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Zendesk CEO calls Freshdesk a freaking rip off - Freshdesk responds

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Re: Zendesk CEO calls Freshdesk a freaking rip off - Freshdesk responds

#121

Post by diamondhead »

chairface wrote: post #118
diamondhead wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not all about a name. Freshdesk is an embarrassing copy of Zendesk.

A lot of successful products are copies of something else, and more power to them. The company I work for* had a competitor make an "embarrassing copy" of our flagship product, and they managed to get acquired because of it. But you know what? I don't hold it against them, in fact, congrats to them. If anything it validates the space we're in. * I'm deliberately not mentioning the company or product by name, because…

Does your company's competitor copy even your visual design? What I see here is some bullshit makers trying to promote their product by trolling. This is not the common case.

By the way, I'm not against copying. I distribute my website, multiplayerchess.com with WTF License to let people clone it easily.

Again, what I see here is bullshit. It's unethical, it's not honest.

Re: Zendesk CEO calls Freshdesk a freaking rip off - Freshdesk responds

#122

Post by tuckbuck »

Different possible Zendesk(ZD) responses and their outcomes :

- Keep quiet and wishing this episode to go away In my opinion ,this is not the best option.At some point ZD would have to come back with a response,atleast to their customers. Not responding keeps Freshdesk(FD) in driving the discourse and makes ZD look timid.

- CEO should make a short tweet ( & no more) ,IMMEDIATELY.It should say " Still stand by my ripoff comment.IMHO ,a crappy ripoff. " . this will prevent this issue from becoming any more sensational and will stop adding fuel to the issue . ZD CEO should stick to his ground by saying that FD IS A RIPOFF

The ZD CEO made a subjective,nasty comment about a competitor's product - this happens all the time. ZD DID NOT make any of the nasty comments like "indian cowboys" etc. Ben keepes and the personal comment by ZD is the only connection with ZD. FD is trying to make ZD look guilty by association.

- Next they should go on the offensive by targeting FD customers and prove that FD is indeed crappy. eg FD customers will get 6 months free.

Re: Zendesk CEO calls Freshdesk a freaking rip off - Freshdesk responds

#123

Post by shakes »

Nrndr wrote: post #112
shakes wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, I hate racism. I grew up the midwest and saw the terrible things that racism can do to a culture. But my argument is, what does Freshdesk gain from going back and forth with @cloudgroupsyd? Beyond that, @cloudgroupsyd apologized but still they chose to bring up this quote to rabble-rouse and make personal attacks against him. We all say stupid stuff, we all make mistakes. Especially in this world of 140 charact…

He didn't apologized.

Really? It looked to me like he did: http://twitter.com/#!/cloudgroupsyd/status/14253941437406412...

You can argue if that apology was enough or if it was a full apology. But I feel like saying "he didn't apologize" is an oversimplification.

Re: Zendesk CEO calls Freshdesk a freaking rip off - Freshdesk responds

#125

Post by shakes »

chairface wrote: post #115
shakes wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is, they respond to the personal attacks by making personal attacks against the people who made them. An eye for an eye. In my opinion, they sunk down to the level of the people who were criticizing them. Making a good product speaks for itself, you don't have to have this petty back and forth.

Where are the personal attacks on that page? I see none.

Taking a tweet from someone with 73 followers, throwing it front of thousands of people (maybe more) and saying that the tweet "reflects poorly on the intellectual ability of the person making the judgement" is a personal attack to me. You can argue that they're right, but does the punishment really fit the crime? It seems in poor judgement to publicly shame some dude who's comments would of otherwise gone unnoticed.

Re: Zendesk CEO calls Freshdesk a freaking rip off - Freshdesk responds

#126

Post by alex_c »

All I see are a bunch of self-promotional trolls, on both sides of the "issue".

Is setting up an entire website really a proportionate response to a dumb tweet? (Obviously, it is if you're stirring up controversy).

Seriously, guys... don't feed the trolls. You should know better than this.

Re: Zendesk CEO calls Freshdesk a freaking rip off - Freshdesk responds

#128

Post by jmedwards »

The whole thing is completely overblown (intentionally so and calculated, of course, by Freshdesk) and was very unnecessary to begin with (on Zendesk's part).

As an Indian-started helpdesk software company ourselves, the 'Indian cowboy' comment raised our brows a bit. It was very unfortunate. But then I realised it was said by a relative nobody. That didn't stop it being used to inflame the situation, though.

Disclosure: I'm from Kayako.com, competitor, the original Original helpdesk and bemused bystander ;-)

Re: Zendesk CEO calls Freshdesk a freaking rip off - Freshdesk responds

#129

Post by jackowayed »

ericd wrote: post #105
teyc wrote: post #74

HackerNews readers, watch and learn. I'm about deconstruct what is going on. Anybody who brushes off FreshDesk because of its Indian roots is doing FreshDesk a favour. This is a sharp mind at work and it is lethal. FreshDesk is executing the standard modus operandi of upstart against an incumbent. Jobs is a master at it (I'm Apple I'm Microsoft), Calacanis too (remember the SEO controversy, and then the Angel controv…

This kind of stuff, especially Twitter-spamming, really rubs me the wrong way. Some people call it hustle, but I just think it's dirty. I'm much less likely to sign up for FreshDesk in the future if it comes across my desk now.

I agree. I interned for a company that was kind of competing with [fairly big startup that most of you have heard of]. At the time, Company was way smaller than it is now, but was still bigger than us. (We had very few customers; no one had heard of us whereas I'd already seen mentions of Company on HN several times; they had fulltime employees other than the founders and we did not.) Despite this, any time anyone mentioned our name on Twitter (not even in dissatisfaction), they got an @reply.

Not only was this annoying and sketchy, but it was totally unnecessary. We were no threat to them. They would have been better off doing just about anything else with their time.

Even though Freshdesk doesn't @reply everyone who mentions Zendesk (just those who are unhappy with it), and even though Zendesk is an "incumbent" (in the absurd Valley way where anything that's been around longer than a year is ancient), this still gives me a really bad impression of them (as does this whole PR stunt), and furthermore, they'd probably be better off building their product and figuring out how to best meet the needs of their current customers.

Re: Zendesk CEO calls Freshdesk a freaking rip off - Freshdesk responds

#130

Post by dools »

alex_c wrote: post #126

All I see are a bunch of self-promotional trolls, on both sides of the "issue". Is setting up an entire website really a proportionate response to a dumb tweet? (Obviously, it is if you're stirring up controversy). Seriously, guys... don't feed the trolls. You should know better than this.

What's wrong with self promotion? Who else is going to promote you for free?
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