Zendesk CEO calls Freshdesk a freaking rip off - Freshdesk responds • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by ericd » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 12:18 PM UTC

teyc wrote: post #160

ericd wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't call emailing bloggers about reviewing your product (given that that's what many of them try to do) something a self respecting person should be reluctant to do. I assume that's what you're referring to with Balsamiq? That's the right way to do it - get the press to give your product some attention because it's really good! Putting up flyers in public places is also fine. It becomes spamming when you inser…

Listen to Andrew Warner's interview. Peldi talked about approaching people on twitter due early days to try to do sales. He wasn't very successful with the approach, and then went on to try something else. I'm fairly certain that this is a company I don't want to ever do business with. That's the respectable side of you talking. If you have a house on the line in your own start up, you'll be crazy not to do everythin…

Oh interesting, hadn't heard that part of the story.

I don't know about that - my thinking is that if blackhat is the only way to get something to succeed, It's probably not a very good idea anyway, and I'm probably better off spending my time doing something different.

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

#182

Post by ericd » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 12:20 PM UTC

wheels wrote: post #161

jackowayed wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 me…

> [...] they'd probably be better off building their product and figuring out how to best meet the needs of their current customers That's nonsense -- a variation on the "Field of Dreams" fallacy of "build it and they will come". Customer acquisition, which PR and marketing feed into, is absolutely essential. In fact, your advice is the opposite of what most programmer-founded startups should do. You don't win by hav…

Eh, I would hold it against them. If they're willing to do shady things in their marketing, who knows what they'll do with all that valuable customer data they're holding on to for me. Signing up for them is like taking them on as a business partner, and trust is a really big part of that.

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

#183

Post by chairface » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 2:52 PM UTC

diamondhead wrote: post #121

chairface wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, the copying was primarily of visual design. Of course, in our opinion, it's a poor copy, but they got acquired and we didn't, so who's to say? I just don't see how it's unethical to try to improve on what someone else has done, which I'm sure is how companies in these situations think of themselves.

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

#184

Post by ZoliErdos » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 6:58 PM UTC

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…

@teyc, I publish / edit CloudAve, and as such, let me clarify a few points.

- We're definitely not racist, don't have an anti-Indian angle . In fact my fellow Editor, @Krishnan is Indian. And for all I care he could be an Indian-African-Martian mix, he is there for what he knows, not where he comes from.

- Ben is a syndicated contributor, and as such he expresses his opinion, which we may or may not agree with. As Editor, I select which of his - and other authors' - posts we publish, and I try to filter out bias - probably not 100% successfully.

- CloudAve can't control what guest authors say on Twitter. All we can do, and again, try really hard is make sure what gets published on our site is unbiased, and hopefully valuable information.

- Personally I find his attack Tweet and the lack of disclosure of his past involvement with ZenDesk unfortunate. I even tried to make light fun of it, saying Freshdesk is actually a rip-off of FreshBooks, which in turn is a rip-off of Fresh Choice. Apparently some did not get the irony, taking my tweet literally, even though Fresh Choice is a restaurant chain. Go figure ...

- In the grand scheme of things this tweet was a mistake, yet Ben continues to write (mostly) insightful posts, of which we get to cherry-pick and so far our readers seem to like it.

- Kudos to FreshDesk for turning this into a PR coup - I suppose this incident brought them more visibility than they would have gained in months without it. Furthermore, now Ben will feel compelled to actually review their product:-)

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

#185

Post by benkepes » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 7:26 PM UTC

luciferous wrote: post #172

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…

> Girish, if you are reading - I'm in Australia, if you could - please don't turn this into a wider "Australians enjoy India bashing meme". We already have a hard time here, and race doesn't factor much if at all in business. Aussie here. Australia has in the recent years acquired a bad reputation when it comes to its treatment of immigrant populations, for e.g.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_against_Indians_…

Guys - as it happens I'll see Christian in Sydney next week and I'll be sure to tell him that his comment was insensitive and racist...

My original tweet was an off the cuff remark, I didn't like Freshdesk's choice of name and I still don't. It's nothing against the founders, the product or anything else. And it sure as heck isn't some dodgy conspiracy aimed at ensuring that Zendesk succeeds....

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

#186

Post by benkepes » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 7:35 PM UTC

CamperBob wrote: post #51

white_devil wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sure are pushing your product hard. Drama attracts attention, which you then direct towards your sign-up page. Kind of sleazy.

