building an international startup with 5700 English words. Suggestions?

https://plus.google.com/115796585590280326202/posts/U97RQYdp6nG

by insert_nick • 15 years ago

4 6 15 years ago

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StavrosK2• 15 years ago

Ah, I don't want to be the guy to tell Antonio that his English really isn't better than most native speakers'...

It would probably be easiest for him to hire an English-speaking person as a cofounder or early employee for copywriting or communication, I guess.

insert_nick2• 15 years ago

You can be that guy and it won't have any harmful consequence on me, or you :) Because I'm already aware of that.

There were other requirements for the cofounder, you know it's not easy to find the right one. I took English knowledge into account (also tried to have a native speaker as a cofounder) but it was just one out of several parameters with some weight.

Regarding the early employee option suggestion, so I should take that into account when estimating the size of a needed seed funding.

StavrosK2• 15 years ago

I had a hunch you'd see that! There's no need to patronize you by saying your English is perfect, there's no shame in not speaking a language perfectly (I'm not a native speaker either).

Just find someone who speaks it well enough, it's not really even that big a problem. A good chunk of the world's population speaks English natively!

TorKlingberg• 15 years ago

It could be an advantage as well. You won't end up naming your startup something like "diaspora".

insert_nick2• 15 years ago

Eh. Actually the true advantage is that I can see more easily - or at least it's more natural to see - also the perspective of non-native English speakers that will make use of the service, so that I can optimize it for a greater world population; at least avoiding common mistakes that keep occurring in services that I use/try, but also taking that into great account while designing the whole thing.

Nice read on the topic: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122178211966454607.html

zeroxsys• 15 years ago

Hi! I can see that you're brave enough to be open about this weakness of yours here. That's a good trait of an entrepreneur, kudos!

As I see it, you don't want to "fail the first time you do it" - so you don't want your visitors to get negative initial impression simply because of some poorly written texts, which translate to being unprofessional. If you already have co-founders/teammates/friends, that have good communication skills, it's better to have them proof-read ALL your texts. Again, as I guess, you don't have one yet, that's why we are here.

If at this phase of your startup, you are willing to recruit co-founders/teammates to handle your communications, go ahead, it will make your product and your presentations (for your investors) language error free and better. However, I will not recommend that you choose them just for this purpose; your co-founders/teammates have to, primarily, help you build your product and your business – these two are the most important things about your startup.

So I strongly suggest that you focus on building your product and marketing/business strategies first, and not worry about English technicalities. Launch it, achieve your investment level, and setup your operations. Once you have the money, you can hire quality marketing personnel to help you make your texts smarter and effective. Good luck!

building an international startup with 5700 English words. Suggestions?

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