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Attention founders: Here’s how you respond to an unfair post about your company

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Re: Attention founders: Here’s how you respond to an unfair post about your company

#11

Post by DigitalSea »

Ben is one of few modern day startup founders who actually give a damn and take the time to respond to customer queries. We live in a society where the startup industry is overpopulated by pretentious Harvard drop-outs who think they have some kind of sense of entitlement and are revolutionaries. It's refreshing to see Ben is anything but a decent, humble and respectable guy who finds the time to write a well-thought out response to even the toughest of critics.

I tend to use Campaign Monitor for emails, but this makes me want to try Mailchimp because I've never fully given it a chance and the fact the company is being run by a decent guy makes me even more motivated to do so.

Re: Attention founders: Here’s how you respond to an unfair post about your company

#12

Post by tyang »

DigitalSea wrote: post #11

Ben is one of few modern day startup founders who actually give a damn and take the time to respond to customer queries. We live in a society where the startup industry is overpopulated by pretentious Harvard drop-outs who think they have some kind of sense of entitlement and are revolutionaries. It's refreshing to see Ben is anything but a decent, humble and respectable guy who finds the time to write a well-thought…

"pretentious Harvard drop-outs"

I have no idea who you're talking about. Could you please elaborate? :)

Re: Attention founders: Here’s how you respond to an unfair post about your company

#13

Post by officemonkey »

JshWright wrote: post #10
ciupicri wrote: post #9

Why the fuck does he use the work "fuck" only to censor it afterwards? You either use it completely or not at all.

It's possible it was uncensored in the original message, then censored when it was published to a broader audience.

But why use it at all? Casual swearing has very few positive benefits, especially since the rest of the email was well-written and expletive-free.

Re: Attention founders: Here’s how you respond to an unfair post about your company

#14

Post by EwanG »

officemonkey wrote: post #13
JshWright wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible it was uncensored in the original message, then censored when it was published to a broader audience.

But why use it at all? Casual swearing has very few positive benefits, especially since the rest of the email was well-written and expletive-free.

For the same reason it tends to get used in Alternate Rock? A way to say, "we both know we're hipper than the average dude, and can use this word to shock Joe Q Public while just adding an inside emphasis for us cool dudes who won't over react to a four character word". Or that could be me overinterpreting :-)

Re: Attention founders: Here’s how you respond to an unfair post about your company

#15

Post by 16s »

It has been my experience that technology is full of naysayers who have strong opinions (it matters not if those opinions are based on actual experience). You are doing it wrong... I would do it with ABC.... I would write that in XYZ. No one uses that database anymore... etc. You should expect to be contradicted and told you are wrong by a lot of people. I always listen to them and try to learn why they think that because a few of them have insight, but the majority just want to tell you how they would do if they were you. You should expect this sort of thing. It's going to happen a lot.

Re: Attention founders: Here’s how you respond to an unfair post about your company

#16

Post by jonathanjaeger »

kevinconroy wrote: post #7

I'd like to point out that this is NOT an isolated incident for Ben. I've replied to the MailChimp newsletter before with my thoughts or questions and on multiple occasions have gotten a response back from Ben within an hour or two with a thoughtful, specific response to my email. I also sent a rant to him after we had some trouble with MailChimp and he apologized and worked to make it right within a day. The lesson…

Agreed. With a great product, you'll think even better things about the company. If you have a buggy, not-so-great product, more can be forgiven. Lesson: always have great communication regardless.

Re: Attention founders: Here’s how you respond to an unfair post about your company

#17

Post by mercurial »

officemonkey wrote: post #13
JshWright wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible it was uncensored in the original message, then censored when it was published to a broader audience.

But why use it at all? Casual swearing has very few positive benefits, especially since the rest of the email was well-written and expletive-free.

Agreed. In the categories of words I'd rather not see in a such an email, but for completely different reasons, I nominate "reinvent". It needs to be taken out the back, shot and served as the main course to a VC dinner.

Re: Attention founders: Here’s how you respond to an unfair post about your company

#18

Post by snowwrestler »

I agree that Ben's response is excellent, but I want to focus on the other half of the interaction for a second. Ben needed to send that email because Paul wrote something ridiculous. As Ben gently pointed out, Paul did not actually know what MailChimp (and, presumably, ExactTarget) are doing lately. From the post, it sounds like he fielded a pitch call and basically published what he heard. Sadly that does not seem unusual on tech blogs these days, although I'm surprised Paul fell prey to it.
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