Meet 30 Cool Young Entrepreneurs • Hacker News Board

Re: Meet 30 Cool Young Entrepreneurs

#11

Post by galois » Mon, Jul 19, 2010, 4:11 PM UTC

axod wrote: post #9

maxklein wrote: post #4

This article made me realise - no matter how much money you are making or how cool your company is - to get featured in such big magazines, your idea has to be simple and it has to be interesting. There has to be some interesting hook, either in your idea or in you. Most reporters are not going to do days of research to find the companies - they will just go for the low hanging fruit. They will think of the companies…

The question is though, is getting featured in such a list a good thing. Does it lead to good things? Perhaps I'm just a bitter "old" person (over 30), but I'm not convinced it matters that much. IMHO The Visual Website Optimizer guy should concentrate on providing value and cool stuff for customers rather than pandering to journalists fashion tastes. If he's providing real value, it's fairly simple to start paying f…

Is getting featured on such a list a bad thing?

Why do you think these people had to pander to journalists to make this list? They were just doing their own thing.

There's so much thinly-veiled jealously in this thread, which, sadly, is exactly what I expected.

Re: Meet 30 Cool Young Entrepreneurs

#12

Post by axod » Mon, Jul 19, 2010, 4:20 PM UTC

galois wrote: post #11

axod wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is though, is getting featured in such a list a good thing. Does it lead to good things? Perhaps I'm just a bitter "old" person (over 30), but I'm not convinced it matters that much. IMHO The Visual Website Optimizer guy should concentrate on providing value and cool stuff for customers rather than pandering to journalists fashion tastes. If he's providing real value, it's fairly simple to start paying f…

Is getting featured on such a list a bad thing? Why do you think these people had to pander to journalists to make this list? They were just doing their own thing. There's so much thinly-veiled jealously in this thread, which, sadly, is exactly what I expected.

It's not jealousy, I think it's great the companies were featured. It's always cool to get your photo/product mentioned somewhere :) Interesting to note that 1/3rd of the people featured were Women. Higher than I'd imagined.

I think it could be a bad thing if you make decisions in order to get on such a list, if you're spending time trying to get on such lists rather than doing what you think is best for the business. Getting featured on Techcrunch/Inc/etc won't make or break your business.

My comment about pandering to journalists was a more general point. As was stated by TechCrunch, they ignored "Visual Website Optimizer" basically because they thought the name was unfashionable. I'd be very doubtful that any customers or potential customers would care.

Journalists write about what people want to read about - extremes/freaks/car crashes/drama/soHotRightNow/epicFails etc. Which may well not be your business or your product. But that doesn't mean you have a bad business/product...

Re: Meet 30 Cool Young Entrepreneurs

#13

Post by icco » Mon, Jul 19, 2010, 4:24 PM UTC

I'm happy this list has a little variety in it.

It may have a few grammatical errors, but at least this isn't another here are another ten companies run by guys from silicon valley. Sure it has some of those companies, but I'm glad to see some variety.

Re: Meet 30 Cool Young Entrepreneurs

#14

Post by evansolomon » Mon, Jul 19, 2010, 4:42 PM UTC

maxklein wrote: post #4

This article made me realise - no matter how much money you are making or how cool your company is - to get featured in such big magazines, your idea has to be simple and it has to be interesting. There has to be some interesting hook, either in your idea or in you. Most reporters are not going to do days of research to find the companies - they will just go for the low hanging fruit. They will think of the companies…

"Most reporters are not going to do days of research to find the companies"

A journalist's goal is to communicate (usually new) information, not necessarily to write about harder to find, harder to describe stories. I don't think this is a question of low hanging fruit, but one of form factor and audience.

From a company's point of view, especially a startup, communicating a message that is both beneficial to you and interesting to others is damn hard work. To take your VWO example, and the context that it came up in last week with Optimizely, I think there is a lot more than having or not having a "hook." The people at YC do an awesome job of prepping new startups for their first press coverage, often on TechCrunch. There is the obvious benefit--that the company is funded by YC--but also the non-obvious benefit that the company is drawing on lots of experience in successfully getting good press coverage and avoiding mistakes that others make.

Re: Meet 30 Cool Young Entrepreneurs

#15

Post by evansolomon » Mon, Jul 19, 2010, 4:44 PM UTC

axod wrote: post #9

maxklein wrote: post #4

This article made me realise - no matter how much money you are making or how cool your company is - to get featured in such big magazines, your idea has to be simple and it has to be interesting. There has to be some interesting hook, either in your idea or in you. Most reporters are not going to do days of research to find the companies - they will just go for the low hanging fruit. They will think of the companies…

The question is though, is getting featured in such a list a good thing. Does it lead to good things? Perhaps I'm just a bitter "old" person (over 30), but I'm not convinced it matters that much. IMHO The Visual Website Optimizer guy should concentrate on providing value and cool stuff for customers rather than pandering to journalists fashion tastes. If he's providing real value, it's fairly simple to start paying f…

"If he's providing real value, it's fairly simple to start paying for advertising and driving new customers to sign up etc."

