Finally telling the truth about our startup to customers

Love it, love it to death! There is so much truth in this article, on both a meta level and the obvious level. In fact, you have inspired me to write a similar post for Fogbeam Labs.

I sometimes feel torn when writing about us, on our blog, our website, etc... trying to choose between "generic corporate voice" where we try to sound like a typical "big company" and something more "down to earth, folksy and honest". And, truth be told, I think I sometimes default to "generic big company" because it's actually easier in some perverse sense. Figuring out how to write simply, directly, and honestly, while preserving the underlying message and not sending a different message, is - IMO - a non-trivial thing.

We want potential customers to know that we're a small company (2 people at the moment), that our products are unfinished, immature and buggy, and that we can't provide some of the things that IBM or Oracle can. But we also don't want them to think that we're a bunch of rubes who don't know what we're doing, or to think that we'll do anything less than bend over backwards to provide the best possible support to those who take a chance on us at this early stage. We also want people to know that we genuinely believe that we have what will be the best product offerings in our space, as things mature and we finish fleshing things out.

It's a tough balance to strike, but this post has me thinking about really trying a different tack on this.