Hype is the pulse of your startup

Startups are not like mature companies. They live and die by the amount of excitement their products and services create.This isn’t just media hyperbole or a peak of inflated expectations. Are your core customers waiting with baited breath for your next release? Are your designers, developers and engineers antsy to show the world what they’ve created? If not that could be a bad sign.

It’s always important to manage customer expectations to something within your ability to execute. On the other hand you don’t want your employees constantly forcing in more features trying to show off how technically gifted they are, especially if it doesn’t improve your core offering. However, if your new release leaves people who are paying for it uninterested and the people working on it bored, you’re not pushing the limits of what your startup can do.

How do you generate the right amount of buzz around your startup? A common answer is under promise, over deliver. A better answer is promise and deliver. Find out what your customers or potential customers are missing from their lives. A lot of times you can impress people by just delivering on the simple things that so many companies overlook. Shoes that last longer than one season, jeans that don’t shrink, microwaves that actually heat up food, an internet connection that’s reliable.They may seem trivial but many people would pay a lot of money to have one less inconvenience in their life.

Do you remember the first time you had a music player that didn’t skip or a web browser that loaded websites in under 5 minutes? That was pretty awesome, right? Now go create products that give your customers that same feeling. That’ll get your pulse beating, that’ll generate hype and that’ll give them something to talk about.