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How Not To Promote Your New Startup

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71–80 of 83 posts

Re: How Not To Promote Your New Startup

#71

What a laugh! Gosh I know how this guy feels -- I've had three other startup ideas that were "copied" by the market and took off in other formats. And he was so dead on and hilarious in his assessment of presenting to investors: * I tried for 4 years to get people to take Fundable seriously, traveling across the country, even giving a presentation to FBFund, Facebook's fund to stimulate development of new apps. It wa…

The marketplace is NOT a meritocracy.

Right, and neither is one's own opinion of oneself.

I don't know if this John Pratt guy actually has any intelligence, perseverance or marketable skills, but one thing he certainly does have is personality disorder. If I were him I'd take some time to reflect on his public persona, figure out what's wrong with his attitude, and then go get his name legally changed before trying again.

Re: How Not To Promote Your New Startup

#72
For all first-time entrepreneurs, first read the original post and then remember the following as your first lesson of 2010. Whatever you do, don’t post on the web immediately after you fail. Don’t try to make yourself look smart. Don’t try to rationalize your failure. Talking about failure doesn’t make failure go away. It just opens yourself to saying things you will surely regret in later days. Instead of talking, you would be much better served if you just shut up and peddle like hell. Now is not the time to seek fame and recognition. With success, you will have both. It is much more fun to do a Blog when you fully recover and share your hard earned experience from the vantage point of sweet success. Otherwise people would make the obvious observation that you are nothing but a wannabe. However, if you inadvertently discover you have a knack for on-line comedy, then you should give up being an entrepreneur. It is a much better career anyway.

Re: How Not To Promote Your New Startup

#73

I was the project manager at Kickstarter during its initial phase of development, during the time that we went from a single requirements document and some mock-ups to a functional site. We weren't ripping anybody off. The boring truth is that we took Perry Chen's idea, and, like any software project, continued to refine and adjust our vision of what the site should be, and what the user experience should be, based o…

I'd have to say I agree - It's quite easy for someone to come up with the same idea as you and not even be aware that you exist(ed).

Blog posts and comments about my startup (http://FriendBinder.com) often think we copied FriendFeed, SocialThing or some other site though the reality is that those sites didn't exist when we started early in 2007 (or were in stealth at least).

That's life I'm afraid.

Re: How Not To Promote Your New Startup

#74
post #48

I got new iPhone. Now what's next. I got new Mac OS. Now what's next. I read the Y Combinator news feed. Major drama from some nutjob who ruined his company and was a douchebag. Ha ha. Cool. Now what's next. I read the TechCrunch page. Now what's next. What's Apple working on next? Ok. What's Google working on next? Ok, I found out. Now, what's next? What does Tim O'Reilly say is the next thing? Ok. What does Cory Do…

Defend yourself online.

Ok. Defend yourself more online.

Ok. Wait, there are still some people who disagree?

Defend yourself online. Right!

Ah, not everyone yet agrees!

[continue as needed to staunch the hole in your ego]

Lot's of people fail at startups. That's actually the norm, despite the way that people perceive the market. Only the most asinine people would make fun of you for just not succeeding. But the difference between most people's attitude and your attitude: you seem to think that you did everything right, that everyone else conspired against you.

That kind of mindset is not the way to succeed in this business.

Re: How Not To Promote Your New Startup

#75
post #36

Perfect example of "Lets kick the guy when he is down", and Seriously why is this even here? I rest my case.

I feel somewhat obligated to reply because I originally tweeted this (and with a title similar to the above).

I didn't do this to kick the guy while he's down. It's that on Twitter I knew enough people working in various roles in startups and even just most companies that I thought this would be a good warning to all of them of what never to do. You don't ever publicly accuse your competitor of outright ripping off your idea (if that really was the case, take them to court, but it's clearly not appropriate here). You don't publicly attack your co-founder because it didn't work out for whatever reason. You especially don't do either one in an email to a group of pretty tech-savvy and possibly well-connected people and then go on to attack said group when they don't respond favorably because oh noes, they're being unfair to you. All because you wanted to tell them about your new startup.

Pratt seems to want to get more connections and more interested eyes looking at his new project for funding and development and more, and he's not helping his case by acting the way he does. All this bad press could have been prevented if he had edited out most of his original email. It should have been something like "Hey, remember me, we might have met before at a previous BarCampLA...I was one of the guys behind Fundable. I'm now working on a new startup called PDXCell, and I'd appreciate it if you'd check it out!". Not this burning-all-bridges tactic. I tend not to talk much at BarCampLA events, but I've still met people there looking to fund startups, talented developers/engineers/hackers, marketing types, and more. That's a lot of potentially useful connections that will now remember this guy as someone never to work with.

So while some of the comments here might really be kicking the guy while he is down, I saw this link as an educational moment, especially to HNers that might someday (if not already) find themselves tempted to do the same. I'd hope Pratt realizes what he's doing wrong eventually..

Re: How Not To Promote Your New Startup

#76
post #49

I have three phrases for Y Combinator blog commenters: BENCH WARMERS. TROLLS. LOSERS WHO HAVE NEVER TAKEN RISKS IN THEIR LIVES OR OPENED THEMSELVES TO PUBLIC OR PERSONAL ATTACK. - John Pratt (yes, it's me)

More coverage of this at http://lalawag.com/great-moments-in-google-groups-with-john-...

with some unpublished emails from the original Google group

Re: How Not To Promote Your New Startup

#77
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, HNers! Keep baiting him! The weather satellites show a spike in temperature over his location. At the rate he's steaming up, he'll explode into a fine red mist in a couple of hours! ("Fags"? Really? This from a grown-up? Utterly bizarre. Is this a fake account or something? It's done well, if so.)

Yeah. I can't believe anybody would really use the "f" word in a forum like this (or ideally anywhere, but especially in an otherwise civil, focused forum like this). Probably (hopefully?) a fake account.

His own replies to his google groups posting are just as bizarre. Sadly, this looks authentic.

Re: How Not To Promote Your New Startup

#78
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I can't believe anybody would really use the "f" word in a forum like this (or ideally anywhere, but especially in an otherwise civil, focused forum like this). Probably (hopefully?) a fake account.

His own replies to his google groups posting are just as bizarre. Sadly, this looks authentic.

Eh, the account was only registered to respond to this post. I'd presume John innocent until proven guilty.

Re: How Not To Promote Your New Startup

#79
post #49

I have three phrases for Y Combinator blog commenters: BENCH WARMERS. TROLLS. LOSERS WHO HAVE NEVER TAKEN RISKS IN THEIR LIVES OR OPENED THEMSELVES TO PUBLIC OR PERSONAL ATTACK. - John Pratt (yes, it's me)

Again, probably not the guy. This account was just made.

Re: How Not To Promote Your New Startup

#80
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His own replies to his google groups posting are just as bizarre. Sadly, this looks authentic.

Eh, the account was only registered to respond to this post. I'd presume John innocent until proven guilty.

I was referring to the follow up comments made on BarCampLA using the same gmail account as his original post there. Those comments have the same tone as the ones made here.
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