Be shameless

This was an article written by my co-founder Sameer Parwani on a blog that has since been taken offline. Figured I'll share it on my blog instead given that his article is just as relevant 10 years later.

By Sameer Parwani, Apr 24, 2013

As an entrepreneur, you have nothing to lose by being shameless. Always promote your company and product. This has been a difficult lesson for me to learn. It goes against my personality to spend much time talking about myself and especially to praise something I’ve done. It’s not that I don’t like the attention, it’s just I’ve always felt if you are doing something praiseworthy then others will eventually notice on their own.

But that takes too long and might not ever happen. Don’t wait until the crowd notices on their own. Make them notice. Be like WebEngage and tell the world you have 9000 customers and are gaining 1000 customers every 30 days. Or be like Wingify and scream that you’re doing millions in revenue without having raised a penny.

There’s too much noise in the world for people to pick out your story unless you push it first. Whatever your goal might be, you have to be your #1 promoter. Want attention from investors? They follow those who are already being talked about. You won’t get any of this buzz till you talk about yourself. Want to be in end of year “best x startup lists” by startup blogs? These blogs don’t actually have a clue who is doing well and who isn’t. It’s only based on perception. But you need to create that perception of success.

We’re soon going to be doing the same. We haven’t been telling the world that CouponDunia is doing over 1 million visits a month, or that from Sept 2012 to now we’ve gone from a 4 person team to a 16 person team and still remained profitable. Or that we are seeing awesome initial returns on DealDunia or a bunch of other good things that up to now we’ve kept to ourselves.

The goal is not to receive attention for the sake of stroking your ego (though its a nice side perk) but to actually help your startup. When you build buzz around your company, doors open much easier. People take your phone calls, meetings are easier to set up, And it becomes much easier to sell your product. The quality of your job applicants increases. It takes less work to convince someone to join your team.

So get out there and start talking about yourself. Tell the world all about the great work you’ve been up to.