I would have liked the article to go into more depth about
his rejections and if he used the rejection feedback to change
his marketing strategy. My guess is when things start heading downhill it all turns into personal problems so I would ignore that stuff in the analysis.
How Not To Promote Your New Startup
21–30 of 83 posts
Re: How Not To Promote Your New Startup
#22http://www.maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/my-very-bad-experi...
From the comments that pretty much sums up why he failed.
The quick synopsis: He gathered fundraiser money then just kept it and never returned it or dispersed it to the users. (Explains the police charges)
Re: How Not To Promote Your New Startup
#23looks like this particular train wreck has made it to news.yc previously:
Re: How Not To Promote Your New Startup
#24Good gravy this is sad-not to mention embarrassing for other Oregonian entrepeneurs like myself.
Connected people (usually) aren't born connected. It's simply a byproduct of past success. They work hard, network, execute, iterate, succeed and get people's attention.
If you can't figure that after 4 years, too bad for you.
Re: How Not To Promote Your New Startup
#25The hilarity continues at PDXCell.com
Check out the section entitled: "A response to this page".
Shoulda known he was an Apple fanboy.
Re: How Not To Promote Your New Startup
#26Good gravy this is sad-not to mention embarrassing for other Oregonian entrepeneurs like myself. Connected people (usually) aren't born connected. It's simply a byproduct of past success. They work hard, network, execute, iterate, succeed and get people's attention. If you can't figure that after 4 years, too bad for you.
He doesn't strike me as the sort that's going to be able to make Portland work with him. Collaboration needs some cooperation; which, well, not his strong suit obviously.
Re: How Not To Promote Your New Startup
#27This is almost funny enough to become a meme: For those of you who insist on thinking that the truth always lies in between two accounts of a situation, I urge you to drop that misguided notion, especially for this situation.
Wow. And check out www.fundable.com
Customers are encouraged to use Kickstarter as a replacement for Fundable.com and seek legal action against Louis Helm personally should he fail to resolve your payment issues promptly.
Re: How Not To Promote Your New Startup
#28You gotta love his sweet pic at the bottom... page - http://PDXCell.com pic - http://pdxcell.com/images/johnpratt.jpg
Yah, that pic screams douchebag (as if it wasn't already obvious).
Re: How Not To Promote Your New Startup
#29I hope Pratt gets over his misdirected anger.
I was happy when I heard of Fundable in 2005, not because it was a cool new idea but because it was an old idea overdue for someone to do it right. (In fact, in 2001 I owned the domains 'payzi.com' and 'tipzi.com' -- as possible homes for some sort of audience-sourced creative-project funding system to complement the Bitzi metadata service.)
Fundable didn't quite do it right, for whatever reasons. Now I'm happy the concept is getting another try from another team.
Re: How Not To Promote Your New Startup
#30looks like this particular train wreck has made it to news.yc previously: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=856301
Screenshot of Fundable "closed permanently" (October 2009)
http://img18.yfrog.com/img18/2396/s8u.png
(image from: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=858033 )