[Kique]

The guy who runs the accelerator program at my university once yelled at me for calling my startup a website when I was explaining it to him. He told me to call it a product or a service and that I should NEVER EVER call it a website - and that "fuck, my 5 year old son can make a shit website". It really made the rest of the phone call awkward since he kept talking down to me and I was being super careful to avoid the W word.

Thoughts on his advice? He was the only investor I've ever talked to so just wondering for the future when talking to other investors...

[lubujackson]

He sounds like an asshole, for one. But maybe there's a point there - if you want to get investment, you should be talking about your business. That means employees, roles, taxes, stock, lawyers, planned growth, goals, etc. The website may be the medium by which you operate, but if someone is to invest in you, they are going to want to see you thinking bigger.

Consider it the difference between someone with a corner store and someone wanting to build a new franchise. No one "invests" in a corner store.

[biot]

A website is to a software startup as a bicycle is to a courier. Nobody invests in a bicycle; they invest in a profit-generating courier service. Similarly, nobody invests in a website; they invest in profit-generating online products or services.

This guy may have conveyed this lesson in an abrasive manner but it is valuable advice.

[rhizome]

Sounds like the same kind of MBA talk that has people calling bugs "challenges."

[csallen]

If you're talking to investors, he's right -- it's better to avoid referring to your company, startup, product, application, etc as a "website".