Yeah -- I'm having a lot of trouble having much sympathy for Zenefits here, not least because of the really moronic spam I've been getting from them recently. And the ______'s keep sending it via Google, so I can't even reasonably blackhole their mail.
I wish one of the YC tests for "how smart are these founders?" was "do you think spam is a good growth hack?"
A shame you're getting downvoted, as your point is relevant. AirBnB did this in the early days- spamming craigslist users looking for hosts (from female sounding email addresses on gmail-- sounds like the "spam from gmail" tactic is a YC "best practice"????)
To be honest, the obvious first growth hack is spamming... anybody can do it. Finding a way to leverage an existing audience without cheating or engaging in slimy behavior takes real thinking....YC companies doing this at some point starts to reflect on YC (And these are not the only two instances of this, it seems like every YC company does it to some extent.)
Comments
Yeah -- I'm having a lot of trouble having much sympathy for Zenefits here, not least because of the really moronic spam I've been getting from them recently. And the ______'s keep sending it via Google, so I can't even reasonably blackhole their mail.
I wish one of the YC tests for "how smart are these founders?" was "do you think spam is a good growth hack?"
A shame you're getting downvoted, as your point is relevant. AirBnB did this in the early days- spamming craigslist users looking for hosts (from female sounding email addresses on gmail-- sounds like the "spam from gmail" tactic is a YC "best practice"????)
To be honest, the obvious first growth hack is spamming... anybody can do it. Finding a way to leverage an existing audience without cheating or engaging in slimy behavior takes real thinking....YC companies doing this at some point starts to reflect on YC (And these are not the only two instances of this, it seems like every YC company does it to some extent.)