Why are media publications useless for a startup?

Publication in the press - what could be nicer to the heart of a startup?
To open a newspaper in the morning (although what a newspaper is in our time is a website!) And there it is printed in arshin letters:

“Just yesterday, two simple guys, Ivan da Demian, sold phone cards in their native Malaya Katsapetovka. And today they are the owners of a cool company that produces and sells the coolest product ThumbaYumba. The guys at night wrote the program, and in the afternoon offered it to all neighbors and acquaintances. ”
Well, then, of course, a success story. About how the company began to grow and sales reached a million dollars. (This is a favorite figure for everyone - it sounds very beautiful - MILLION DOLLARS!)
And then cool investors came and bought 20, 50 or 80% of the company for steep money.
Well, in the end, of course, the case of a grateful client who lived very poorly without ThumbaYumba, but with ThumbaYumba he began to live very well, his employees began to love and he earned a lot of money.

Such a text looks incredibly beautiful and it seems that after such an authoritative mention, sales will immediately soar to the sky with a swift jack, and investors will line up as in McDonalds in 1990.
')
And no ...

In fact, the theme of such stories is not new. Remember that they asked Khlestakov in the Inspector General? "Tell the sovereign-emperor, he lives, they say, in such and such a city Ivan Ivanovich Dobchinsky." A trifle, but nice.
Let's look at why articles about startups are not useful and do not differ from this pleasant kickshaw.
To do this, try to look at them through the eyes of a potential client, to understand what he feels.

History of success

Initially, the reader is invited to marvel at how stubborn hard work led the company to success.
Already at this stage, the reader receives the first negative emotions.

Firstly, all these numerous success stories annoy him. He has his own worries, a lot of problems in business, loans have risen in price, prices have risen - and they write to him about happy and somehow too successful starters, to whom the money pours.

Secondly, the reader has probably already been tried many times to learn from positive examples. He read Henry Ford's My Life, My Achievements, but he never created an auto company. I looked at the Pirates of Silicon Valley, but did not become Jobs or Gates. I read about Tinkov, but did not start a brewery or a bank. (By the way, Tinkov is the most positive example of self-praise, the rest before him as before the moon)

And thirdly, the client never believes that our conditional Ivan and Demyan managed to do everything on their own that was written in the article. Most likely, a high-quality business manager remained outside the brackets, or even a few. And which the guys did not even consider it necessary to mention. And this forces the reader to repeat after the hero of Kramorov from “The Elusive Avengers” - “Nonsense!”. And then, if he himself is a hired manager, then he, too, will be hurt that all the work is done alone, and the glory goes to others.

Investments

"We have attracted one hundred thousand-million investment." What do we get from your investment? People who are engaged in business development are interested in understanding how they were spent, which programmers and vendors were hired, what salary, and how they were stimulated to work. But they never write about this (surprise-surprise!)
A client about investment is even more useless to read. “Have you attracted investment? So you already have the money. What do you want from me? ”
Or even so - “Oh, you have an investment ?? And I have a loan at 30%! Do not you see my denyuzhek !!! ...... "

Success stories

The main problem in stories about happy customers is that the reader is not ready to associate himself with them. Another business, other features, “suited him — not a fact that suits me.”
And the reader understands that the client didn’t come running to the startup “let me tell you a good story”. He was persuaded for a long time, the history was polished, the sharp corners smoothed out. And what is the value left in this story?

And what publications work?

So really all the publications are absolutely useless?
Of course not. But only in the case when it is described not the company's combat path, not the varnished labor biography of the founders and not a story about the miraculous power of the product.

Let's look at an example of Uber . Which of the three publications will force you to install the Uber mobile app on your smartphone?

• The creators of Uber received another investment of $ 1 billion
• Uber customers share their impressions
• New York taxi drivers went to protest against Uber

What the reader will think - “The first article - someone has extra money. The second article - the next stories. But the third ... New York taxi drivers are ruthless sharks. If there was a service against which they are so desperately protesting, then it is certainly very profitable. Need to try".

So, people are interested in two things: public reaction and analytics .

Public reaction guarantees the proven experience of a large number of people. These people are not guaranteed by the software manufacturer. They do not hide the experience gained. Experience can be both positive and negative - that is, we do not deprive the reader of the right to independent choice.

The analyst assumes movement from a problem, not from a solution. The reader gets all the information about the problem itself, about the degree of its seriousness, about the ways to solve it. From him do not require - KUPIIII !!! He is given independent decisions.

Are we working on publications in the press? Yes, but we try to talk not about ourselves, but about the industry as a whole.

The fact is that the market of personnel control systems is still very young and many business people do not know that such systems exist at all and how they work. It is this information that we are trying to convey to them.

And let the client make the choice.