Should I present myself as a person or as a company in the about page?

by racoder • 15 years ago

25 24 15 years ago

racoder9• 15 years ago

I'm a one man startup.

My about page should be personal like: After working for 4 years as a server administrator for some medium to large websites and after having a lot of trouble with existing monitoring solutions I decided to build my own.

---OR---

Like a company: With our 4 year experience in the server management industry, we build this tool to help our clients… etc

please let me know what do you prefer.

Thanks!

ivanstojic• 15 years ago

I'd love to see what the fine folks of Hacker News think about this.

Since I most work alone, I've hit upon the same dilemma several times. Unfortunately, I didn't track my effectiveness when I used one or the other approach so I don't have any hard data to contribute :-(

SamColes• 15 years ago

I prefer the former myself, but I would guess a lot of people would have more trust and faith in the latter.

imeikas• 15 years ago

I'd preffer the first one, you are a startup so your company won't have 4 years of experience in the industry, you have. Also clients will figure out that you are a one man startup anyway.

Jason Cohen writes exactly about this question in http://blog.asmartbear.com/youre-a-little-company-now-act-li...

racoder9• 15 years ago

the short summary of the article: "Be human. Stop hiding. Be yourself." is a good suggestion

Udo• 15 years ago

The most important rule is: don't lie or misrepresent what you've been doing. Second: don't sound silly. "our 4 year experience in the server management industry" violates both a little bit.

It's OK to present a company profile as "we", but don't overdo it by constantly implying a large group when there is none. And really, even one-man-shows generally have help from other people (be it friends or family or freelancer) so that's OK.

That being said, I think it's often a good idea to present a separate About section specifically detailing the founder of the company. It can even be on the same page as the company profile. This is the place where you put professionally relevant personal info, such as "4 year experience in the server management industry". You can even make it more personal by giving out info about what motivated you to do this in the first place, which can be a powerful tool to establish a deeper connection with your potential clients.

racoder9• 15 years ago

I tried to present two extremes. Unfortunately English is not my primary language and the company extreme looks a little strange :) .

Some grate advice in your comment, thanks for your time.

alain94040• 15 years ago

I think you can go either way. Since your product seems to be targeted toward enterprise, one could argue that you want to sound more professional.

However, in my experience the About page is seen by about 5% of your users. So to say things clearly: it doesn't matter.

PS: I don't particularly like your company version. I'd still make it personal, but sounding like a company: "XYZ was started by John Foo...". So it's pro, and personal.

racoder9• 15 years ago

1. The product is targeted towards small website owners that depend on it. (ecommerce, services that charge money)

2. When the product is finished I plan to add a payment plan for some additional features. People won’t read the about page even when they want to pay for the service?

3. Yes, your pro and personal is a very good suggestion … thanks!

icebraining2• 15 years ago

Personally, I'd leave the about page as is; but I'd definitively change the main page to impersonal discourse.

"tagBeep has some unique and very useful features but there is a lot of room for improvements and I’m working on them." Would become (something like, I'm not a native speaker): "tagBeep has some unique and very useful features but there is a lot of room for improvements which are being actively developed"

" The app has some unique monitoring features, but it's far from where I want it to be." Would become something similar to: "The app has some unique monitoring features, but it's far from finished"

racoder9• 15 years ago

When I've made that page the idea was to present myself as a person, as one software developer working on a nice product.

A lot of people suggested a middle path... that is what I'm thinking to do now but I will give it more time.

amirmc• 15 years ago

The poster was suggesting that you use 'impersonal discourse' on other parts of your site but can leave the about page as 'personal'

The rest of site should not be about you. It should be about the product. Otherwise it comes across like a hobby project (and I'm guessing you don't want that).

glimcat2• 15 years ago

Among academics, the convention is to use "we" when writing papers irregardless of the number of authors. It's half custom and half a matter of maintaining professional distance.

Use "we" even if everyone can see that it's a single-author paper. It communicates that it is a company and not just your personal services, which is especially important if it's just your services for now. You can still come back and talk about the exciting thing you're personally working on as a founder.

