The author is is almost exactly the exact opposite of the ideal customer for any startup. He is a venture capitalist and an ad man. He is in the business of buying the startup instead of buying from the startup. He sees orders of magnitudes more startup websites in a month than a customer ever will in their lifetime. He will be looking far more closely at the advertising side of things than a customer and will probably over apply his expertise. Therefore, I don't think his advice will probably be all that useful to founders. Ad hominem is a logical fallacy, but a bayesian's crutch. You can logic it out for yourself, but I don't think this guy knows what he is talking about.
Customers don't classify the websites they visit as "startup websites" or the businesses they buy from as "startups" any more than they classify the fish they eat by taxonomic rank.
The "ideal customer for a startup" is a human. Humans read what interests them, and buy things based on emotion, not logic. And what interests them is, with 100% predictability, themselves. Not you, your product, your business plan, your home page layout, your design scheme, nor any of the other elements many startups choose to create rigid sets of communication rules around. If you wanna talk to your customer effectively, then talk about your customer. They'll listen every time.
Apple does this extremely well. Let's examine some of their current main headlines:
iPod: "Engineered for maximum funness."
iPhone: "Loving it is easy. That's why so many people do!"
iTunes: "You have never been so easily entertained."
Startup headlines usually talk about themselves. For example, we call ourselves Easiest Form Builder here at JotForm. Apple seems to be talking about the user and the emotional benefit they promise: "It is fun", "it is lovable", "it is entertaining".
Very true, but Apple can afford it, when 99.9% of the people on their website probably not only already know what an iPod or an iPhone is, but actually already want to have one...
If I go to a website of a product I've never heard of, my main questions are most likely to be "what is this thing?", "what can I do with it?", "how is this better than what I already know". In this case, explaining the WHAT is probably most important. If I see "Engineered for maximum funness" on such a website, I think I'd be much more likely to hit the back button.
I think what you say is true, but only if you somehow arrive on a website with absolutely no understanding of what you're looking at or how you arrived there.
When most people land on a company's home page, they arrived there from searching specific keywords in a search engine (which demonstrates a context for what they're searching for), clicking-through a socially shared link (which probably includes descriptive text like "Checkout this awesome Fireworks replacement I've been using...), or directly clicking marketing messages in an email or display ad (in which case they'll have a very clear understanding of the category the company is in).
In other words, they have a pretty good sense of "what this thing is," and they want to know _why_ it's better than the other ones they've seen.
Now, if you click a link on HN that says something like "I'm 13! Checkout the product I coded over the weekend!" then yes, the main question will be "what is this thing?" But in the "real world," people don't often stumble randomly across websites in this way, and if they do, they're probably not in the target audience anyway.
Most of the time (and I'm assuming we're all optimizing for most of the time instances), users already know generally what you do. So tell them why you do it in a way that is interesting and meaningful.
The kind of feature-focused, "logical" startup messaging that this article takes issue with isn't usually a result of "abort(ing) the creative process." It's probably more a reflection of:
(a) where these companies are in terms of product-market fit
(b) the companies applying an analytical, test-everything mindset to all aspects of marketing, including branding
Most startups at the stage that the article talks about (those in incubators or fresh out of them) are testing out various different messages to see which ones convert the most effectively. A/B testing the headers and supporting copy on your homepage is an obvious way to see which features & offerings are most compelling to visitors, so you'll see a lot of companies change their top-line messaging frequently as they learn more through their various sales and marketing channels and try out new positioning.
Also, the majority of these early-stage companies aren't entirely clear on the emotional and functional benefits that they're delivering. Figuring out the functional benefits is much easier-- we help you "store your photos more securely," "have a frictionless extra-marital affair," etc.--but clarity on the emotional side often comes later, as users develop a relationship with the company and start to give feedback.
With that said, I think most startups wildly underestimate the importance of branding and the role it can play in driving growth. And, for that matter, the amount of up-front brand research that can be done to figure out what kinds of emotional ties they can foster between consumers and their brands from the very start.
Mike Troiano (CMO Actifio, former Principal at Holland-Mark) has a few great presentations and talks about how startups can develop strong, flexible positioning that can adapt through the various stages of a company's lifecycle, including this one:
Tl;dr version of presentation: Find a way to squeeze your points of differentiation, functional and emotional benefits and mission into a pithy tagline, but be prepared for it to change numerous times as your company evolves
