3 ms·

any publicity is more than a no name startup would usually get. stunts like these are often primarily for publicity.

danans 3mo ago
More appalling than the publicity stunt is the fact that several people were desperate enough for work to take them up on the offer.
saghm 3mo ago
Yeah, I was asking about what the actual goal of that publicity was, because I still don't think it's obvious. My point was that I don't understand what the parent commenter was assuming the actual thing they were trying to get out of it was; it seems just as plausible that bad publicity would hurt their ability to recruit/fundraise/make sales in the future as it would to help them. Even if you personally believe that "all publicity is good publicity", that doesn't explain why you'd think it's obvious that the motivation for the stunt was based on that line of thinking unless you were sufficiently confident that the executives also believed that, and I would expect even people who believe that to have a sense that it's not necessarily a universal view. If the actual argument is "I'm fairly confident that the founders of this startup believe that the publicity from this will be more beneficial than harmful", that seems like a defensible but arguable view, and I would find it interesting to dig more into the assumptions around that. Is it based solely on expectations of how the founders would think, or on how the general perception of other people in the industry (job applicants, potential investors, etc.) tend to view things like this? Or even a more broad statement about human psychology (e.g. society as a whole ends up acting in ways that benefit actors who are well-known even if it's not for good reasons)? Maybe I'm too naive or not smart enough to know what everyone else thinks about this, but none of this seems particularly obvious to me! I would expect a lot of people to have very different views on all of it, and those types of discussions are among the type that I come to HN for.
- nemomarx 3mo ago
  In my view start up founders are definitely the type to view all publicity as good publicity, especially because they really need attention to get further funding. You see a ton of ai start ups with provocative advertising or billboards like "never hire humans" for similar reasons, right? In a different market with a serious business where long term reputation matters, maybe bad publicity could be a factor. But this startup is likely to go under within a year and the founder will shed it like a skin and move on it it does. So they don't have a strong reason to care about negative press if any (and I still think this article is probably worth the cost of one tattoo artist for them).
  - saghm 3mo ago
    > You see a ton of ai start ups with provocative advertising or billboards like "never hire humans" for similar reasons, right? I've never seen this, but I don't live in the Bay Area, so maybe I'm just out of the loop. All of this is useful context though, and the type of thing I was looking for when I asked!

More appalling than the publicity stunt is the fact that several people were desperate enough for work to take them up on the offer.

saghm 3mo ago

Yeah, I was asking about what the actual goal of that publicity was, because I still don't think it's obvious. My point was that I don't understand what the parent commenter was assuming the actual thing they were trying to get out of it was; it seems just as plausible that bad publicity would hurt their ability to recruit/fundraise/make sales in the future as it would to help them. Even if you personally believe that "all publicity is good publicity", that doesn't explain why you'd think it's obvious that the motivation for the stunt was based on that line of thinking unless you were sufficiently confident that the executives also believed that, and I would expect even people who believe that to have a sense that it's not necessarily a universal view. If the actual argument is "I'm fairly confident that the founders of this startup believe that the publicity from this will be more beneficial than harmful", that seems like a defensible but arguable view, and I would find it interesting to dig more into the assumptions around that. Is it based solely on expectations of how the founders would think, or on how the general perception of other people in the industry (job applicants, potential investors, etc.) tend to view things like this? Or even a more broad statement about human psychology (e.g. society as a whole ends up acting in ways that benefit actors who are well-known even if it's not for good reasons)? Maybe I'm too naive or not smart enough to know what everyone else thinks about this, but none of this seems particularly obvious to me! I would expect a lot of people to have very different views on all of it, and those types of discussions are among the type that I come to HN for.

nemomarx 3mo ago
In my view start up founders are definitely the type to view all publicity as good publicity, especially because they really need attention to get further funding. You see a ton of ai start ups with provocative advertising or billboards like "never hire humans" for similar reasons, right? In a different market with a serious business where long term reputation matters, maybe bad publicity could be a factor. But this startup is likely to go under within a year and the founder will shed it like a skin and move on it it does. So they don't have a strong reason to care about negative press if any (and I still think this article is probably worth the cost of one tattoo artist for them).
- saghm 3mo ago
  > You see a ton of ai start ups with provocative advertising or billboards like "never hire humans" for similar reasons, right? I've never seen this, but I don't live in the Bay Area, so maybe I'm just out of the loop. All of this is useful context though, and the type of thing I was looking for when I asked!