Shy Bats Don’t Hit Homers

I watched a startup flounder severals months back. Not from bad product-market fit or running out of cash. They just mumbled along into oblivion.

Their product is solid and is actually better than their main competitor's. But every time they pitched it, they'd hedge.

"We think it might help with..."
"Some users have said..."
"It's pretty good, we think..."

Meanwhile, their competitor was out there claiming they'd revolutionized the industry. Same features. Worse UI. Double the price. But they said it like they believed it.

Guess who got the Series B.

This happens constantly. Good companies with good products treating their own value like it's something to apologize for. Like confidence is somehow dishonest. Like being excited about what you built makes you a used car salesman.

Look at Jobs introducing the iPhone in 2007. The thing barely worked. AT&T's network couldn't handle it. The battery died in four hours. But Jobs stood up there and told everyone they were about to witness history. And because he believed it, or at least performed belief perfectly, we believed it too.

Compare that to BlackBerry's response. They had better battery life, better email, better security. But their executives kept talking about "enterprise messaging solutions" and "keyboard optimization." They were right about the features. They were also boring as hell. Being right doesn't matter if no one's listening.

Or take Dollar Shave Club. They sold the exact same razors you could buy in bulk from Costco for half the price. But they made a video where the founder walked through a warehouse saying "Our blades are f***ing great." That's it. That's the whole value prop. Confidence and profanity. They sold for a billion dollars.

Even boring products become interesting when someone believes in them:

• Old Spice turned deodorant into masculinity theater

• Geico made insurance funny

• Charmin convinced America to care deeply about toilet paper

• Red Bull created an entire sport just to sell caffeinated sugar water

None of these products are revolutionary. They just had leaders who weren't embarrassed to say "this is great and here's why."

I get why people hesitate. We're trained from childhood that bragging is bad. That modesty is a virtue. That good work speaks for itself.

But work doesn't speak. People do. And if you won't speak for your work, someone else will speak for theirs, louder.

This doesn't mean lying. If your product sucks, fix it. But if you've built something good—something you genuinely believe helps people—and you're standing there shuffling your feet and mumbling about "modest improvements," you're not being humble. You're being negligent.

Your team needs to hear you believe in what they're building. Your investors need to know you'll fight for market share. Your customers need to feel like they're buying something that matters.

Yes, you can overdo it. Theranos overdid it. WeWork overdid it. Hell, OneFootball definitely overdid it. But for every company that dies from too much hype, fifty die from too little. They fade away, apologizing for taking up space, while inferior products with confident founders eat their lunch.

Here's what I've learned after watching hundreds of pitches: The difference between the companies that make it and the ones that don't isn't usually the product. It's whether the founder can look you in the eye and say "This is going to be huge" without flinching.

If you can't do that—if you can't advocate for the thing you've spent years building—why should anyone else care?

Your product might be great. Your team might be brilliant. Your metrics might be perfect. But if you're whispering while everyone else is shouting, you're going to lose.

Not because you were wrong. Because no one heard you.

So get on the damn soapbox. Tell people why your thing matters. Say it like you mean it. Repeat it until you're sick of hearing yourself. Then repeat it some more.

Because shy bats don't hit homers. And modest companies don't change markets.

They just quietly go out of business while their bolder competitors take the swing.