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Dear Google, Thanks For Copying My Startup But You’re Doing It All Wrong

willweinraub.com

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Re: Dear Google, Thanks For Copying My Startup But You’re Doing It All Wrong

#121

Post by [deleted] »

7Figures2Commas wrote: post #83
shadowmatter wrote: post #40

I'm not going to lie, I didn't like this post as much as I wanted to. The author says that Google is making the same mistakes that LiveNinja made over a year ago. And that LiveNinja has learned a lot and iterated since then. At this point, I'm ready to believe that LiveNinja is the more mature product. That if I have a need, I should probably go to LiveNinja. I'm ready to be sold... But then the author does nothing.…

The target audience for posts like these is more often than not...(wait for it)...the person who wrote the post. When a big company enters your space and becomes a competitor, the first reaction of many if not most founders is to worry. These types of posts are an effort on the part of founders to convince themselves that the larger competitor has an inferior offering and won't be able to compete effectively. Inciden…

[deleted]

Re: Dear Google, Thanks For Copying My Startup But You’re Doing It All Wrong

#122

Post by onelovelyname »

Decided to think about Helpouts from Google's perspective. I don't see it as a stand-alone monetizable business, put into the market to compete with LiveNinja. Rather, it's a strategic move by Google to strengthen its ecosystem by:

1. Onboarding more people to G+. G+ is Google's attempt to create a single social identity for each person across all Google products, thus uniting what can seem like a fragmented Google experience. Having Helpouts (using Google Hangouts) is one way to drive new users for G+ through a specific use case.

2. Developing real-time results for help in Google Search. Imagine what will happen when a user searches "math tutoring today" - Google can offer real-time suggestions from Helpouts using Universal Search and Knowledge Graph.

3. Driving new business accounts on Google Apps & Google Analytics, plus sell more ads. When Google encourages skilled people to create Helpouts, they are basically increasing the number of enterprise customers they can potentially recruit for Apps, Analytics, and oh yeah - search / display ads.

And a random idea:

4. Using recorded Hangouts and posting them into a new category on Youtube. Could increase the overall quality of instruction. Also Youtube could be a great way to source Helpout teachers.

If Google chooses to achieve scale - by integrating with search most likely - it will be difficult for LiveNinja to compete on a broad scale. As previous posts mention, a niche / targeted approach may work better for LN to secure loyal users and deter drop off to Helpouts.

Re: Dear Google, Thanks For Copying My Startup But You’re Doing It All Wrong

#123

Post by cwills »

shadowmatter wrote: post #73
hbharadwaj wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe he wants Google to buy his company

But explicitly spelling out to your wealthy competitor all the ways in which you kick its ass likely improves your chances of being acquired.

But he doesn't spell out the ways in which LiveNinja is better, like others here, I was waiting for the comparison? He's deliberately held off on specifics to use it as a selling point for acquisition. "Buy us and I'll tell you what we learned"

Re: Dear Google, Thanks For Copying My Startup But You’re Doing It All Wrong

#125

Post by cwills »

deathanatos wrote: post #99
oftenwrong wrote: post #34

>I’m pretty underwhelmed. Why? >This is more like a squeeze bunt back to the pitcher and you’re out at first base. How so? >What I’m seeing when I look at Helpouts is some of the exact same mistakes we made over a year ago, while our company was still in private beta. For example? >...you built Helpouts all wrong. Go on... >Will people buy some of these Helpouts? Yes. No doubt. But it’s not going to scale in the way…

Did he ever lay out concrete examples or reasons as to how Google is doing it wrong? I gave up digging through all the fluff.

I get the impression he would like to sell this information to Google, in an acquisition.

Re: Dear Google, Thanks For Copying My Startup But You’re Doing It All Wrong

#126

Post by kamjam »

jamescraft34 wrote: post #116
kamjam wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That article is just a big bitch fest, or maybe it is just his toen I do not like. You could have summed what he says into 2 sentences. As you say, it would have been much more mature to have compared the 2 products, show why their product is better and done away with all the childish ranting.

Cut the guy some slack.. Imagine you just woke up to see Google is now your biggest competitor... I imagine this was written off the cuff and during a state of panic. Entrepreneurship is already a tremendous roller coaster of emotions and this I am sure was not helpful. The founder of LiveNinja doesn't seem immature to me. He built a great product and I am sure very passionate.

Sure, I feel for the guy and I'm sure they are very passionate people, I don't doubt that. But the problem with "off the cuff" on the internet is that lots of people read it and it's not in internet memory. They're running a business and sometimes you need to take the personal touch out of it a little.