Seems all the 'drama' came from Zendesk's paid blogger. If you don't want the other team to score with the ball, don't hand them the ball.

Oh FFS, and for the millionth time. I am NOT Zendesk's paid blogger"

/out

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

#187

Post by benkepes » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 7:50 PM UTC

OK - here goes....

My tweet, "“Seems to me that #Freshdesk is an unethical troll trying to cash in on #Zendesk‘s good name. But that could just be me….”" was an off the cuff remark. I still think Freshdesk is trying to leverage Zendesk's brand but hey, hat's just my opinion. I do note that other folks in here have commented on the similartiies between the two products, I've reached out to Freshdesk asking to ommuncate with them to review their product - am looking forward to comparing them with Zendesk.

The image on Freshdesk's site showing a Zendesk post with my name on it actually relates to a CloudCamp that Zendesk was helping to spread the message about earlier this year. I run CloudCamps in aus/nz (for free, as in gratis, voluntary, unpaid). So that image is kind of irrelevant - it's kind of like saying that a Red Cross volunteer is somehow in the pocket of a large corporate that sponsors the Red Cross.

That said I did do some writing for Zendesk for their blog - around a year or so ago and not since then. So saying I'm a paid blogger for zendesk is kind of like saying I'm an advocate for mcdonalds since I worked there when I was 15. And for anyone who really cares, I have possibly the most complete disclosure statement of current and past engagements - feel free to cross check any other comments I make... http://www.diversity.net.nz/diversity_analysis/ben_kepes_dis...

Finally, in relation to the comments from Christian Marth about he country of origin of the Freshdesk founders - that I obviously don't condone. Those who know me will see (from the size of my nose if nothing else) that I'm Jewish. My mother spent time in a concentration camp and my Grandfather was murdered by the Nazis because he was Jewish - with that background it's unlikely that I'd be a candidate for pulling the race card.

/out

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

#188

Post by teyc » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 9:43 PM UTC

benkepes wrote: post #185

luciferous wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Girish, if you are reading - I'm in Australia, if you could - please don't turn this into a wider "Australians enjoy India bashing meme". We already have a hard time here, and race doesn't factor much if at all in business. Aussie here. Australia has in the recent years acquired a bad reputation when it comes to its treatment of immigrant populations, for e.g.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_against_Indians_…

Guys - as it happens I'll see Christian in Sydney next week and I'll be sure to tell him that his comment was insensitive and racist... My original tweet was an off the cuff remark, I didn't like Freshdesk's choice of name and I still don't. It's nothing against the founders, the product or anything else. And it sure as heck isn't some dodgy conspiracy aimed at ensuring that Zendesk succeeds....

Bear in mind, it is very difficult to convey tone in a tweet. The larrikin in Australia gives a lot of colour to life here, and I'm sorry to see it go if all communication go electronic.

There used to be a time when a gentle jibe in the ribs between friendly groups included off-colour remarks making fun of race. I grew up in that environment in Malaysia. The only problem is on the internet, you are not anyone's friend, and there is no nuance at all.

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

#189

Post by teyc » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 9:47 PM UTC

ZoliErdos wrote: post #184

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…

@teyc, I publish / edit CloudAve, and as such, let me clarify a few points. - We're definitely not racist, don't have an anti-Indian angle . In fact my fellow Editor, @Krishnan is Indian. And for all I care he could be an Indian-African-Martian mix, he is there for what he knows, not where he comes from. - Ben is a syndicated contributor, and as such he expresses his opinion, which we may or may not agree with. As Ed…

We all know that [there is no racism]. This is a stoush between competitors, brothers in arms. This is why I want to check on any unintended escalation.

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

#190

Post by larrys » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 10:58 PM UTC

user24 wrote: post #173

larrys wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"custom URL" which was just created yesterday (12/3/11): Domain ID:D164025278-LROR Domain Name:RIPOFFORNOT.ORG Created On:03-Dec-2011 14:26:48 UTC

well yeah, it's not like they're going to have been preparing to be called a rip off for the last 6 months.. Of course they registered it in response to this... ?!?!?

What is obvious to you is not obvious to everyone on HN. And by the way what conclusion would you come to if the domain was registered 3 months or 3 years ago?