Nobody wants the true founding story

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The origin story as critical branding

The origin story is a powerful tool in the startup marketer’s arsenal. Startups are fighting an unfair fight, and need to leverage any tool they can. Many–perhaps most–miss a key opportunity to fight unfair: the origin story.

Founders love the truth, especially technical founders. They care about precision and detail. They have the sense for integrity that comes from years in the academy. It’s a curse.

In some industries–regulated ones, like medical or supplements–integrity and accuracy is non-optional. But you knew that and have lawyers looking over your shoulder already. For everyone else, it is a curse.

The Harry’s story

Harry’s founder Andy Katz-Mayfield went into a drugstore in 2011 to buy a razor. But the experience was frustrating–locked case, high price, confusing products. His friend Jeff Raider had co-founded Warby Parker, and Andy vented to him. Boom! They started Harry’s.

The Gillette marketing machine has decades of research, hundreds of millions of dollars in marketing, distribution literally everywhere and a global sales team pushing its products. Yet the Harry’s brand and story captured everyone’s attention. In 2019 Shick tried to acquire Harry’s for $1.37 billion (but the FTC blocked it).

From start to FTC-cares-enough-to-sue in under a decade. Not bad for a founding story. It’s a boring listen on How I Built This–no near death experiences, no founder drama. But worth a listen, because boring in this case is The Way.

The opposite of Harry’s

A founder I recently chatted with started his pitch with a great origin story. He was filling out a medical form, and didn’t know what something meant. He had to leave the form and go research it, but it turned out to be an ambiguous acronym. ChatGPT gave him a completely wrong definition, he filled out the form wrong, and it took months to set the situation straight–which in this case meant it took a long time to get medical insurance to reimburse him.

Pretty great story. Real pain, he understood it, and as an AI-inclined founder was well positioned to do something about it. I leaned forward in my chair, expecting some kind of embeddable chat for medical forms AI app.

Instead, he pitched a product for influencers and online course teachers to host websites and have AI interact with their followers. WTF?? Where did that come from?

Do I need to explain what’s wrong here, or do you get it already? He didn’t. I had to explain it. I felt bad because I didn’t think I was being nice. And I kind of wasn’t–that voice in the back of my head was screaming “This guy is wasting your time.” But not telling him would have been far worse.

This kind of founding story isn’t like the Harry’s one. You need a Harry’s style founding story. If you don’t have one, make one up. Seriously. People do it all the time.

The (fake) Houzz founding story

I met a founder of Houzz, the very popular app that dominates home decoration and remodeling media. There were two founders, both developers but one who leaned into business and one who was an iOS developer. The founder I met was the iOS developer. He built the iPad app and a lot of the early stack.

“But wait!” you say. “Houzz was founded by a husband and wife team! It even says so right on their website!” It’s an amazing story! Alon was a developer at eBay and Adi was his wife who was trying to remodel their Palo Alto home! Because it was so hard to find good help they built Houzz to help ideate and find great contractors. Who wouldn’t feel badly for that cute Palo Alto couple? They were on BBC, CNBC, and lots of other places.

Apparently everyone empathized. It is a pretty amazing founding story. Houzz is also a great product, one that many of you have probably used. It has raised over $600 million and was last valued at over $4bn.

But the founding story is total bullshit. Maybe there was a Palo Alto home. I’m sure Alon was a developer at eBay. But Adi didn’t join at the beginning–she joined much later. The guy who was there at the beginning was the developer I met. He built the iPad app that the company was built on top of, long before Adi joined. At least, that’s my understanding of it all.

Does it matter?

No.

No it does not. There are no rules. The truth is what you say loud enough and often enough until it is the only thing people remember.

Don’t feel bad for my developer friend. He owns a lot of shares. He’ll be fine. Better, actually, having been cut out of the founding story than if he had been left in. What would that have been, anyway? “Two nerds figured out a great market opportunity in a rich suburb and exploited it with their software coding skills.” Can’t see the BBC–let alone House Beautiful–picking that one up.

Would Houzz have been as successful if it talked about being two developers with a damned good idea? Maybe, but probably not. The PR story sure sounds better when it’s a husband and wife romcom. And it made PR a major driver of growth.

Don’t be crippled by the academy

The truth may well be that the idea to start Houzz came from 2 developers in East Palo Alto filling out a medical form (in a fixer-upper house?) and needing to look things up–but getting it wrong. The world will never know.

What matters is the story and the impact it has (or can have) on your business. There is no bad consequence for telling a great founding story that might not be entirely accurate.

The consequences for telling a lousy founding story are severe.

Do it right.