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Ask HN: Founder's tactics crossing the line?

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Re: Ask HN: Founder's tactics crossing the line?

#21

Post by andykmaguire »

This move is unethical for a very clear and straight forward reason. Demo Day at 500 Startups is "invite only". The YC company was not invited. People are invited for very targeted and strategic reasons. Information will get out, intentionally via press and investor conversations, but the timing is a critical factor.

The group is larger, but the logic is parallel to pretending to be an investor to hear a competitive startup pitch for capital, or sneaking into an internal team meeting at the competition.

It is a move without class.

Re: Ask HN: Founder's tactics crossing the line?

#22

Post by NhanH »

dquail wrote: post #17
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #15

Well, one of YC's guidelines is "don't worry about your competitors". This is a guideline for practical rather than moral reasons. Worrying about your competitors wastes your time and energy. So (dodging the moral and legal questions), this behavior may be counterproductive.

I'm a big fan of the "don't worry about your competitor" mantra. But at the same time, it'd be silly not to pay attention and to learn from your competitors failures/successes. Doing so, IMO is quite productive.

You can pay attention but not worry. The two are closely related but not the same thing :-)

Re: Ask HN: Founder's tactics crossing the line?

#23

Post by wdewind »

rexreed wrote: post #19

If your biggest competition is an un- or under-funded, not yet widely known or used startup, you've got bigger problems than that startup. I find it amazing that startups will consider other startups their main competition, when the reality is both startups need to focus on the larger untapped market rather than think that each other is stealing each other's non-existent business. Another way to put it: If the market…

> Another way to put it: If the market is really that small that one small startup can take away business from another small startup, then you don't have much of a market at all, and you should find a larger market.

This is true but not the entire picture.

It is extremely common for the VC community to de facto agree on a leader of a space. Markets are frequently interpreted as winner takes all, despite the reality that almost none are. Once a winner has been agreed to it can be extremely difficult to raise funding in the same space.

Re: Ask HN: Founder's tactics crossing the line?

#26

Post by dhimes »

andykmaguire wrote: post #21

This move is unethical for a very clear and straight forward reason. Demo Day at 500 Startups is "invite only". The YC company was not invited. People are invited for very targeted and strategic reasons. Information will get out, intentionally via press and investor conversations, but the timing is a critical factor. The group is larger, but the logic is parallel to pretending to be an investor to hear a competitive…

This is the right answer. Right now it's quite far down the page, so I hope OP sees it.

Think of it this way, OP: if there was nothing wrong with it, then the person doing it wouldn't mind being outed, right? So, out him or her and see what happens.

Re: Ask HN: Founder's tactics crossing the line?

#27

Post by argumentum »

Seems like a vague story. Nothing is obviously underhanded even if true. Moreover, it's not actionable in any sense.

It's too early for customer impressions to shaped by bad press, not important enough to put off early hires and not relevant to investors.

More importantly it sounds like just a he said / she said type of thing.

Re: Ask HN: Founder's tactics crossing the line?

#28

Post by mildtrepidation »

aspir wrote: post #11
mikeryan wrote: post #6

Lets boil this down. The only thing this competitor did was; The competitor then bought ads online for anything related to 500 Startups, to leverage the increased press surrounding Demo Day and the latest 500 Startups batch of companies. This is marketing 101. Go where the action is. I find nothing dirty or underhanded about this and its a far cry from what Uber was doing which was directly impacting their competitor…

It's definitely underhanded and classless. It would be like a MSFT infiltrating an Apple demo and trying to upstage Tim Cook. But, at this point, we're arguing values and philosophy, and nothing's going to come of it :)

I agree with you and the GP: It is Marketing 101. And that, unfortunately, is often underhanded and classless.

Re: Ask HN: Founder's tactics crossing the line?

#29

Post by saurik »

rexreed wrote: post #19

If your biggest competition is an un- or under-funded, not yet widely known or used startup, you've got bigger problems than that startup. I find it amazing that startups will consider other startups their main competition, when the reality is both startups need to focus on the larger untapped market rather than think that each other is stealing each other's non-existent business. Another way to put it: If the market…

Your argument implies the startups are competing for customers: from the description they are competing for investors; in fact, in such a scenario, your biggest competitor is pretty much always "an un- or under-funded, not yet widely known or used startup". Investors are a group of people who are difficult to market to, and can also be difficult to cold call, so it seems like this technique of "sniping" a pitch at a semi-closed venue seems like it would be uniquely effective. (Even the ads they were supposedly running: end users would not be looking up stuff related to 500 Startups; the ads are almost certainly trying to catch the eye of potential investors looking for interesting companies.)
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