If they truly did sneak in, it sounds like a clear case of trespassing and theft. Report the crime.
Ask HN: Founder's tactics crossing the line?
31–38 of 38 posts
Re: Ask HN: Founder's tactics crossing the line?
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 :-)
Totally agree. I think we're saying the same thing (that was my intent anyways :|
Re: Ask HN: Founder's tactics crossing the line?
#33500 Startups Demo Day is hardly invite only - I attended once and had the option to buy a ticket to attend demo days. The slides are publicly available anyways. Unless they were impersonating you when talking to investors this is irrelevant.
Buying Adwords on things related to 500 is definitely aggressive, but well within the lines of fair play. If this is actually hurting your startup then both companies need to reconsider the size of the market they are in.
Re: Ask HN: Founder's tactics crossing the line?
#34If 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 t…
Really? There's equally valid conventional wisdom that's just the opposite - that it's easier to get funding if you do a slightly-improved knockoff of an existing popular startup (consider all the Groupon knockoffs).
Re: Ask HN: Founder's tactics crossing the line?
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 t…
Really? There's equally valid conventional wisdom that's just the opposite - that it's easier to get funding if you do a slightly-improved knockoff of an existing popular startup (consider all the Groupon knockoffs).
Name five...
Re: Ask HN: Founder's tactics crossing the line?
#36Well, 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.
Completely agree. If this is true, I'd never want to invest in the bunch of muppets who were wasting time on this.
Conversely, it's probably now RAISED the profile of the competitor, made them look like more a threat than they really were.
Maybe I've just nailed it, and it it's secretly the 500 Startups company who're behind it. If they are, that's pretty clever.
Re: Ask HN: Founder's tactics crossing the line?
#37Lets 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 :)
No, it's not like that. The only thing the OP indicates happens is the infiltration part, not the upstaging part. I'm pretty sure MSFT sends people to Apple demos whenever possible.