3 ms·

i like your naecdote but wanted to add another perspective on the business cards. there are different paths to success. one path is through sales, in which a g

i like your naecdote but wanted to add another perspective on the business cards. there are different paths to success. one path is through sales, in which a good prototype/demo and pitch can get you early, paying customers. you print up business cards and product sheets--even before you have a company set up--and hand them out during sales meetings to bring a little bit of legitimacy to your venture, and that's worth the $15-20 (plus design time) it takes.

notahacker 9y ago
Yeah. For some markets the business cards, registered company name and client specific conferences and illusion of prestige actually earns you the users to pay you up front to write the code, or are more important than the code period. (funnily enough, I walked out on a fledgling fintech startup with a guy from a similar background to John from the article whose prestige obsession was the opposite: paying for people to write serious amounts of software to create a more mostly-cosmetically modern bespoke internal document management system he was convinced he needed to get the partners he needed to take his ideas for disrupting other aspects of their mostly customer marketing & relationship driven business model seriously. Frustrating when he had connections to potential needed partners anyway and they were more worried about leadgen than anything else, something he knew a fair bit about about and could have focused on instead, but something that might have resulted in falling at the first hurdle... tbf he paid for it, stuck at it and his business is showing some signs of life these days)
factsaresacred 9y ago
Yes, I don't mean to dismiss business cards. They matter. But for the type of biz (customer facing Saas) and the amount of progress made (zero) they didn't matter as much as almost everything else.

3 ms·

i like your naecdote but wanted to add another perspective on the business cards. there are different paths to success. one path is through sales, in which a g

by clairity 9y ago

notahacker 9y ago
Yeah. For some markets the business cards, registered company name and client specific conferences and illusion of prestige actually earns you the users to pay you up front to write the code, or are more important than the code period. (funnily enough, I walked out on a fledgling fintech startup with a guy from a similar background to John from the article whose prestige obsession was the opposite: paying for people to write serious amounts of software to create a more mostly-cosmetically modern bespoke internal document management system he was convinced he needed to get the partners he needed to take his ideas for disrupting other aspects of their mostly customer marketing & relationship driven business model seriously. Frustrating when he had connections to potential needed partners anyway and they were more worried about leadgen than anything else, something he knew a fair bit about about and could have focused on instead, but something that might have resulted in falling at the first hurdle... tbf he paid for it, stuck at it and his business is showing some signs of life these days)
factsaresacred 9y ago
Yes, I don't mean to dismiss business cards. They matter. But for the type of biz (customer facing Saas) and the amount of progress made (zero) they didn't matter as much as almost everything else.