Stop the lies

Start-ups tend to promise more than they can deliver. That damages an entire scene. Founders can do something about it.

When startups dream, it's not under revolution. Some want to revolutionize the financial world, others the B2B business and still others the e-commerce market. In most cases, they have big plans and visions for this, and more and more often, a topic that is important to the younger generation in particular is on the agenda: Sustainability.

To attract as many customers as possible, many startups therefore like to present themselves as green, organic, eco - or even climate-neutral. This would not be a problem and would even be praiseworthy if these advertising promises were true. Unfortunately, however, they are often exaggerated, without any scientific basis and therefore not infrequently groundless, especially in the case of start-ups. This in turn leads to a major problem: When customers find out sooner or later, the outcry is great, the start-up is in trouble, and in the long term this behavior damages the entire scene. For many consumers, a motto that already existed in grandmother's day is likely to apply at this point: If you tell a lie once, you won't be believed.

Greenwashing is a disservice to the scene

So now when startups make big promises, it not only hurts them, but the entire startup scene. The next time consumers go shopping and pick up a pair of supposedly sustainable pants, they'll remember that the last pair of sustainable jeans from a startup wasn't so sustainable after all, and they might throw the climate idea overboard. Why pay attention to this if in the end there is nothing to the promise anyway? In this way, supposed individual cases do a disservice not only to themselves, but to the entire scene.

The lies are also unnecessary. Consumers are by no means stupid. They can understand that a start-up cannot be 100 percent climate-neutral, completely eco-friendly or organic. You just have to explain it to them properly. And this is where founders have an obligation: They have to communicate honestly. Many find this difficult because they have to admit to themselves that the grand plan, the vision and the world improvement just don't work the way they imagine.

Honesty builds community

But it brings enormous benefits. Probably the biggest: founders who communicate honestly build a real community that can also forgive them for mistakes. They show themselves to be human - and nothing else is what customers want when they back a young, dynamic company. No perfection, no growth of 1000 percent, but simply a nice, small company whose product is just new or better. Of course, that doesn't absolve you from doing your best and making it truly sustainable. But no one expects complete climate neutrality unless founders promise it in a big way.

Investors and business angels also have a role to play. They have the task of advising start-ups in the best possible way in order to increase the return for themselves and to set up a start-up for long-term and sustainable success. Should the founders arrive with the topic of "sustainability", it is their duty to also say "stop" once in a while. Stop, we need evidence for this, stop, we can't lie to people, stop, we won't go along with that. Anyone who wants to make impact investments and can't imagine doing so should ask themselves whether they have chosen the right job.