of "very" in that sentence and it's a stronger
statement.)

~~~
ThomPete
Heh yeah well I am not native English speaker and it did go a little fast.

------
travisl12
This especially applies to Trello tickets that you're writing to your own
colleagues/developers.

Prior to going to DevBootcamp I worked as an engineering consultant, my
product was informational reports that had to describe specifically what the
problem was, how we determined that, and what we recommended to resolve it.

Sometimes my reports would be returned to me in a blood bath of red ink on
changes but eventually you understand what it means to get the point across
objectively and concisely.

My point is, get your copy proof read, limit the jargon, and get to the point
in the first sentence.

------
Mz
I think a lot of tech people honestly don't know how to do this.

GIS is a database with mapping software attached. I began explaining it to
people as "kind of like SimCity for the real world." People who do GIS get
lost in the details. They can't see the forest for the trees. Laypeople need a
quick and dirty sketch of the forest in the simplest, most pertinent terms
possible.

This is just not easy to pull off when your day to day work is all about
cataloguing individual leaves in this vast forest.

------
thisisit
I have been reading Dale Carnegie's seminal book. One of the advice therein -
Arouse an Eager Want.

So, while the 2nd example is an improvement, many people might read the first
para - So you are attending the conference and are some kind of bank with
APIs...umm..so what? Why should I be interested in it?

The better structure will be to start thinking in terms of why/what an
intended recipient might want to use the API, followed by the process and
conference.

~~~
j_s
_The Hidden Persuaders_ (Vance Packard, 1959)
[https://amzn.com/dp/B006NV977W](https://amzn.com/dp/B006NV977W) was
recommended elsewhere today. This nearly-as-ancient classic is at least an
order of magnitude less mentioned but provides more depth applicable online.

>Xunxi: _some of the examples are dated [...] how to "stoke the hivemind"_

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=the%20hidden%20persuaders&sort...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=the%20hidden%20persuaders&sort=byDate&type=comment)

------
beamatronic
Our unique technology allows you to not only increment the counter, but also
to branch based on whether that counter is equal to zero.

~~~
staticautomatic
It also allows for interconnected fizzing and synergistic buzzing.

------
geonnave
Landing pages make this very same mistake all the time.

It is one of the biggest goals for such a page, to show the what & why of the
product, and still too many people do it in a way that lets no clue about what
the thing is about.

It is good to see other people noticing this and writing about it. Hopefully
this will be included in good/bad practices lists in the future.

------
indescions_2017
"Do" may be irrelevant if you are advising someone who is an expert in a
particular vertical, in which you yourself have little experience or domain
knowledge.

But if they state their model is Enterprise SaaS or Subscription-based Media
Content. Then its easier to suggest a quick hack for training sales teams or
where to find freelance editors online, etc.

------
pleasecalllater
Usually burns the investors' money :)

------
supermatt
> Starling Bank be attending $conference 2017

Arrrr!?

------
0xbear
To be fair, oftentimes startups themselves can’t answer this simple question
_to themselves_. “What is it that we do” is a loaded question, and once you
answer it you’re at least temporarily committed to that cause. A lot of
founders have severe commitment issues.

------
bitwize
We leverage synergies in B2C relationships to provide growth opportunities!
_Duh_!

~~~
Sodman
But can you help us with the transformation to digital?

~~~
hguhghuff
What is the transformation to digital meme?

~~~
thetrumanshow
It’s a great new meme opportunity, and you’re on the ground floor. Get in
while you can.

~~~
jaclaz
Naaah, we are already onto _seamless and AI-driven_ transformation to digital
... ;-)

~~~
brootstrap
Our AI-driven IoT real-time predictive ML platform provides the ultimate
corporate syngergy-gasm.

------
acabal
I'd also like to add that not everyone (cough cough) uses or wants to use
Twitter. Please, please, please also include a plain email address or a
contact form so that everyone can get in touch with you if necessary.

------
trisimix
Guess this is why my college is forcing me to take technical communication.

------
kirykl
Checkbook.io is like this. Took me 45 min just to understand their value
offering. All they need to mention is “we use Check21 instead of ACH” but it’s
no where to be found.

------
inthewoods
The example given here is pretty extreme. The lack of any explanation of who
the startup is and what they do is so basic that I hesitate to even call it a
marketing issue.

------
vmateixeira
It seems to me that their marketing is really working.. they just got to HN
front page and I'm sure almost everyone reading couldn't resist googling them
;)

~~~
welly
A bunch of people talking about "what do they actually do?" that doesn't
convert to sales would suggest their marketing isn't actually working.

------
erikb
Well, that is taught here since 2007 or so. Most start-up guys are just young
and simply don't know. I guess you need to experience that first.

------
Balgair
Ahh yes, but then you take away the _mystery_. Can't grift investors or
customers if you let them look behind the curtain, can you?

------
lhnz
Maybe they do this because it creates better engagement?

If they told you their signup process was quick, they would lessen their
ability to convince you that you need to sign-up _right now_.

If they told you what they did, then you wouldn't have to click through to
their home page or twitter account to find out what it is.

And finally if you weren't annoyed, you wouldn't have given them all of this
free marketing on Hacker News.

------
pascalxus
It's a basic but good point. Always mention what your start up does AND
include a sign up page.

For instance, I'll often start off with something like(notice that I start off
with the value proposition too): "Never break your code: We build Regression
tests, so you don't have to" Check us out here:
[https://swif.club/?s=hn](https://swif.club/?s=hn)

And I include that in my signature as well.

