Perceived Legitimacy: How to Visually Prepare Your Startup for Fundraising | Hacker News Reader

Perceived Legitimacy: How to Visually Prepare Your Startup for Fundraising

aleberrycreative.com

64 pointsaleberry23 comments

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.

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.

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?"

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

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

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

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

An impressive application of Poe's law.

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

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)

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

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

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

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

Android Galaxy phone with Firefox browser. Btw, now I realize my previous comment seems snarky. It's not meant like that. It not rendering properly made me think this was a sort of joke.

Thanks! Working on testing this. Have you read the "Are you a Rockstar?" - sarcasm is welcome at Aleberry.

Email me if you want me to run some tests for you.

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.

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...

Cheers,

Thank you!

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

I don't think responsive includes printers, but I can surely be wrong. I've come to treat that as "print" styles. Which not every website has or needs.

I'd hope that responsive includes not just trendy mobile devices, but boring old printers, speech synthesizers, and accessibility in general.

I'm pleased that aleberry is responsive in the way that matters the most: by answering questions and providing solutions! Thank you!

http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2013/04/responsive-web-...

http://www.creativebloq.com/responsive-web-design/make-your-...

Good point to bring up. After all, responsive design is about accessibility. I'm currently redoing my website and you've stumped me. :)

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