> but sometimes it seems to me that you cross the line into being a busybody
Possibly. But I'm not going to fall over and roll on my back just because it is PG that does something.
Wakemate has a great chance to manage their image here and PG has essentially thrown that away.
> I'd like to be more communicative about my startup too. The reason I don't is that I'm spending all my energy working on the product.
I've worked for enough start-ups to know that you need to do everything right, not just work on your product. If you spend all your energy on that - and you've signed up customers for pre-order - I suggest you do something about it before you copy wakemates mistakes. It's really a pity, I've seen them go from having a ton of goodwill to essentially being damaged goods.
That's wasteful.
And to see PG squelch discussion about a YC company when he's fine with us discussing everything else under the sun is for want of a better description less than elegant, especially if HN has been used as a venue to get initial customers. Another reason why it is bad to do so is because we can all learn from each others mistakes and to see bad stuff discussed in public is a learning experience for all, not just for the company involved.
You simply can't launch off HN and rely on us to do our bit with passing word of mouth to friends if there is an interesting new YC start-up and hit the mute button if there is a legitimate concern by a HN member regarding non-performance by said company. That's what causes the stink.
People that put their $5 or $50 down have a reasonably expectation of in order:
- a product
- failing that to be kept in the loop
- if all else fails their money back or an explanation
Less simply won't do, and even if it was free you'd still be morally obliged to keep people informed. Stonewalling is the dumbest thing you could possibly do.
The OP wasn't trying to kick up a stink, he was simply a concerned customer. And given the way PG handled it now he probably went from 'disappointed' to something a few steps lower than that.
Imo closing threads like that is a bigger PR hit, it makes both the start-up and HN (and by implication YC) look like they are ignoring feedback if it is public and negative. In a tech world where the norm seems to be that support is a luxury making some noise is sometimes the only way to get action (see countless threads regarding google on HN that did not get axed, implying a double standard) and in a conflict-of-interest situation letting these threads run their natural course would be to everybody's best interest.
Think of them as an opportunity to show that you do care about your customer, and that 'make something people want' is not just a hollow phrase, rather than to muzzle them and potentially adding insult to injury. If we're to believe what the OP wrote then PG's advice was especially bad given that he - by his own words, which I can't check but let's give the man the benefit of the doubt - had been trying to talk to the company for quite a while and turned to HN as a last-resort before suing them.
> people on HN are always so eager to crucify a company for its past
Perhaps. In my case it's less crucifying a company despite intentions to fix and more crucifying a company because I'm tired of hearing the same PR nonsense and not seeing real improvement to the industry as a whole.
What you're seeing is the flip side of the whole "it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission" nonsense.
> That's pride talking. Pick and choose your battles. If you're going to pick this one, make it overwhelmingly compelling.
As I said:
>> Assuming, of course, you're sure you did everything right.
The rest of your post assumes that there is an issue to deal with. There isn't. If they're in the right (again, assuming), being mentioned on the internet doesn't mean they should pivot into crisis mode.
There's a HN post, most of which, including the top comments, is meta and five (5) tweets - all of which are boring knee-jerk condemnation, none of which ask for clarification. If it'd gone viral, if people, if customers started asking what the hell is going on, then respond to them. But at least until that happens, it's a non-issue, PR-wise.
> I've never heard of this company, but my first impression is negative. Turn that around.
Sure. I've also only just heard of this company too. I think their technology and value proposition sounds promising. If I was in the business of putting JPEG images on in the internet, I'd be intrigued.
So are they going to do any kind of end-user communication in the near future?
Their credibility is at stake here, and your squelching of the discussion does not help matters imho.
edit: And the only reason people get to play pretending they're wakemate is because wakemate does not communicate regularly in the first place.
edit2: wakemate really sets themselves up for trouble, this part of their blog especially is troublesome:
"In the coming weeks, we’re going to be more active on the blog, publishing photos, screenshots, and videos of what we’ve been working on. Hopefully this will help assuage some fears that the product is “vaporware” and get our pre-order customers as excited for the next wave of shipments as we are."
And that was on the 26th of April, total radiosilence since then. If you promise activity in 'the coming weeks' then you should show some. I'm really not surprised by the posting that was originally done, and in fact I think that person should be commended for their restraint rather than to see their post deleted.
>"but I don't really see what the point of this post is- shaming this company for... what?"
Rarely is it the case that I feel like some dispute should be kept private, rather than brought public. In my opinion, the internet is the great-leveler in that context; it's so easy to get things into the court of public opinion. Governments and companies can get away with far less than years past.
The OP felt he was misled, or worse. He tried to deal with the company through private channels, and they ignored him. Bring it on. Let me be the judge of whether I'd like to deal with the company.
> To me, it only communicates that the issues were embarrassing, inconvenient, or otherwise do not shine a good light.