What would have been better, from my perspective, would have been after reading the post saying "hey, these guys have a much better product that what Google has launched, it is much more mature and much more thought out. I think I'll give them a try and tell my friends to do the same". Turn a negative into a positive, that's all he can do at this point.

Re: Dear Google, Thanks For Copying My Startup But You’re Doing It All Wrong

#127

Post by kamjam »

davidjgraph wrote: post #96
shadowmatter wrote: post #40

I'm not going to lie, I didn't like this post as much as I wanted to. The author says that Google is making the same mistakes that LiveNinja made over a year ago. And that LiveNinja has learned a lot and iterated since then. At this point, I'm ready to believe that LiveNinja is the more mature product. That if I have a need, I should probably go to LiveNinja. I'm ready to be sold... But then the author does nothing.…

Entirely seriously, their site has been top of HN for a few hours now. They don't care in the slightest whether the post make more sense, in fact probably better lay the HN counter-argument on a plate with a link-bait headline. It's a thinly veiled marketing attempt and because we've voted up rather than flagged, it's worked. I'd have a big grin on my face in his position today...

They're never really going to make it big just by making it to the top of HN, are they? They seriously need to be looking at a bigger audience base than that... I presume the link has been making the rounds on reddit et al too?

Re: Dear Google, Thanks For Copying My Startup But You’re Doing It All Wrong

#128

Post by abbasmehdi »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #120
abbasmehdi wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Also, Google's weakness that a startup can exploit is their almost non-existent Customer Service. Google wants to scale massively from day one, so manual, 1-on-1 support can never be part of the plan (unless they go meta and create a Helpouts for Helpouts, probable actually). If Google entered my space, I'd just up the customer hand-holding game and start posting testimonials about it. Kevin Hale of Wufoo com…

I've had great experience with Google Apps customer service - the person on the phone took the time to understand my problem, went away while he worked on it, and a few hours later emailed me a detailed set of instructions for a workaround he found to my specific situation.

My 50 year old yoga instructor told me this morning that she needed me to help her set up Helpouts (after I introduced her to it yesterday). I'll ask her to get in touch with Google and post back how helpful she found them. She isn't totally up and up on tech things so this should be a good experiment.

Re: Dear Google, Thanks For Copying My Startup But You’re Doing It All Wrong

#129

Post by JumpCrisscross »

7Figures2Commas wrote: post #83
shadowmatter wrote: post #40

I'm not going to lie, I didn't like this post as much as I wanted to. The author says that Google is making the same mistakes that LiveNinja made over a year ago. And that LiveNinja has learned a lot and iterated since then. At this point, I'm ready to believe that LiveNinja is the more mature product. That if I have a need, I should probably go to LiveNinja. I'm ready to be sold... But then the author does nothing.…

The target audience for posts like these is more often than not...(wait for it)...the person who wrote the post. When a big company enters your space and becomes a competitor, the first reaction of many if not most founders is to worry. These types of posts are an effort on the part of founders to convince themselves that the larger competitor has an inferior offering and won't be able to compete effectively. Inciden…

The trader in me smells fear in this post, not confidence.

To (quickly) test my intuition I compared the language in this post with the last two [1,2] using the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (FKGL) statistic [3]. This statistic tends to decrease by 0.4 to 0.8 following trauma [4]. The original post was written with the sentence and vocabulary complexity of a 6th or 7th grader (6.9). The other two were more at the level of an 8th grader (8.4 and 8.8). Thus, we see a -1.7 change in the FKGL.

[1] http://willweinraub.com/post/44506341885/the-happiness-equat...

[2] http://willweinraub.com/post/53269730823/stop-saying-you-hav...

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch-Kincaid#Flesch.E2.80.93K...

[4] http://www.researchgate.net/publication/227792923_Relationsh...

Re: Dear Google, Thanks For Copying My Startup But You’re Doing It All Wrong

#130

Post by jessaustin »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #129
7Figures2Commas wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The target audience for posts like these is more often than not...(wait for it)...the person who wrote the post. When a big company enters your space and becomes a competitor, the first reaction of many if not most founders is to worry. These types of posts are an effort on the part of founders to convince themselves that the larger competitor has an inferior offering and won't be able to compete effectively. Inciden…

The trader in me smells fear in this post, not confidence. To (quickly) test my intuition I compared the language in this post with the last two [1,2] using the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (FKGL) statistic [3]. This statistic tends to decrease by 0.4 to 0.8 following trauma [4]. The original post was written with the sentence and vocabulary complexity of a 6th or 7th grader (6.9). The other two were more at the level…

Are three data points enough when the topics are different? This is fine as a check on intuition, but maybe that's as far as it goes?
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