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I think you've hit on some of the issues. One of the challenges is that it is hard to know what the company was getting out of being open. That is hard because
by ChuckMcM 4y ago
I think you've hit on some of the issues. One of the challenges is that it is hard to know what the company was getting out of being open.
That is hard because there is what folks say, and there is what they really think, and in the startup business the gap between those two realities can be really big. Also, the most successful startup CEOs seem to be really good at crafting a narrative out of very cherry picked "facts" in order to achieve their objectives (funding, growth, recruitment, whatever). As a result the "information space" around startups is usually way more complex than it appears on the surface.
That won't stop people from looking at that information space and drawing conclusions of course, people do that naturally. I agree with the above comment that the author is not (at least in the article) asking themselves if their belief of the motivations for being open are well supported by all the facts or not. Doesn't mean the author is wrong of course, things can be just as they seem, it just seems like some additional care should be taken prior to acting on a belief in why they are doing what they are doing.
Of course a certain level of disclosure is required by the SEC if you want to be traded publicly, and practicing those disclosures prior to an IPO can help set IPO expectations more accurately. And for that reason, understanding GAAP and what disclosures are required are good things for the startup leadership.
- isthisthingon99 4y agoPeldi (Balsamiq) did this well, but in reality it was all pretend. He pretended like had this massive groundswell of people who loved his app but it was an incredibly well-executed PR campaign and he deserves mad props for it. He didn't make it clear at the time, but eventually it came out. Of course, people did love his app but he engineered that incredibly well. So if being open makes sense for PR, do it, but learn from people who have done it successfully.
- pcthrowaway 4y agoWas there a twitter thread about this or something? I'd love to read more. I actually don't think I've heard the name Balsamiq in 10 years
- isthisthingon99 4y agoNo, I was just obsessed with how he did it, so I swallowed every piece of info I could've until it was clear. It was manufactured, which is the best approach.
- tomcam 4y agoWhat is the product its self just not as popular as he claimed, or what? I actually don’t understand what he got out of the ruse.
- isthisthingon99 4y agoIt wasn't a ruse. People genuinely liked the app BUT he had a manufactured pr push. It wasn't organic.
- tomcam 4y agoThen I say more power to him. It was masterfully done, and I ended up becoming a paying customer
- isthisthingon99 4y agoSame. If it wasn't clear I wasn't saying it's a bad thing just that people should understand being open solely in the context of beneficial pr.
- nickfromseattle 4y agoI was caught up in this and ended up purchasing. Links verifying your claim?
- isthisthingon99 4y agoVery sparse. You'll have to piece it together through interviews he gave around that time. His opsec is good but not good enough.
- UncleEntity 4y ago> Of course a certain level of disclosure is required by the SEC if you want to be traded publicly… This is what I find confusing, there isn’t some magic switch that gets pulled when you are required to disclose financials which protects you from the downsides to being open. If your product can be trivially copied, like an AI email writer, I’m going to guess the problem wasn’t how open you were during the development process. Everyone has come out with their own “Do X with AI” at this point with zero hope to monetize beyond charging for compute time as the market is fully saturated.
- crabmusket 4y agoExactly. Competition is a fact of business, and while the example in the article was pretty egregious (launch tweet was identical down to the placement of emojis), it's going to be hard to succeed if you can't take those lemons and turn them into product differentiation lemonade.
- mst 4y ago"Do X with AI" is obviously going to be something where competition should be expected. Cloning the UI and the launch tweet was still a bit much, though.