The author is is almost exactly the exact opposite of the ideal customer for any startup. He is a venture capitalist and an ad man. He is in the business of buying the startup instead of buying from the startup. He sees orders of magnitudes more startup websites in a month than a customer ever will in their lifetime. He will be looking far more closely at the advertising side of things than a customer and will probably over apply his expertise. Therefore, I don't think his advice will probably be all that useful to founders. Ad hominem is a logical fallacy, but a bayesian's crutch. You can logic it out for yourself, but I don't think this guy knows what he is talking about.
littlegeneral|13 years ago
The "ideal customer for a startup" is a human. Humans read what interests them, and buy things based on emotion, not logic. And what interests them is, with 100% predictability, themselves. Not you, your product, your business plan, your home page layout, your design scheme, nor any of the other elements many startups choose to create rigid sets of communication rules around. If you wanna talk to your customer effectively, then talk about your customer. They'll listen every time.