One of our alumni startups messaged me this morning. The team has a great story to tell – it’s just raised a seed round – but it also has a strong engineering culture that suggests everything should line up perfectly before sharing news with the world. I told the team that it looks to me like an acute case of communication constipation, writes Hugh Mason.
Back in the day, when I first joined the BBC as a TV producer, giant corporations tried to control every aspect of their messaging. Communications professionals tried to lay perfectly formed eggs in my in-tray before calling me repeatedly to try to make sure that, from the boss’ perspective, the story didn’t get scrambled. My job as a journalist was to cut through the ‘spin’ and compacted BS.
From control to conversations
Yet long before social media burst on the scene, wise prophets foretold a new future. In 1999 the authors of the Cluetrain Manifesto set out a vision that now looks remarkably prescient. Anyone with a story to tell can be part of the conversation about it, they said, but nobody will control it. Collectively, We The People, own every story. Startups, brands and governments can choose to join the conversation but, if they don’t speak, we will make up our own version of The Truth without them.
So unless a startup has a very good reason to pursue a stealth strategy, sitting on an announcement is generally a bad idea. Either the world will decide that you’re boring, or your news will leak sooner or later. Better, then, to just go with the flow and say it like it is, when it is.
Share Minimum Viable Stories
LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman famously said: “If you are not ashamed of your product when you launch it, you launched too late.” This gem of wisdom has become encapsulated in the phrase Minimum Viable Product, now one of the mantras for the Lean Startup movement. I’d like to propose a corollary for startup communications: the Minimum Viable Story.
You are running a startup and everyone expects you to change. You are not IBM or Apple, whose every dot and comma gets analysed by a herd of professional pundits. Even though research shows that most of today’s household name corporations will be gone in a less than 20 years, the world seems to want big company CEOs to pretend that they are in control as they pilot a container ship with a 10 mile turning radius through uncharted waters.
Keep It Real
Startup founders don’t have to pretend. Everyone knows you are riding a raft down a white water ride. We know it’s going to be super scary sometimes and, from time to time, people are going to fall off. You know it too – that’s why you are a hero for doing it – so share the twists and turns.
We want you to be honest and open, tell short stories every day in tweets and release news as it happens: raw and undigested. Say if you don’t know. That way you will come across as authentic and find all kinds of allies.
Good engineering is all about getting stuff right and keeping things under control. So there’s an urge to hold stories in. But if you do that as a startup, you’re getting drawn into corporate BS way before your time. As a young company, you can avoid communication constipation by keeping your stories short, straight and regular. Don’t try to control the conversation – just help it flow.
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