“Hype is the awkward and desperate attempt to convince journalists that what you’ve made is worth the misery of having to review it.” — Federico Fellini
Publicly launching your startup and scoring a post at one or more of the mythical tech blogs might seem to be the ultimate way to kickstart your early stage startup. In many cases it isn’t. Sustainable growth needs different mechanisms. Don’t pat yourself on the shoulder for that one time hit that distort your metrics, but instead focus on the triggers and channels that help you to grow your user base in both volume as activity constantly. Pitch potential customers and the real thought-leaders in your field, instead of wasting energy inside the small world of techies.
Traffic referred from Techcrunch.com after the release of our mobile version
We’ve had some awesome coverage in the past. Mashable, Techcrunch, VentureBeat, the Dutch financial times (great to show to your grandparents), and many other tech blogs. But 90% of our growth finds its origin in a small group of early adopters, mostly people from the UX scene, that helped us to improve our product and spread the word. Thousands of tweets, likes, and posts on seemlingly “insignificant” blogs of real users with valuable feedback and praise made a difference. Those 2000 TechCrunch visitors will not make or break your business in an early stage. Focus on the ivy-league of tech blogs only to power up your street cred in the tech scene and know how to channel and activate that small burst of signups.
Hype makes you lazy.
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