To me failing fast, just means that you realize that the idea sucks and you close down shop and move on. And yeah if you have a crappy launch, you shouldn't use

To me failing fast, just means that you realize that the idea sucks and you close down shop and move on. And yeah if you have a crappy launch, you shouldn't use that to discount your idea. You only need to hit a certain niche of users to make your idea work. To tell the truth, we really haven't gotten that much feedback after we came out of private beta. In private beta we got hundreds of tips, feature requests etc, and now in public beta, nada. Not a single feature request last week. Yeah an article on TC won't make or break a startup, but it sure does help. a) better response to your other coverage requests b) a small bump to your page rank c) a flood of potential new users to help jump start the site. If I had to give it a numerical value, I'd say major launch coverage, can help you save 1-2 years of building your traffic the old fashioned way...1 person at a time