Who Do You Hate?

One of the blogs I like to dip in to occasionally is Fred Wilson’s avc.com.

A post yesterday caught my eye: Minimum Viable Personality.

It’s worth a read in full but the gist of it is that your business should have a personality. I like to think KashFlow has a personality and it’s what has helped us market ourselves well over the years on a very small budget.

As well as making marketing easier, it also made another very valid point: If your product/business has a personality then it’s viewed by customers as a friend, not a stranger. You forgive friends when they cock up (screw up a change in pricing model, have technical difficulties, etc)

You know your friend isn’t perfect, but you want your friend to win.

This is very important in an early-stage web startup as you WILL make mistakes. And it helps infinitely if your customers/friends are understanding.

The post lists three questions you need to ask yourself to see if your product/business/proposition has personality:

1. How do you change your customers life?

2. What do you stand for?

3. Who or what do you hate?

1 and 2 are nothing new. But 3 – 3 is an interesting one. I don’t see enough companies defining themselves by what they’re not or who they hate.

It’s no secret what KashFlow isn’t and who we hate.

So you think your business has personality? Come on then, who do YOU hate?

http://twitter.com/GaryMcC Gary McCombe

A wise man (well Yoda) once said “fear is the path to the dark side. fear leads to anger. anger leads to hate. hate leads to suffering.”

Why spend time hating something when you could use a more positive emotion to get one with something else?
- http://twitter.com/DuaneJackson Duane Jackson
  
  Hate is a deliberately strong word in this context – you could beat around the bush and use some other phrase. But hate is emotive, it’s evocative – so it does its job nicely here.
  
  Saying what/who you hate, or what you’re not, is good shorthand for getting across what you ARE.
  
  It’s a cause, it’s a crusade, and people can get behind a cause. Much more so than they can a mission statement.
- FAKE GRIMLOCK
  
  STAND FOR REQUIRE STAND AGAINST.
http://twitter.com/KarinHccp Karin H (=Hermans)

Quite agree with Duane’s reply.

If you stand out from the crowd by being complete different than or opposite the company/business/service you hate (which could even be a reason for starting your business) yourself, your staff, your prospects, your clients know exactly what you are and where you stand for.
If that’s not a positive thing I don’t know what is.

Karin H (Keep It Simple Sweetheart, specially in business)
ps: our business hates B&Q, Wickes and other DIY-sheds 😉
http://www.virtalacltd.co.uk Stewart Setter

I hate mornings pre 7am, people who smoke in cars when their kids are there, people who drive whilest on the mobile phone……….!

From a business point of view, I hate a suppliers whom is also a customers that expect next day delivery from us but gives us a 42 day lead time…… think I need to re-educate our service team !

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