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There's a café down the street from where I'm staying in Barcelona. Maybe 12 tables.
The menu, the napkin, the chalkboard outside, the paper bag they hand you the food in, the song that's always on when I walk in, it all feels like the same place. Same opinion about itself, everywhere you look.
Three doors down there's another café. Same croissant supplier probably. Same price. I've been in there twice and couldn't tell you a single thing about it.
You can feel which one's going to still be there in five years.
I think about this a lot when I audit startups. The homepage says "intelligent" The onboarding says "simple and friendly" The sales deck says "enterprise-grade" The careers page says "we move fast and have fun" Four companies stapled together pretending to be one.
The reason restaurants can't get away with this is the customer sees every surface in 90 minutes. Tech brands have months between touchpoints, so the contradictions hide.
Doesn't mean they're not there, thehe buyer feels them but they just can't always name what's off.
So go sitit in a small place you actually like for an hour and pay attention to how it talks to you. Then open your homepage or current site.
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