How important is a great website while trying to raise capital?

Not sure how many of you readers out there are subscribed to the jasonnation.com email list (Jason Calacanis' mailing list which I highly recommend you get subscribed to) but his most recent post was entitled "How to raise an angel round" and it got me thinking (uh oh).  His email talked much more about how to interact while going into the round and dealing with angels than most other posts I've seen on the topic and most of it was very interesting.  One part in particular really struck me:

Product wins, so product speaks. Here are 10 things you can get right to impress angels.

...

3. Professional design: it's really simple to hire great designers from around the globe to put together professional presentations and mock ups. If your stuff is ugly, you are not trying hard enough--and that's a tell.

Jason was talking about needing a professionally designed website while courting angel investors.  I'm not quite sure A) I understand the thought process or B) I agree with it.  Let me explain.

What I don't understand about this thought...

I do get that having a professional design is both good for the brand and pleasant for people to look at, many times the design is the last piece of the puzzle.  Say you're making an awesome new VOIP service or a cool iPhone app and you've got most of it down pat but a logo and (maybe even a proper name) were not nearly as important as the underlying code.  You may be pitching an angel/group of angels to raise the money to push the product over the edge.  If having a professional design is that important to an investor, are they really getting the point of the product?

And now for why I disagree with it...

As I mentioned previously, it can be tough to get a design down long before you've raised money.  Sure you could use one of those services like 99designs (that he mentioned in his email) but is this a great way to spend your time/money?  I would think that most investors are looking for smarts, ideas and execution while looking to invest.  Sure you have the great idea and you may have executed but is it really smart to spend a small amount of cash on something that should surely be handled by someone that understands branding, design, SEO and so much more?  My thought would be that part of the first round of funding would push just these things forward by allowing the startup/entrepreneur to bring someone in who's truly talented at this.

I know from talking to enough friends who have raised money or have built a product that knowing where your skills start and where they end are two of the most important things to making a product or business successful.  When you need help coding, you should probably seek out a coder.  If you're looking for legal advice, don't go it alone.  And surely when you're looking to design your site, you probably shouldn't loose sleep over not knowing the proper CSS tags or whether or not your code is fully XHTML compliant.

Do you agree?  Do you believe that having a great looking website is that important to landing capital?  Does it depend on your product or is this sort of a blanket rule?

P.S. - I'm very interested in this topic as the project I've been working on rides a lot more on technology and mobile apps/sites than it does on pretty web pages.

Comments

[Gordon]

Great web site designs are a bit of a chicken and egg type question. For example :

What might appeal more to a group of potential investors : a web site where there is great potential for improvement or a web site that indicates the web owner dedicated greater resources and effort to the web site then to the product or service that they are selling ?

On one hand, the web site is the public face of the potential company - so you don't want to hang your reputation on a web site that looks like a bunch of chimps produced it - but on the otherhand, you don't want a web site that is so magnificent that it leaves the potential investor 'wondering' how much effort and expense were 'misdirected' into that effort ( as compared to the product or service being offered ).

As you can see... it is a delicate balancing act. Personally, I believe that functional, friendly and informative is more important to potential investors then glossy, glitzy and costly.

There are many 'great' looking web sites out there that simply don't deliver the value of content. They look great... but in the end the user ask themself " Where's the beef'. And there are many 'ugly as sin' web sites out there that do deliver the content. In the end, content always wins over glitz - because ultimately people are only initially impressed with the glitzy and gimmicky web sites - but they always go to where the content is in the end.

[Jesse Middleton]

Thanks Gordon for the insight. Yes, I'm sure it's a fine line but it was interesting to me to hear an angel list this as a top 10 need-to-have while looking at a company. If I walked in with no web site BUT I could turn toilet water into drinking water at .01/gallon then I feel like that should be enough to get the money flowing -- although I guess one could argue that if you could do that then you probably wouldn't need the angel money, you'd be looking at a larger bucket or were much, much further on your way.

It's an interesting world out there.

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