This is definitely not fairly simple. Getting the attention of potential users is a huge problem and a difficult, valuable one to solve. This is to say nothing of what the founder of VWO should be doing, but whatever the answer is it shouldn't be because getting customers is fairly simple. It's super hard.

Re: Meet 30 Cool Young Entrepreneurs

#16

Post by evansolomon » Mon, Jul 19, 2010, 4:51 PM UTC

maxklein wrote: post #10

axod wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is though, is getting featured in such a list a good thing. Does it lead to good things? Perhaps I'm just a bitter "old" person (over 30), but I'm not convinced it matters that much. IMHO The Visual Website Optimizer guy should concentrate on providing value and cool stuff for customers rather than pandering to journalists fashion tastes. If he's providing real value, it's fairly simple to start paying f…

You're absolutely right. Such lists mean nothing to your core business, and the effect is minor in the long run. Imagine you want to create a great airline. What do newspaper articles have to do with that? If your airline is great, people will hear about you. That's how it should be. My original point was just about why it seems that it's always the same people being featured. It's because those people just have more…

You are likely correct that it's unlikely any of these companies' futures will change appreciably because of this coverage. However, PR can definitely make a real difference in a business--see Aaron Patzer's thoughts on this (no particular source, but he talks about it a lot). To take your airline example, Virgin America invested a ton in PR when they launched.

Also, I think writing off successful PR (even in this particular article) as being a company with or without a human interest angle is wrong. I don't think there's anything particularly human interest-y about Posterous, or syncing cell phone data to computers. Certainly the fundamentals of the businesses are not the high order bit either, but that doesn't seem any more like any inherently good decision basis than many other things.

Re: Meet 30 Cool Young Entrepreneurs

#17

Post by galois » Mon, Jul 19, 2010, 4:54 PM UTC

abstractbill wrote: post #6

dmix wrote: post #5

Twitter clone + 15,000 users = Cool Young Entrepreneur?

I often get the feeling that being under 30 is more important to Inc than other more obvious measures of success.

Well is this part of that 30 under 30 thing they do?

There's nothing wrong with focusing on a particular demographic.

Re: Meet 30 Cool Young Entrepreneurs

#18

Post by paraschopra » Mon, Jul 19, 2010, 4:55 PM UTC

maxklein wrote: post #4

This article made me realise - no matter how much money you are making or how cool your company is - to get featured in such big magazines, your idea has to be simple and it has to be interesting. There has to be some interesting hook, either in your idea or in you. Most reporters are not going to do days of research to find the companies - they will just go for the low hanging fruit. They will think of the companies…

Maybe I lack imagination or maybe A/B testing is dull, but I can't get to understand what a "hook" can be. Would you have any imaginary example for me? Do you mean something like 'mine was a small business, but when I used VWO my sales increased by 20% and finally I could afford a new server to expand the business'? Well there are such case studies available on the site. What sort of hook are you talking about here?

Re: Meet 30 Cool Young Entrepreneurs

#19

Post by evansolomon » Mon, Jul 19, 2010, 4:55 PM UTC

abstractbill wrote: post #6

dmix wrote: post #5

Twitter clone + 15,000 users = Cool Young Entrepreneur?

I often get the feeling that being under 30 is more important to Inc than other more obvious measures of success.

Being "successful" isn't necessarily the point, and I don't think it needs to be. If the goal were to write about the most successful companies, there would probably never be a startup mentioned--and it would probably be an article you had no interest in reading. "Google, still huge. Exxon, yup they make a ton of money. Etc etc."

Re: Meet 30 Cool Young Entrepreneurs

#20

Post by paraschopra » Mon, Jul 19, 2010, 4:59 PM UTC

axod wrote: post #9

maxklein wrote: post #4

This article made me realise - no matter how much money you are making or how cool your company is - to get featured in such big magazines, your idea has to be simple and it has to be interesting. There has to be some interesting hook, either in your idea or in you. Most reporters are not going to do days of research to find the companies - they will just go for the low hanging fruit. They will think of the companies…

The question is though, is getting featured in such a list a good thing. Does it lead to good things? Perhaps I'm just a bitter "old" person (over 30), but I'm not convinced it matters that much. IMHO The Visual Website Optimizer guy should concentrate on providing value and cool stuff for customers rather than pandering to journalists fashion tastes. If he's providing real value, it's fairly simple to start paying f…

I think press does something that advertising can never do: providing social proof. Advertising gets you eyeballs; press gets you eyeball + proof (that a startup is worth knowing more about).

But, yes I agree that pandering to a journalist's taste isn't a great idea. But that's not because I think it is against my philosophies (or such), rather it takes so much time to figure out what works for him/her. As I commented above, I still haven't found my hook. And I'm vaguely aware that the hook will vary from journalist to journalist.