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You're absolutely right. Such lists mean nothing to your core business, and the effect is minor in the long run. Imagine you want to create a great airline. Wha

You're absolutely right. Such lists mean nothing to your core business, and the effect is minor in the long run. Imagine you want to create a great airline. What do newspaper articles have to do with that? If your airline is great, people will hear about you. That's how it should be. My original point was just about why it seems that it's always the same people being featured. It's because those people just have more human interest in their concepts than other people, and the fundamentals of their businesses have little to do with their being featured.

evansolomon 16y ago
You are likely correct that it's unlikely any of these companies' futures will change appreciably because of this coverage. However, PR can definitely make a real difference in a business--see Aaron Patzer's thoughts on this (no particular source, but he talks about it a lot). To take your airline example, Virgin America invested a ton in PR when they launched. Also, I think writing off successful PR (even in this particular article) as being a company with or without a human interest angle is wrong. I don't think there's anything particularly human interest-y about Posterous, or syncing cell phone data to computers. Certainly the fundamentals of the businesses are not the high order bit either, but that doesn't seem any more like any inherently good decision basis than many other things.
- axod 16y ago
  >> "I don't think there's anything particularly human interest-y about Posterous, or syncing cell phone data to computers." The human interest bit is that "These are all 'young' people (under 30 or something)". If it was just a list of "hot new startups" it wouldn't have that same angle.
  - evansolomon 16y ago
    That doesn't make sense in the context of maxklein's comment. He said that the same people get covered over and over because they have a better human interest angle. If the human interest piece were being <30 years old, that would only work once/year when Inc does this feature.

evansolomon 16y ago

You are likely correct that it's unlikely any of these companies' futures will change appreciably because of this coverage. However, PR can definitely make a real difference in a business--see Aaron Patzer's thoughts on this (no particular source, but he talks about it a lot). To take your airline example, Virgin America invested a ton in PR when they launched. Also, I think writing off successful PR (even in this particular article) as being a company with or without a human interest angle is wrong. I don't think there's anything particularly human interest-y about Posterous, or syncing cell phone data to computers. Certainly the fundamentals of the businesses are not the high order bit either, but that doesn't seem any more like any inherently good decision basis than many other things.

axod 16y ago
>> "I don't think there's anything particularly human interest-y about Posterous, or syncing cell phone data to computers." The human interest bit is that "These are all 'young' people (under 30 or something)". If it was just a list of "hot new startups" it wouldn't have that same angle.
- evansolomon 16y ago
  That doesn't make sense in the context of maxklein's comment. He said that the same people get covered over and over because they have a better human interest angle. If the human interest piece were being <30 years old, that would only work once/year when Inc does this feature.