In the elevator on my way to lunch, I ran into the CEO of another startup in our building. He introduced himself and his company. I told him that I had seen their name in the building and asked him what they did. He gave me his “elevator” pitch and proceeded to tell me how they were going to disrupt how business was done. Very confidently he told me how VC's from X and Y companies had invested in his startup and how their product was the best ever. I was extremely impressed and during lunch, was thinking about how we could partner with them.

I came back to my office and decided to look up their web site. Whoa, their web site almost didn't load. A majority of pictures on their web site and videos didn't load at all. Now this wasn't their actual e-commerce site, this was just their client facing web site.

Now I'm thinking, all that talk about how great their product is and how they are going to disrupt business, if they can't get their web site working, how great will their product be? I mean their front facing web site is their introduction to customers, it's what partners/vendors/customers see first and they can't get that to work, how great is their team and product for real?

Now I admit that maybe I'm biased just a tad but come on, anyone worth their salt would have done performance testing and cross browser testing of their web site. It's not like I was accessing their site from across the world or something, we literally sit in the same building 2 floors apart.

What does this mean you ask? Well, I realized that my attitude towards him and his company changed completely when his web site didn't perform. From thinking that maybe they were really on to something, my thought process went to that he is full of hot air.

All because his web site didn't load properly! This is what performance or lack thereof does to your reputation.