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I'm completely happy to see this happen to ~pkrumins. He's always seemed like a genuinely nice, brilliant fellow, who's stuck with his project in spite of the u

I'm completely happy to see this happen to ~pkrumins. He's always seemed like a genuinely nice, brilliant fellow, who's stuck with his project in spite of the usual startup advice. (He submitted a YC application years ago that iirc didn't go very far.) Hope this turns into some real success for him.

jonathan_n 9y ago
He's profitable and growing like a weed. The WhatsApp hack potentially opens up a huge new market for him. Browserling has been a great investment, and he's a good friend as well. :)
- godzillabrennus 9y ago
  Glad to see another Hackers/Founders company succeeding J!
abricot 9y ago
> He's always seemed like a genuinely nice, brilliant fellow Really? From TFA: > "Then I got curious. Would these users tweet anything that I asked them? So I decided to troll my competitors a little bit, and asked users to tweet a popular meme Taiwan number one to them. And it worked! Suddenly Twitter was full with my troll tweets" He's also a bit of a prick.
- kindfellow92 9y ago
  How is he a prick? What harm has he caused to anyone?
  - StavrosK 9y ago
    You mean besides lying to them and making them do things for some reward and then not giving the reward and laughing about it?
    - fastball 9y ago
      Pretty sure he gave them the reward? Can you not use browserling from India now?
      - StavrosK 9y ago
        He says he didn't at the time, in the post.
        christophilus 9y ago
        I read it differently. It sounded to me like he was trying to keep momentum up while he figured out a way to serve people. Maybe I misread it?
      - mcintyre1994 9y ago
        > And they did! All these users started following Browserling and tweeting about it. But they still couldn't use Browserling or Whatsapp, it was just a new message in place of "fatal error". > Then I got curious. Would these users tweet anything that I asked them? So I decided to troll my competitors a little bit, and asked users to tweet a popular meme Taiwan number one to them. Then he seems to shift to actually trying to tell them when the service is available instead of pretending it will be if they send a tweet: > Then instead of just tweeting and trolling, I asked users to start following Browserling on Facebook so I could reconnect with them and let them know when the software was up and running again. And then finally he built something where they could sign up and it admitted they were building up server capacity to handle it. Then he moved to a lottery which it sounds like legitimately paid out, and he started to do legitimate monetisation of a not-entirely-firewall-blocked service.
    - kindfellow92 9y ago
      Whoa there. Calm down buddy. Before you bust out the pitchforks, he just asked them to post tweets. The cost to them is zero in money, and virtually zero in time. Couple that with the fact that he was providing them with a free service and I only see a morally net positive contribution from him.
- thaumaturgy 9y ago
  I guess there's a subtlety at work here that's difficult for the most vocal people on HN to grasp, going by the overall tone in the comments here. There's a difference between someone who's spent years of their professional life, largely ostracized by a tech community that should've supported them more, who suddenly gets a massive influx of users and initially assumes it's an attack and, when they discover it's not, take a hacker-ish approach to playing with the situation before sitting down and devoting 20 hours a day for days on end attempting to make the service work for those users even though they're clearly unwilling to pay very much for it ... and other actual assholes that this site has regularly worshipped, people who have built entire businesses out of exploiting users and employees alike. I suppose that if any of us are lucky, we'll be successful enough one day to be burned at the stake on HN by a bunch of folks who can't tell the difference between "did one or a couple of things badly" and "is a bad person".
jVinc 9y ago
I'm sure if you would be of a differing oppinion if you were a competitor suffering from attempted DDOS attacks, or bashful campaigns. Or if you were just someone who though his product was great going along with it on the promis of getting access only to find out you got lied to. I guess it's just the case that for every ass-hole out there, there are people who'll stand besides him saying he's a great guy, simply because he's an asshole they know.

jonathan_n 9y ago

He's profitable and growing like a weed. The WhatsApp hack potentially opens up a huge new market for him. Browserling has been a great investment, and he's a good friend as well. :)

godzillabrennus 9y ago
Glad to see another Hackers/Founders company succeeding J!

abricot 9y ago

> He's always seemed like a genuinely nice, brilliant fellow Really? From TFA: > "Then I got curious. Would these users tweet anything that I asked them? So I decided to troll my competitors a little bit, and asked users to tweet a popular meme Taiwan number one to them. And it worked! Suddenly Twitter was full with my troll tweets" He's also a bit of a prick.

kindfellow92 9y ago
How is he a prick? What harm has he caused to anyone?
- StavrosK 9y ago
  You mean besides lying to them and making them do things for some reward and then not giving the reward and laughing about it?
  - fastball 9y ago
    Pretty sure he gave them the reward? Can you not use browserling from India now?
    - StavrosK 9y ago
      He says he didn't at the time, in the post.
      - christophilus 9y ago
        I read it differently. It sounded to me like he was trying to keep momentum up while he figured out a way to serve people. Maybe I misread it?
    - mcintyre1994 9y ago
      > And they did! All these users started following Browserling and tweeting about it. But they still couldn't use Browserling or Whatsapp, it was just a new message in place of "fatal error". > Then I got curious. Would these users tweet anything that I asked them? So I decided to troll my competitors a little bit, and asked users to tweet a popular meme Taiwan number one to them. Then he seems to shift to actually trying to tell them when the service is available instead of pretending it will be if they send a tweet: > Then instead of just tweeting and trolling, I asked users to start following Browserling on Facebook so I could reconnect with them and let them know when the software was up and running again. And then finally he built something where they could sign up and it admitted they were building up server capacity to handle it. Then he moved to a lottery which it sounds like legitimately paid out, and he started to do legitimate monetisation of a not-entirely-firewall-blocked service.
  - kindfellow92 9y ago
    Whoa there. Calm down buddy. Before you bust out the pitchforks, he just asked them to post tweets. The cost to them is zero in money, and virtually zero in time. Couple that with the fact that he was providing them with a free service and I only see a morally net positive contribution from him.
thaumaturgy 9y ago
I guess there's a subtlety at work here that's difficult for the most vocal people on HN to grasp, going by the overall tone in the comments here. There's a difference between someone who's spent years of their professional life, largely ostracized by a tech community that should've supported them more, who suddenly gets a massive influx of users and initially assumes it's an attack and, when they discover it's not, take a hacker-ish approach to playing with the situation before sitting down and devoting 20 hours a day for days on end attempting to make the service work for those users even though they're clearly unwilling to pay very much for it ... and other actual assholes that this site has regularly worshipped, people who have built entire businesses out of exploiting users and employees alike. I suppose that if any of us are lucky, we'll be successful enough one day to be burned at the stake on HN by a bunch of folks who can't tell the difference between "did one or a couple of things badly" and "is a bad person".

jVinc 9y ago

I'm sure if you would be of a differing oppinion if you were a competitor suffering from attempted DDOS attacks, or bashful campaigns. Or if you were just someone who though his product was great going along with it on the promis of getting access only to find out you got lied to. I guess it's just the case that for every ass-hole out there, there are people who'll stand besides him saying he's a great guy, simply because he's an asshole they know.