I just read a really good post about a startup that felt unfinished, because there was no mention of critiques of the company’s product or business. I’m not blogging about startups these days, I’m building one, but in the bloggers’ spirit of telling other people how to do their jobs, here are some things I believe every post about a startup should include, if possible.

• Info about the founding team’s relevant background. This is something Michael Arrington taught me was an important part of every startup’s story. Reading Roger Ehrenberg’s thoughts years later about how a founding team’s background illustrates what skills they won’t have to spend the time to learn from scratch helped me understand why all the better.
• Mention of the company’s business model. They say business is the ultimate sport, would you report on a game pitched full of curveballs without mentioning that?
• Discussion of the market and competitors. Who else is in this space? It’s one thing for a blogger to make an assessment of a company’s viability, but I think it’s important to point the reader towards enough information about competitors that they can make their own informed decision, too. Many people have said over the years that tech blogs are so poorly written their only value add is in discovery of cool companies to follow the links to – in that case let’s link to more than one per article!
• Thoughts on a company’s meaning, its place in larger trends and what it points to in the future. Richard MacManus taught me about adding that kind of value.
• Links to previous coverage, on your blog and on other blogs. It’s a good value add for readers and it’s fair play to recognize those who wrote before you. I always use a Custom Search Engine made up of the archives of the top tech blogs to search for previous coverage of a company I’m covering, as well as to learn about competitors.
• Critiques. Every product and company has its critics. If you’ve used the product yourself and can talk about it from personal experience, all the better. I don’t think blogging/journalism has to be objective or balanced but if there’s not some inclusion of critical perspective, I don’t think the post is finished.

That’s my list, off the top of my head, of near essentials. Some blogs do better than others at including this kind of information – and I certainly haven’t included it all in all the posts I’ve written either. Sometimes you just run out of time and have to press that publish button.