Transparency is a Good Trait to Have for a Startup

Something happened last night that was very, very funny. A number of people showed up at the unofficial PRE MashMeet party. Among those were myself and Ann Bernard of WhyGoSolo who was having a blast taking me to task for yesterday’s post as well as informing me that I didn’t have room to talk about such things, because I wasn’t an entrepreneur and had never started a company (the nerve! ;-)).

Fortunately for her (what with my diplomacy and whatnot), such statements don’t piss me off, they just annoy me and it’s certainly nothing to ruin a relationship over.

Anyway, Ann missed a handshake yesterday. What’s a handshake? a Handshake is WhyGoSolo’s terminology describing a first meeting. She was “handshaking” Ken, who I had never met but in my brief interaction with him last night seemed to be a nice enough guy. We thought it was comical that Ann, the CEO of WhyGoSolo would miss a handshake, but let’s be honest - worse things have happened and they may have happened to you. I know worse things have happened to me.

Bad things happen to people and companies all the time. Sometimes everyday. The trick is, you can’t avoid goofs. You can’t avoid mistakes. It’s part of life. What you do with them is what matters. Ann showed fantastic transparency today by fessing up to the goof publicly. Though all of us thought “OMG, I need to Twitter this”, it was ultimately Ann’s choice whether to “out” herself or not.

This is why, though the DC startup community is not a mature investment pool yet, Ann and WhyGoSolo are poised to be the cornerstone for the growth that will happen at some point.

But what do I know? I’m not an entrepreneur. ;-)

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About the Author: Aaron Brazell is the lead editor of Technosailor.com and a social media expert. His passion is to see companies and individuals use the internet and web technologies wisely and effectively to promote their brands and companies. He is Business Development Manager for Lijit and he worked as Director of Technology at b5media from 2005-2008 and is currently an independent consultant.