10 Things That Are Not Really Impressive

I’ve recently had a number of conversations with people that say certain things meant to be impressive when really in my head I’m thinking that those things are not impressive. Sometimes they actually have a negative impact on my opinion.

I’m sure we all have things like that that we use in forming our impressions of people and situations. Here is a list of 10 things that I believe are not really impressive, that are sometimes touted in a way to try to be impressive:

Busyness. It’s off-putting.
Little sleep. It’s not cool, not good for your health, and not going to get you ahead of other people.
Putting Word, Excel, Powerpoint on your resume. Yeah, if knowledge of those is impressive enough to you that you feel to list it on your resume, that’s worrisome (at least for more experienced hires).
Unqualified revenue magnitude. Different kinds of businesses need to transact very different levels of revenue to be equally impressive. SaaS companies are very impressive at $1 million in revenue. Ecommerce ones are not as much.
Unqualified fundraising. Venture funds are raised for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes they are good. Sometimes they are not. In any case, a round raised is not a sure sign of vitality. Revenue or user growth speaks louder than fundraising.
Large email signatures. Yuck! Especially yuck if you include an image.
Carrying a big ego around. I’m glad that does not happen as much around Atlanta. Most of the best entrepreneurs here are the most down to earth.
Number of employees. There is a startup guy in our market that talks about hundreds of employees. Um, yeah right; that’s inflated. A team of web devs across an ocean does not count. Number of employees is irrelevant. Output is what matters.
Future deals, contracts, etc. Don’t count your chickens before they hatch, especially to a VC. Just be real about the state of things and people will be more impressed with honesty and realism.
A list of many to-do items accomplished. I would much rather have employees tell me they accomplished deep thought substantive work and pushed through hard problems than spent time hoping around on superficial tasks without finding the time to focus on needle-moving things.