The appearance of a startup is more important than the reality of that startup period. The fact is that most people aren't capable of an objective critical analysis of the options before them, so they just go with whichever thing invokes more of their positive biases. People are simply incapable of differentiating substance from non-substance, or objective value from non-value. It's all about the signals that they pick up from your appearance and presentation (including your representation by third parties, like friends or press outlets).
You can be a massive chunk of crap that only works 10-20% of the time and still get 90% market penetration based solely on the robustness of your marketing/image management teams. The key, therefore, is to look substantive and important, even if you're not, and trip the correct biases in your target audience.
This acts against good founders and good products, because they usually spend a lot of time thinking about how to fix something and improve their product instead of worrying about their PR.
You can be a massive chunk of crap that only works 10-20% of the time and still get 90% market penetration based solely on the robustness of your marketing/image management teams. The key, therefore, is to look substantive and important, even if you're not, and trip the correct biases in your target audience.
This acts against good founders and good products, because they usually spend a lot of time thinking about how to fix something and improve their product instead of worrying about their PR.