Shut down the Hype to generate value

If you have followed the startup eco-system lately its been really hyped up, with almost every top publication now has a startup column/section/page. Forbes now has list of top X in X for everything startup and on and on. Overall I believe that this hype is a +ve factor for people to take risks, employees to move from established companies to riskier startups, more government support into startups.

The place that Hype really hurts is in the minds of the people working in the startups and the close ones around them. I personally believe that managing hype is probably one of the most underrated qualities of a successful long term company but is a huge factor that dictates a lot of what your company/product/people stand for.

As all things business, this lesson was learnt from the Spurs, the goal of a company/business should be long term innovation coupled with sustainability. Just like basketball teams, tech companies are a huge function of the people within the company, how they come together as a unit to create this long term culture of innovation. When a company hires, raises, advertises based on the hype it attracts employees who are attracted by the hype rather than the grind, they are attracted to the sizzle but not the steak.

Let me dive into this a bit more because its important :

Lets look at company Sprogole, started by ex Google/Facebook/Stanford graduates (hype) — which just raised a 10m$ round from A list investors (hype) from silicon valley (hype). They are off to a great start and start hiring for their company that has a path breaking innovation

The company probably has no product like most startups and are trying to figure out the right way forward — they are under pressure to hire so they go all in with the same impressive pitch and give confidence to the employee who is going to be hired that they will figure it out.

Employee goes home explains to his family about how Sprogole has such great caliber and has raised all this money so must be doing something right + startups are cool and they are paying more than their previous job. Employees’ family go to their friends/relatives and basically say the same pitch.

This happens a LOT and the vision/product/overall reason for existence of the company is lost in translation and is replaced with hype. The why is replaced with the what and the what is usually a bunch of PR terms.

One of the key things we have focused consciously at TeliportMe for the past 4 years was to dial down the hype outside the company as well as inside the company. It was a forced decision I took as a New Year resolution in 2013. I stopped sending PR updates, no more VC coffee meetings, no conferences, no social media BS about crushing it, no forming band of entrepreneur’s that pat each others back for doing nothing, no “lets catch up” meetings.

I shut down all kinds of outreach to an extent that some people thought our company closed down while we slogged our asses off to become the largest panorama sharing community in the world and the #1 Panorama Capture app in the world that all the big tech companies (GOOG, FB, MSFT) tried to acquire atleast once (some have tried three times).

Shut down the Hype to Generate value.