11 ms·
It looks like Livecoding have now updated my profile for me, to claim I am "spamming them": https://www.livecoding.tv/lazer/ https://www.livecoding.tv/lazer/
by drakonka 11y ago
It looks like Livecoding have now updated my profile for me, to claim I am "spamming them":
https://www.livecoding.tv/lazer/ https://www.livecoding.tv/lazer/
- nemexy 11y agoCan anyone please explain to me why a YC company is making such a terrible name for themselves at a website which is literally FULL with people, who they should aim at building positive image with. I am pretty sure that over 70% of their users have at least a username in this community. I hardly have ever seen a worse way to respond to a marketing crisis. edit: Now the answer of the co-founder(you can find it below) is way better and it should have been the first reaction to this post. Hopefully there can be a happy result to both sides.
- austenallred 11y agoBecause the founders suck at dealing with users. YC doesn't run your company for you.
- nemexy 11y agoI really did not wanted to blame YC. My mention of them is mostly because they are the biggest incubator, so people who get in should have at least minimum amount of marketing skills. They literally make fool of themselves in front of their main "customers" and apparantly we are still talking about one of the cofounders. You are trying to run companies worth millions and do such stupid mistakes, it is just beyond understanding for me.
- austenallred 11y agoI think it's because that doesn't scale to seventy companies without being a hinderance. I'm sure the skills are there, the problem is unless the founders ask UC doesn't know where to deploy them.
- benologist 11y agoFounders of Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Linux, Oracle, Tesla and probably many more have been famous for childish or angry stuff. It's not very uncommon.
- eli 11y agoJeff Bezos is allegedly a sometimes difficult person to work for, but Amazon treats its customers extremely well.
- tptacek 11y agoYes, but I had the same thought; along the lines of "does YC really have to do a dinner where someone comes in and tell the batch's founders not to try to make examples of customers/users that are annoying them, because they will look ridiculous at best and, as in cases like this, actively malignant at worst"? Is that really a lesson YC needs to teach?
- krapp 11y agoAt the very least, I would expect Y Combinator to try to invest in founders who don't need to be told that.
- tptacek 11y agoPeople have crazy unrealistic expectations of YC in this regard. They invest in 30-40 teams per batch, based on an application and a very short interview. That's a good thing for founders, and whatever else you might think of them, YC is the probably the most founder-positive force in the entire technology industry. They're investors, not chaperons.
- DanBC 11y agoIt doesn't need to be a dinner, but a nice blog post would possibly help. It's not as if this is the first boneheaded response from a YC funded company, and it's YC's name that gets linked to this sub-optimal behaviour. That "break the rules" post got around. Maybe there needs to be a "but don't be a massive jerk to ex customers" follow up post.
- tedunangst 11y agoI thought there was already a "no asshole" rule? But maybe it's one of the rules you're supposed to break.
- tzs 11y agoYC doesn't run your company for you, but a big point of YC is that they provide advice and guidance. As they say in an article [1] linked from the YC FAQ: Most people don’t do YC for the financial investment—they do it because they want the advice, the help of the network, the benefits of the program. Heck, for a long time YC only invested something like $20k and got something like 7% of your company. From a money point of view, only a complete idiot would have taken that deal. What made it worthwhile was getting access to the YC people for advice. Now YC gives $120k for 7%, so it is no longer completely idiotic from a purely monetary point of view, but even at $120k most of the value is in the access it gives you to the YC staff and the other people YC puts you in contact with. Because of this a lot of people have higher expectations for YC companies. [1] http://blog.ycombinator.com/the-new-deal http://blog.ycombinator.com/the-new-deal
- argonaut 11y agoAre you suggesting YC can run your company for you? YC can exert pressure but that's it. They don't have any legal or corporate control whatsoever.
- minimaxir 11y agoDICE.COM EMPLOYEE SPAMMING LIVECODING.TV Liza Shulyayeva banned for spamming. WORKS FOR DICE.com and is just spamming Livecoding.tv BANNED FROM LIIVECODING.TV FOR SPAMMING BANNED FROM LIIVECODING.TV FOR SPAMMING+ BANNED FROM LIIVECODING.TV FOR SPAMMING ...did they mispell their own startup in their vandalism? Also, per her LinkedIn, the OP works for DICE the game-development studio (subsidiary of EA, made Battlefield, etc.), not Dice.com (job hunting site).
- yokohummer7 11y agoIt is also interesting that only the second line has a plus sign at the end. I'll have to infer the meaning of that.
- 467568985476 11y agoWow, that is insane. These guys are a YC backed company?!
- deadcoding 11y agoIf it is they need to pull funding immediately.
- omegaham 11y agoAs far as I know, Y Combinator invests a lump sum and then contributes mentorship. Their only real recourse is to say, "Sorry, we've decided that you're not worth our time" and to terminate all work with the company. Which, honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if they do.
- yokohummer7 11y agoWhat on earth is this? Is this something like a joke?
- drakonka 11y agoIn all seriousness I think their founder is still quite immature and possibly has some temper issues, at least judging by these past interactions and now this immature act. You can see this was written hastily, probably in anger - they didn't even spell the name of their own website right here. They don't really seem to care about maintaining the least bit of professionalism.
