In this new weekly column, Marco Greenberg, a long-time PR and marketing jedi specializing in venture-backed start-ups, will share his experience of the most common mistakes young entrepreneurs make that keep them from getting the love—and the press—they so justly deserve.
Chapter 1: Because your company has no personality
Stop me if you’ve heard any of these before:
It’s about the executive team, not about me. It’s about our platform, not about me. It’s about the pedigree of our initial customers, investors and IP, not about me.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
In more than three decades of working with entrepreneurs, I’ve heard just about every argument against getting too personal early on in the launch process, and, I have to say, these arguments have merit. Putting yourself out there is scary; it’s a whole different ball game than just talking about your algorithm or your business model. It also goes against the basic instinct for humility most of us were brought up to believe is key to a good, well-balanced life. That may all be true, but it’s also beside the point: if you want to succeed, you have to put yourself out there, front and center, as intimately as you possibly can.
Danny did. He was a graduate student at MIT when he decided to start a company with his professor. He had a good idea, but zero marketing experience, let alone business training. As his close friend, I volunteered to be his first PR guy. And I was met with a lot of resistance early on.
When I asked him to talk to reporters about his experience as a commando in an elite unit of the Israeli army, he cringed. When I said he should talk about more than his company—expressing his opinions about the heady days of Internet 1.0—he said he was afraid that he might come across as unfocused. I insisted, and, eventually, Danny saw the merit of my ideas. When a photographer came along to take some shots, Danny didn’t just stick to the staple pose of CTO-at-the-whiteboard, but also allowed himself to be photographed relaxing in his hammock, riding his motorcycle, and playing foosball with friends. In other words, Danny allowed himself to be Danny.
It’s a good thing he did: the company he co-founded, Akamai Technologies, was one of the most successful IPOs of all time, and today delivers up to one third of all content online.
Danny, sadly, was murdered on 9/11, becoming the attack’s first victim after trying to single-handedly storm the kidnappers and thwart their plot. But the incredible company he helped build, and the path he took to becoming one of the technology world’s most celebrated leaders, taught me a lot about how to stand out even in a crowded field thick with big egos: just be yourself.
I know it sounds corny. But having worked with the heads of Fortune 500 companies, counseled several of the world’s richest men, and worked with government ministers in a number of different countries, I can tell you that there’s just no substitute to being honest, direct, and caring.
It’s a lesson my own family learned the hard way. My grandfather, JB Greenberg, never got more than an eighth-grade education, but that didn’t stop him from founding the Standard Brands Paint Company. In the 1970s, it was part of the Nifty Fifty, a vaunted list of America’s greatest brands, including names like Wal-Mart. So how come you’ve probably never heard of it? The answer has a lot to do with personality: after my grandfather’s passing, and after the rest of our family was no longer involved, the lawyers who now ran the business stripped the personality from Standard Brands faster than a paint thinner removes solvents. My grandfather and his family built a company that looked and felt like them, which meant making sure every customer was satisfied and caring more about quality than growth. The custodians who inherited the company from him looked at little else except for charts, graphs, and market reports. Within a few years, Standard Paints was no more.
This, in part, is why I get genuinely mad when I see young entrepreneurs failing miserably because they’re too timid to talk about personal stuff. A while back, for example, I had the pleasure of working with the African American cofounder of a fast-growing tech company operating in a specific—and almost entirely white—niche. The racial disparity bothered my client, but every time I suggested he speak out publicly, he shuddered. It was too much for him. It’s a pity: had he come forward more forcefully, had he not been afraid to just speak his mind, I have no doubt that he would have become a far more central player in his industry.
The reason for getting personal is simple: as another former client, Jack Mitchell—who owns a family business dynasty in upscale retail and is the author of the customer service bible Hug Your Customer—correctly reminds us, people do business with people they like. This is especially true now that there’s so much competition, and so many of the products and services we see look more or less the same. Make people fall in love with you, make them feel the passion you felt when you set out one day to start your own company or join a small and fledgling venture, and they’ll want to support you. But unless your brand feels like you and your spirit and your life’s work, you’re going to fail.