The point isn't whether or not relying on your investors' resources is a good way to get started in business. It is. It's just proper to be honest about it when asked.
If InDinero has so many paying customers ("hundreds" according to the interview), there should be no problem referring to one that isn't also controlled by an investor.
Who asked her that question? I didn't hear anything like that from the interviewer.
We, the internet, need a little more back up for your insinuation that she "routinely" makes these mistakes. Or that a mistake was even made in this case.
Also, there are famous people/businesses that use Dropcam, but I would never disclose them as customers because I don't have their explicit permission. Our friends and investors, however, are mostly happy to be named.
Full disclosure, I met Jessica for about 2 minutes at a Dropbox party once. Do you have anything to disclose?
I'm basing the word "routinely" on the Hacker News thread (which I'm sure someone can find) where Jessica admitted to copying another site's design wholesale. That's copyright infringement. She apologized for the mistake.
Everything I have to disclose is disclosed. If you'd like to try to poke holes in the TechCrunch interview I did with Evelyn a few weeks ago, feel free.
5:56: "So Eventbrite is one of your customers?" "They are one of our customers"
Truth value of this statement: 10/10. And it's a video interview, so you don't add caveats like "oh, and they heard about us because their CEO is an investor" to everything you say -- Eventbrite is just a representative of a customer archetype. If Evelyn had asked how Jessica got Eventbrite as a customer, it'd be a different story. But she didn't, making your comment misleading at best.
RE: web design, I side with http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=989295. I remember when Scribd ripped off Xobni's jobs page almost verbatim, at Xobni we had a laugh and moved on. It's not like they duplicated the core product.
This really comes across as trollish nitpicking to me. What's your real beef?
In the context of the conversation it was pretty clear that many of the early customers already had some kind of relationship with them.
She'd already said how they had signed up early stage web startups at PG's suggestion, which implied a relationship there, and she'd said how many of the investors had ideas on how to use the product.
I see this as normal business. For example, in enterprise software it is not abnormal at all for customers to invest in a startup vendor company so they have some say in the business and some way of guaranteeing they remain around.
Comments
The point isn't whether or not relying on your investors' resources is a good way to get started in business. It is. It's just proper to be honest about it when asked.
If InDinero has so many paying customers ("hundreds" according to the interview), there should be no problem referring to one that isn't also controlled by an investor.
Who asked her that question? I didn't hear anything like that from the interviewer.
We, the internet, need a little more back up for your insinuation that she "routinely" makes these mistakes. Or that a mistake was even made in this case.
Also, there are famous people/businesses that use Dropcam, but I would never disclose them as customers because I don't have their explicit permission. Our friends and investors, however, are mostly happy to be named.
Full disclosure, I met Jessica for about 2 minutes at a Dropbox party once. Do you have anything to disclose?
Evelyn did. Fast forward 5:56 in.
I'm basing the word "routinely" on the Hacker News thread (which I'm sure someone can find) where Jessica admitted to copying another site's design wholesale. That's copyright infringement. She apologized for the mistake.
Everything I have to disclose is disclosed. If you'd like to try to poke holes in the TechCrunch interview I did with Evelyn a few weeks ago, feel free.
5:56: "So Eventbrite is one of your customers?" "They are one of our customers"
Truth value of this statement: 10/10. And it's a video interview, so you don't add caveats like "oh, and they heard about us because their CEO is an investor" to everything you say -- Eventbrite is just a representative of a customer archetype. If Evelyn had asked how Jessica got Eventbrite as a customer, it'd be a different story. But she didn't, making your comment misleading at best.
RE: web design, I side with http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=989295. I remember when Scribd ripped off Xobni's jobs page almost verbatim, at Xobni we had a laugh and moved on. It's not like they duplicated the core product.
This really comes across as trollish nitpicking to me. What's your real beef?
In the context of the conversation it was pretty clear that many of the early customers already had some kind of relationship with them.
She'd already said how they had signed up early stage web startups at PG's suggestion, which implied a relationship there, and she'd said how many of the investors had ideas on how to use the product.
I see this as normal business. For example, in enterprise software it is not abnormal at all for customers to invest in a startup vendor company so they have some say in the business and some way of guaranteeing they remain around.
I disagree. Aside from the fact that not every web startup is affiliated with Paul Graham--mine isn't--I think the question was unambiguous.