One mistake I often made as a founder was trying to explain everything about the product too precisely.
We built a publishing platform for serialized mobile stories – mainly in the form of digital comics and novels. It was a new concept at the time, so most people didn’t really understand it (Later, Webtoon, our bigger competitor, came in with aggressive marketing, which helped create much better consumer awareness.)
Interestingly, when we said “We’re YouTube for comics,” people understood the concept much more easily.
But in my mind, “YouTube for comics” wasn’t entirely accurate. The word “YouTube” made some people think of videos, while we weren’t a video platform; The word “comics” made some people imagine traditional comic books, but our format was visual stories optimized for phone reading, so in a way closer to Instagram stories than traditional comics.
Yet, “YouTube for comics” worked far better than “an open publishing platform for serialized mobile stories such as digital comics and novels.”
Now I try to use familiar concepts to describe a business, even if the description may not be 100% correct. I’d rather have my listeners grasp 100% of a concept that’s 80% accurate, than 30% of a concept that’s 90% accurate.