An interesting comment from one tech venture firm. They actually liked the fact that we didn’t have business cards. The reason they gave was that it showed that we were focusing on the work and that we weren’t about the “flash”.
I guess that meant that if we had shown up in suits, flipped out some bad-ass designed business cards, showed some swank term sheets and/or presentations, that would have presented a different view of us. Instead of being heads down and about the work, people could have interpreted that kind of presentation as being all fluff and no substance.
In the previous Internet boom years, I suppose many people showed up with fancy powerpoints, documents, and cool business cards. I would think that many people couldn’t live up to the fluff, despite how much money they had put into it. These showmen lost a lot of money for investors and now people are wary of the “flash”.
We were lucky that we showed up the way we did. Being Mr. Designer guy, it doesn’t take much work to whip up some decent looking business cards. It was only pure chance that I got hung up trying to buy a good piece of stock photography for the card’s imagery and never made it to a printer to get some made.
But now we’ve had another valuable lesson in the current venture environment, and that’s to not be that showy, but to focus the attention on ourselves and what we bring, rather than hiding it behind a showy presentation.
I am now working on the website and some business cards. I think showing up with nothing can’t be good in all cases. I think something simpler but professional looking should be good for us, and definitely something that does not remind people of the “all-flash” designs of 1999…