- yokohummer7 11y agoBut... but... they are YC-funded. People with such a childish attitude should have been filtered earlier. :( Anyways, I don't think I would sign in to their site anymore. It is unfortunate that one of the YC companies doesn't feel "cool" anymore.
- eropple 11y agoI don't quite understand this idea of YC companies being somehow immune to idiocy. I've been approached by multiple YC companies about early-stage roles and been stunningly unimpressed by each. That it's publicly foolish now is maybe a little funnier, but I don't get the surprise of it.
- tymekpavel 11y agoThis is insanity. This startup should be immediately dropped from YC.
- roflchoppa 11y agoright? Thats not only dis-tasteful. but also what the fuck are you thinking doing that to a client? Now I'm never going to that website.
- DrMJG_HN 11y agoSeems all Ycombinator haters are always lurking for their next moment to trash Ycombinator whenever they get an opportunity.
- phpnode 11y agoNo one is trashing YC here, plenty of people criticising you and your behaviour though. Maybe you should reflect on that.
- jamiegreen 11y agoHi drakonka, I have only just found out about this, and was until now not aware of what happened. I don't know why my cofounder Michael marked you as spam, and I will ask him to contact you. I can only apologise for the handling of your account deletion, it really is not acceptable that it took so long, so we will make it a priority to improve this.
- tshtf 11y agoDo you really think drakonka would want your cofounder to contact her after all this stalking?
- drakonka 11y agoHi Jamie, Thanks for getting in touch. I would love to just have my account deleted and move on. No need for Michael to contact me.
- Mithaldu 11y agoIdle curiosity: Are you aware that you have zero believability at the moment now unless you can demonstrate results or at least your commitment usefully?
- tylerlh 11y agoYou read the article and see the updated profile on your site, right? I think being slow to respond is the least of your worries.
- whiteboarder 11y agoAny response on the weird comments such as "DICE.COM EMPLOYEE SPAMMING LIVECODING.TV" that were put on the profile?
- jessedhillon 11y agoDo you have any explanation as to why you are running a page with her name, publicizing her employment and calling her a spammer? That requires both a deliberate effort to research her, and then the poor judgment to actually post the text, presumably in an effort to shame her.
- 11y ago
- Kiro 11y agoI actually didn't think the issue in the OP was that bad but this just escalated it to insane levels.
- tylerlh 11y agoDoes YC not provide any kind of guidance or coaching around customer support and PR to founders during the program? Seems like that should be a really important topic, given how situations like this impact not only the reputation of the startup, but also YC itself.
- austenallred 11y agoYC isn't going to run your company for you. This isn't a YC problem.
- tylerlh 11y agoThe entire premise of participating in YC is to learn from other founders about how to build a successful startup. You're saying that YC doesn't have any reason to try and help founders do better at running their companies?
- austenallred 11y agoIt's up to the founders to reach out and try to figure out how to solve the problem. If they don't do that YC isn't going to perform an audit or hold a bunch of seminars or something. TBH most of this is basic competence. YC can't ensure that all of the companies are competent in all aspects.
- pkaye 11y agoWill it will become a YC problem with all the bad PR.
- s4chin 11y agoThis is crazy. Can these people be any more unprofessional?
- stordoff 11y agoThis is a ridiculous thing for a company to do. It makes them look unprofessional and immature, and probably could form the basis of a libel claim.
- Raed667 11y agoI think that they just gave you some ground for some legal action.
- tptacek 11y agoThis is an almost unbelievably stupid and upsetting thing for them to have done.
- wildlogic 11y agoThis is straight up trashy.
- moron4hire 11y agoI had started using Livecoding.TV about 4 months ago, but had to take a break to move house. I got spammed by them quite a bit to start streaming again. I'm sorry I'm not helping you build a revenue stream, but seriously, get off my case. What is the narrative you think these emails are fulfilling? Did anyone ever stop using a site because they just forgot? "Oh yeah, I think I remember that site I had been using for a month but stopped two days ago. Must have slipped my mind." I had even bought a t-shirt from them and it took longer to show up than I remembered I had an account there. Then they decided they fucked up the t-shirt and at least two months later another one showed up at my old address. No warning. Luckily, I still own the place but had gone to show it to a new tenant. I was willing to chalk my experience up to operational growing pains, but this story here is just inexcusable. Clearly, reasonable people with a love of engineering and a passion for their product aren't running the show there. Now I want my account deleted.
- drakonka 11y agoAh I remember them pushing t-shirts fairly hard in email at some point a few months ago. I think I got some sort of email or internal Livecoding message about having won a t-shirt or _something_ of the sort. I would have to give them my address to receive the item and considered it but never went through with it I think. From memory they claimed to have made the offer based on some sort of user criteria, like a "You did this so we are giving you a free x!" A few days later I get another message saying the first message offering the free item was a mistake, and that I wasn't invited to have one after all. Can't say I was too torn up.
- DrMJG_HN 11y agoIt will be honest if you could disclaim your name to the people reading here so they know how to intepret your comments here
- slicedlime 11y agoYour 10 replies of claiming people should spell out their full legal names in the thread are not making anything better. In the few cases we don't already know their names, it wouldn't make you seem any bit less incompetent or hostile to know their names. Also, you're going on the record as saying that the important thing here is not to apologize, not to fix the problem, not even to try to explain but rather to point out to people that they should sign their names in an online discussion with full names. Grow up, step back, fix it, apologize.