How do I get customers to trust a brand-new company? Every founder asks it. Most answers sound the same.
Borrow some trust. Put up a logo wall. Collect a few testimonials. Stick a badge or two in the footer.
I get why. When you're new, you've got nothing to point at. But borrowed badges are a thin coat of paint, and careful buyers can see through it.
Badges are easy to fake
Anything that's easy to put on a website is easy to put there without earning it.
Regulators know this. The ACCC says it's against the law for a business to create fake or misleading reviews, or to arrange for others to do it. It points to a removalist, Citymove, that copied testimonials from an unrelated review site, changed them and published them as genuine. It paid a $6,600 penalty.
In the US, the FTC's 2024 rule bans fake reviews and testimonials, including AI-generated ones, and lets the regulator seek civil penalties.
So the honest founder's badge sits next to the faked one, and a buyer can't easily tell them apart. Which means it isn't doing much work.
Show what you did instead
When I was the one asking the questions, a logo wall told me very little. What I wanted was the trail. What did you promise? What did you deliver? What went wrong, and what did you do about it?
A new company can't have a long history. It can have an honest one, kept from day one. That's trust a stranger can actually check.
Here's what I'd start keeping now:
- Every customer commitment, with the date you made it.
- What you shipped, and when.
- Feedback as it arrives, good and bad, in the customer's words.
- Problems, and how you fixed them.
- Key decisions, and why you made them.
- Your numbers, kept current, not tidied up later.
None of it needs to be pretty. It needs to be real, dated and kept as it happens, not rebuilt the week before a big deal.
Let them check
A testimonial asks a buyer to take your word for it. A record lets them see for themselves. Investors want the same thing when diligence starts.
Ethiks360 gives you one place to keep that trail from your first customer on, so the proof is already there when a buyer or investor asks.
Small and new is fine. Small, new and checkable beats big and decorated.
Earn the badge before you hang it: this week, write down your first customer commitment with today's date.
82/18: machines did the boring bit. The thinking's mine.