attention

Things have been really busy lately. I’ve been working on a whole bunch of stuff, none of which I’ve felt compelled to blog about. In the midst of all this activity, yesterday I felt a pang of envy while reading techcrunch – It was just another write-up on a newly-funded silicon valley startup but – I hadn’t felt those pangs of envy in a long time.

The attention seeker in me was re-awakened.

Whatever negative connotations attention-seeking has, if you’re building a business or product, your livelihood depends to some degree on seeking and getting attention. What I realised some time ago was that I was looking for attention in all the wrong places. There seems to be this widely-held unquestioned belief that coverage on Techcrunch will be the makings of a startup – that it’s a startups path to attaining critical mass. I think this is a dangerous assumption given Techcrunch’s audience, many of which are themselves startups or cubicle-dwelling dreamers.
If you’re in the early stages of building a user-base (let’s stick with old-skool terminology – I hate the way the word ‘community’ is bandied about these days), the last thing you want to do is go looking for exposure on techcrunch. In fact I wouldn’t do this until after your product or service has a respectable number of users.

I’m not saying startups shouldn’t pimp their wares far and wide – they absolutely should – just don’t expect the big web2.0 news portals to take notice. All this is just a reminder to myself.