4 ms·
So should every startup fake their way to traction?
by khadim 13y ago
So should every startup fake their way to traction?
- jerryji 13y agoOr can every startup fake their way to traction _nowadays_?
- pcunite 13y agoThat is why it is getting crazy important to get mentioned on sites like TechCrunch, etc. It is not the best mouse-trap that wins ... just be the most known and funded one.
- minimaxir 13y agoThere's a reason that modern startups are now hiring "growth hackers" unironically.
- Wilya 13y agoThere doesn't seem to be much drawbacks to this strategy. I can think of very few startups that failed because of shady early tactics, as long as it stayed only a way to get to traction, and wasn't a decisive part of the business model. If you're small, nobody will care enough about you to learn about your tactics. If you're big, you should have enough money to rebuy a reputation with marketing/PR.
- loceng 13y agoExcept for being genuine, authentic. You can't be 90% genuine - that's not possible.
- jerf 13y agoMmm, I think you may be confusing perception vs. reality. As much as we'd like to think the two are inseparably joined and it's impossible to fake being genuine (or vice versa, impossible for a really genuine thing to be perceived as inauthentic), I don't think the facts support that idea.
- pessimizer 13y agoAuthenticity is a brand, and you will be rewarded for it by the customer. Honesty is a quality that can only be recognized when someone maintains truthfulness and fair-dealing when they know that they will be punished for it. Honesty will, if anything, destroy your authenticity.
- moepstar 13y agoI don't even think there's any drawback to this strategy. Let me explain: So $business_name faked their way into relevance, $somebody found out about it, $angry_mob_of_other_founders argue and rally against it. Nothing of this will matter in any way cause it's almost certain Joe Normal will never ever hear the slightest about it and will happily continue using $business_name. The only possibility of Joe Normal ever finding out is if $business_name overdid it in a way that might prompt (inter)national media to report about it or have it mentioned by a buddy to him. Even then, he couldn't care less about it cause he still could peddle his wares on the site (or whatever), make a profit from it, and just shrug about the advice given by his buddy.
- hsuresh 13y agoI would't like if a startup fakes. They'd lose my credibility. However, some of the examples seem reasonable - like the case of reddit. It is more about providing value to the early adopters - clearly reddit needed more users to contribute, so no harm in creating fake users to seed the content. The example of PayPal seems bad - i am not sure if PayPal was a paid service for merchants back then, but if it was, they were just being evil.
- khadim 13y agostartup fake to build credibility. if found faking anyway they didn't do it right.
- 3pt14159 13y agoIt doesn't really work in the areas where it is easy any more. Too many people are doing it. Reddit clones ESPECIALLY do this, usually by creating crawlers that crawl reddit. But yeah, it still works for dating sites (I know someone that started one) and the like. Normally you have to have a couple friends help you, because activity is great, but eventually people want you to jump on the webcam.
- jusben1369 13y agoWait. Isn't the point that this is only for startups that need two sided traction and thus need to artificially stimulate one side?