Perception Precedes Reality

June 3, 2026

Whether you are a one, two or three person band, when you first start every founder is confronted by the fundamental question from potential clients of who are you? As I said yesterday in the podcast short with successful founder and bootstrapper Jennie Moss https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bootstrapconfidential_as-a-founder-you-are-hands-on-and-have-to-activity-7467455544409247744-wH57?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAF1UkEBCY-a17j1ZdCo5zlZPvZI1z0Bcbk you may be a one person band but it is imperative that you give any buyers comfort that it’s not just you. To find out why check out this extract from my book, Bootstrap Confidential – Building from bedroom to Boardroom without Investors

When you start out, you have to understand that you represent a risk for any buyer—and a pretty significant one at that. The phrase ‘No one got fired for using IBM’ is true. While you’re pitching your Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to a potential buyer, it doesn’t matter how much they like what you have; they are also wondering about who you are and what your company is.

Is it a one-person band? Is it just starting? How many team members are there? What happens if I buy their product and they go bust? What happens if they get sick, and if there are only one or two of them, who will do the work? What if their investor pulls the plug or makes them change direction?

All of these are legitimate questions. No buyer wants to make a decision that turns out so badly that it costs them their bonus—or worse, their job. It was even more difficult for RFi because all our potential clients were bankers, and the main job of a banker is to manage risk. Banking is the most risk-averse industry there is.

So, my primary challenge at RFI was to overcome that.

To address as many of these questions as possible, I decided to launch the Australian arm of a successful UK business. Perception is everything and I figured no one was likely to actually check this out. We would be perceived as the new Sydney office of an established UK enterprise. This way, I hoped that all such concerns as I just mentioned would disappear or at least be mitigated.

Our website was deliberately designed to reflect this illusion. Saatchi & Saatchi, the advertising giants, started in the 1980s with an office shopfront deliberately designed to look like they were a century-old, high-end, old-school luxury firm, as opposed to the brand-new start-up staffed by just two young brothers. As Andy Warhol said, perception precedes reality.

We didn’t name the company using our family names, as that would have been a dead giveaway that we were a start-up. Nothing screams start-up louder than a company named after its founders. Also, with the surnames Green and Shields, there may have been some confusion between us and a certain US stamp dynasty.

Importantly, when exit time comes, if your name is in the company title, buyers are likely to apply a discount for how much brand equity they will lose when you leave, as well as how much extra risk they’re taking on with a founder so intimately involved.

From every perspective, it was an absolute no. Having set ourselves up as the Australian arm of an imaginary UK business, we also had job titles to match. No CEO or co-founder or anything like that. Instead, I was the Business Development Director, and my partner, Alan, was the Research Director. Both English, both living in Australia and now both setting up the local branch of a UK firm.

Our story made complete sense. It lasted more than five years before we changed these job titles. We had an imaginary boss in the UK based on a real person who had once actually been my boss. I knew he was on a year’s sabbatical and a LinkedIn check would have shown that all three of us had worked together in a previous business with him as Managing Director. So, if any prospective client ever bothered to check, it all made sense.

If this sounds like a lot of silly effort for nothing, be assured it wasn’t. I know from speaking to clients who now know us well how important it was back then that we didn’t appear to be just a two-person start-up but the Australian arm of an established UK business. I also used to call my imaginary boss to get authorisation for certain discounted deals, which added both to the fun and to our image of being well-established.

I’m not suggesting that you do this, but bear in mind that whatever you do and however you present yourself, you will want to have thought through beforehand all the potential issues and questions that you’ll face when you present yourselves. These are all potential deal-blockers and you need to work out how to resolve them in advance.

If you enjoyed this then check out my book, Bootstrap Confidential, your playbook for bootstrapping at:

Bootstrap Confidential: Building from Bedroom to Boardroom Without Investors eBook : Green, Charles: Amazon.co.uk: Books