In either case, pick the singular or the plural and stick with it. Mixing "I" and "our" like you currently are is a matter of grammar rather than style.

icebraining2• 15 years ago

>irregardless

I was crucified on /. when I wrote that :)

glimcat2• 15 years ago

Call it revenge on my elementary school English teacher for complaining about "ain't." ;)

racoder9• 15 years ago

English is not my primary language and sometimes I really have difficulties writing what I want to say. I will try to read more about this.

jmitcheson• 15 years ago

It's definitely a good question. You need to consider the pros and cons and decide for yourself.

If you present it as a company, people will be much harsher with their criticism and expectations. If you present it as a person (yourself) people will be more lenient, but at a cost: they could question the longevity of the service; trust, support capacity etc. More important for enterprise customers though, imo.

On the other hand, there is a sense of wanting to help the 'little guy' when I read your about page. Like, if I was on the fence I could be compelled by the fact that it was done by a solo entrepreneur, and want to try it out of support. But, that's probably because I am in the same boat :)

Finally, you could take the middle road and personalise the about page from the perspective of ceo / founder of the company.

racoder9• 15 years ago

I don't think I'll have enterprise customers, my target market is formed by small sites that have to be online (eCommerce and services that ask money). So i'm left with the middle path or personal.

Thanks for your suggestions!

biot• 15 years ago

Both! Describe the company: "tagbeep's goal is to help administrators...". Then follow it up with a message from "Your Name, Founder": "After working for four years as an administrator, I started this company to...".

That way, the about page projects a professional corporate image while keeping the personal touch. A bit like how GoDaddy is more than just Bob Parsons but he's the face of the company in some ways.

jason_tko• 15 years ago

This all depends on your target customer.

Put yourself in their shoes, and try to do your best to write what would make them feel comfortable and good about your product for long enough for them to get out their credit card.

Regardless of the size of your company though, it's good to keep in mind that some people are going to be very sensitive to stability when making purchasing decisions, especially if they've been burned in the past by a service that suddenly stopped working. The people who don't care about this, won't care anyway, so for them it doesn't matter what you write.

So I'd be erring on the side of talking about stability, even if you are a one man shop. Especially if your product is still in the early stages and lacking the polish of more mature products.

So perhaps instead of: "After working for 4 years as a server administrator for some medium to large websites and after having a lot of trouble with existing monitoring solutions I decided to build my own."

Maybe something like: "TagBeep was developed in response to a gap in the market for a professional yet simple tool to track website uptime.

Our years of experience in server administration for medium to large sized websites provided us with unique insight into designing a powerful application that takes 5 minutes to set up, and helps you keep your sites up and running 24 hours a day."

Also, while you're clearing in active development and doing a lot to improve your product, I'd hesitate before broadcasting this process that to a small business owner who might not be familiar with the development process, and who is in the decision making phase while looking at your About page. I'd be moving the "Whats Next?" stuff to a dev blog hosted on tagbeep.com/blog.

racoder9• 15 years ago

Your comment has some very good advice. I realized now that most of the marketing stuff that I’ve written was made with the assumption that the user is like me. I like reading about the developing process of an app… that’s why I thought it is important to broadcast that. I will try to read more about marketing and about how to know your clients and market. Thanks for your time.

patio11• 15 years ago

3 seconds of thinking about this is at least 2 seconds where you could have been doing something which actually matters but were not.

It is the canonical question asked to avoid actually making or selling stuff on the Business of Software forums.

racoder9• 15 years ago

I know what you’re saying but I really needed some help on this part of the project. For example when I was listing my site in web app directories or in the chrome web store I always tried to talk about my service in a very personal way (that made it look like a hobby) but after getting a lot of feedback here I will talk about the service in a professional way and about the company and plans in a personal way.

The feedback from this thread is amazing, thanks to all!

gte910h• 15 years ago

Both!

It's important you don't just say you're a person, because you'll piss off some random person who doesn't understand you need to outsource some part of a project you don't know how to do (who is angered you personally didn't do it).

Should I present myself as a person or as a company in the about page?

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