Seems to be a lot of assumptions going around. Let me clarify anything you want to know. AMA.
TechStars, Lies & Videotape
31–40 of 103 posts
Re: TechStars, Lies & Videotape
#32Bloomberg in general is terrible. From the financial side, they leak information to others, so the rule of thumb is to never talk to them unless you are absolutely desperate to raise monies.
I agree they messed up here, but Bloomberg in general is amazing. The terminal is invincible, the news network is the best on television (have you seen their interview with pg or their feature on Elon Musk?), their revenues are insanely great. On what evidence are you basing this "leak info" rumor?
I'm not arguing about bloomberg the terminal. I and many of my other friends in trading have had conversations with really chatty Bloomberg reps who wantonly leak information. In particular one rep mentioned by name that I was a customer when discussing smaller firms using Bloomberg :/
Re: TechStars, Lies & Videotape
#33This seems so obvious in hindsight. Despite "The Social Network"-generated interest, startups are simply too boring to make for great ratings without some manufactured drama. I feel for those who applied to TechStars NY, not knowing about the circus they were getting into. Startups are hard enough without additional, external distractions.
The original videos were really interesting. The original url is out[1], but google is your friend[2], so you can find them out[3], and even a few ones on youtube[4].
It even got an Emmy[5]!
Edit: Vimeo still got them all: http://vimeo.com/13484895
[1] http://www.techstars.com/thefounders
[2] http://www.google.com/search?q=site:www.techstars.com%20thef...
[3] http://www.techstars.com/the-founders-episode-5-and-6/
[4] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsKKNYAQpnQ
[5] http://www.techstars.com/the-founders-wins-a-heartland-emmy/
Re: TechStars, Lies & Videotape
#34Bloomberg in general is terrible. From the financial side, they leak information to others, so the rule of thumb is to never talk to them unless you are absolutely desperate to raise monies.
I agree they messed up here, but Bloomberg in general is amazing. The terminal is invincible, the news network is the best on television (have you seen their interview with pg or their feature on Elon Musk?), their revenues are insanely great. On what evidence are you basing this "leak info" rumor?
I randomly saw that feature on Elon and was blown away by both his story and the piece. I thought it was great.
Re: TechStars, Lies & Videotape
#35This seems so obvious in hindsight. Despite "The Social Network"-generated interest, startups are simply too boring to make for great ratings without some manufactured drama. I feel for those who applied to TechStars NY, not knowing about the circus they were getting into. Startups are hard enough without additional, external distractions.
I would find a show about start-ups without drama interesting. There are reality shows that seem to be fairly drama free like "19 and counting" (so I'm told anyway). I honestly feel like the producers of the show weren't giving the audience enough credit and just made up normal reality show nonsense.
If they are targeting those interested in startups and not just the lastest trashy reality show they would be much better served doing it documentary style. It's something I would gladly pay a fair amount to watch, following the ups and downs on young startups in a level headed and unbiased way.
I think another good setting for this would be a coworking space, I know techstars is essentially that but at a regular coworking space you get a heap of diversity in what people are doing which adds interest.
Re: TechStars, Lies & Videotape
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would find a show about start-ups without drama interesting. There are reality shows that seem to be fairly drama free like "19 and counting" (so I'm told anyway). I honestly feel like the producers of the show weren't giving the audience enough credit and just made up normal reality show nonsense.
If they are targeting those interested in startups and not just the lastest trashy reality show they would be much better served doing it documentary style. It's something I would gladly pay a fair amount to watch, following the ups and downs on young startups in a level headed and unbiased way. I think another good setting for this would be a coworking space, I know techstars is essentially that but at a regular cow…
Check out The Founders series mentioned above - it is fantastic.
Re: TechStars, Lies & Videotape
#37disclaimer: techstars founder here...
while the finished product that Bloomberg aired is not the most amazing piece of journalism i've ever seen, i don't think TechStars is to blame for that.
the TechStars ethos is to be open and encourage entrepreneurship. to this end, TechStars asked us if we were ok with putting ourselves out there to the world and we all agreed to it before the program started.
at the end of the day, 10/11 companies got funded, a few are driving great revenues already and all are on track to build great companies... it's hard to argue with that.
and if anyone out there learns from what we went through on the show, or is excited by startups or encouraged to go start/join a startup... then the show is a success.
Re: TechStars, Lies & Videotape
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know the exact details, but you'll notice that there are only 6 companies being profiled in the show. Ten companies went through the NY program in that cycle. My understanding is that each team was given the option of participating in the show, along with appropriate caveats. I doubt anyone from TechStars pressured them to participate, although the folks from BloombergTV may have. In theory, TechStars founder…
Every company was required to participate: the choice was (1) do the show or (2) drop out of TechStars. Bloomberg followed all 11 (not 10) companies throughout the entire program, but focused only on 6 companies because it was impossible to follow 11 different story lines in 6, 22-minute episodes.
> Every company was required to participate: the choice was (1) do the show or (2) drop out of TechStars.
Required by whom?
Sounds like TechStars signed up for a 'documentary' PR push and prioritized the filming over the founders. If it didn't work out, sorry, but I don't think TS can play the victim card here.
Re: TechStars, Lies & Videotape
#39Seems to be a lot of assumptions going around. Let me clarify anything you want to know. AMA.
It seemed as if you were typecast as the villain/arrogant/guy-you-love-to-hate reality show archetype. Did you expect this during filming? Did the producers try to steer you into behaving in a certain way?
Re: TechStars, Lies & Videotape
#40This doesn't surprise me considering how it's clear they were trying to play up the drama angle in some of the other startups on the show. I honestly thought after seeing it that she was starting a Groupon like thing for fashion and found that it didn't work. That LinkedIn thing was particularly weird too. It's good that she wrote this because the show sort of made her look foolish.
They do paint her as a clueless girl when in fact reading her posts suggest the very opposite.