Want To Make A Great First Impression? Try Giving a Damn

A few smart guys at Google recently figured out that people will actually visit a website less often if it takes 250 milliseconds longer to load than a competitor’s site. That’s how accustomed we are to getting what we want online. When your target audience’s patience is less than the blink of an eye, it is vital to follow your parents’ shopworn advice and make a good first impression. And, chances are, you know more about this than you think you do.If you’ve ever made a profile on Facebook or LinkedIn or any other social networking site, you know that people are constantly making branding decisions about themselves. From something as simple as a profile picture, you can figure out if someone is an aspiring photographer, a drunken sports fan, or just an aspiring drunk.We make decisions about our personal brands all the time, and they apply just as much, maybe even more so, to the products and companies you are trying to create. Insignificant though they may seem, all of these almost imperceptible decisions create the impressions that people are going to have, not only of the things you build or the services you offer, but also of the kind of company that you are.

All three of the companies I helped to start (reddit, Breadpig, and hipmunk) have “cute” mascots. I didn’t do this because someone recommended I do so; it’s just something I did because I gave a damn how my website looked. In fact, Paul Graham long loathed the reddit alien because he thought people wouldn’t take us seriously. And indeed, a cute mascot is not a requirement for success.

What is a requirement for success is that you, as a founder, give a damn about everything — even something as seemingly insignificant as a mascot. Remember, no one else will care about your website (your mom excluded) unless you do. That means that it’s up to you to think long and hard about the kind of brand you’re trying to create. The amount of “damns” your founders give will set the standard the rest of your company is going to follow, and that affects everything from product design to customer service to the copy on the website to, yes, whether or not you have a cute mascot. And so it’s really, really important to get this right and to get it right from the start.

Here’s the truth: launching a startup is probably one of the more irrational decisions you could make. It’s a decision I encourage you all to make, if that’s your dream, but be ready to answer the big question: Why? Why are you doing this? Be ready to explain not just to your parents why you’re quitting your nice, sensible job to move back into their basement, but to every one of your customers. There is a huge difference between the companies that really understand why they’re doing what they’re doing and the ones that don’t: They don’t think about what they do, they think about why they do it and it shows in everything they do.