> Am I reading too much into this, or does this kind of pithy announcement usually hide skeletons? Genuinely curious here.
This line of thinking bothers me. It reads as if you feel like you're owed something from the company. Why does it matter?
If it's fundraising issues, lack of product market fit, founder disputes, team member stole the entire bank account, the end result is the same. They can't run the business. As long as there's a clear message and a path to EOL for active customers, what possible reason could help?
To me, it actually highlights the praise of the team and the products they built together instead of focusing on the details of why they're no longer operable. And reading the other threads here, they did a great job but there simply wasn't large enough captive market.
I want to echo what tptacek is saying here, though I didn't write much here on HN about the issue. I have been talking with colleagues and friends and the comments in the article seemed well intentioned but a little tone deaf. I am relieved to hear not only that they were false, but also that PG and YC are actively working at some of the misgivings I share concerning our industry.
I know it's incredibly hard to not take it personally when people call your baby ugly, but you're not helping things by being defensive. People seem to have issues with how you (as a company) handle bugs and criticism, and while it may not seem fair or accurate, at very least, it's likely that your company's responses contribute to the perception.
If nothing else, it points out a communication problem.
Thank you for coming forth with a statement on this. I don't remember seeing one from you when this issue first cropped up, which really didn't look good. A lot of people referenced your "founders should push the envelope" phrase in your absence to explain it, which in my opinion made it look even worse. I value your word a lot more than I do theirs since they don't have a known reputation (with me). Culpable or not, that incident still left a bad taste in my mouth.
> It could've very well damaged your personal brand.
But it didn't. They are smart guys. They'll learn that what they didn't probably wasn't advisable and they probably won't do it again, but they got away with it. They have a great story to tell and more users of their service.
I new exactly what the response to this story was going to be before even reading the comments. HN just loves to knee jerk and tell people how wrong they are. It's a bit sad really.
You’re right. I’m sorry about that and have been behind on sleep during this whole debacle. You are 100% right and thank you for the kindness of letting me know. I just now tried to go back and update the comment to change it and say “my startup, Preamble, discovered prompt injection” so it’s less about me about more about our business. Unfortunately I’m past the HN comment editing time window but I wanted to write back and say that I took your feedback to heart and thank you.
> why should I care if I don't like how they're doing it?
I don't know. Why are you posting in this thread? I wasn't responding to you in my initial reply and I haven't a clue how you managed to feel personally spoken to from it.
Why are you even in a comment thread about a company you consider irrelevant?
>I fail to see you address the point that these kids caused harm to a business
Very well. These kids caused harm to a business. So what's that change? The business screwed up, badly. The agent of destruction is quite irrelevant. Had it been a power failure, backup failure, permissions failure, data leak, or data corruption would PHPFog deserve any less blame? This need to shift some responsibility to a bunch of kids is nauseating.
>I'm just much more impressed with the way that PHPFog is handling their business after the fact than these kids are.
This is another example of the weird HN mentality when it comes to companies "apologizing" (Like WakeMate blaming their Chinese manufacturer for flunky power supplies). Are you actually impressed that a corporation has better PR than a bunch of children? Does that even make sense to you? I'd be impressed if they had managed to actually apologize while accepting all the blame without trying to pawn off the responsibility for their mistakes on some kids.
> What matters is doing the right thing after the mistake is discovered.
They didn't. They only did "the right thing" after it went viral on HN.
They did the same thing a few days ago to another developer, and only after it went viral on HN did they do the right thing. They were very aware that a) their flagging process is broken and b) their support process is non-existant unless you make your complaint go viral. The canned response is part of their strategy to filter out everyone that isn't large enough and they'll just ignore those complaints.
> This is required by US law for anyone doing business in the US.
It's required to do it automatically and wrong? I have some serious doubts.
What? They've handled it as well as they could have considering the position they were placed in.
I don't care for either side "winning" this debate. This is about mature behaviour, not PR spin. Their problem can, and frankly should, be viewed from the technical perspective. Had I participated in the system development, I would advocate for e-mail notifications that need to be sent to the original company's support e-mail address. There's no reason NOT to do it.
As I've said above, GS is to blame here, as well. However, there was something that 37Signals could do that would show that they're the fantastic company they market themselves to be. Sadly, their charismatic leader chose the route of public airing of his grievances. It wasn't needed at that point in time, since 1) they knew about the problem for a while and 2) they haven't talked to GS's founders privately first.
As for scoring of comments, I really couldn't care less. I believe in my standpoint and if I don't express my standpoint clearly, let me know. If you're going to downvote me, because I'm being critical of 37Signals, then they're speaking to the right audience.
> Are you sure there aren't abuses from your portfolio companies managers/employees to flag negative stories? I imagine Sam, for example, knows exactly what he has to do to get ChatGPT criticism guided off the stage.
Quite sure. That is, there may be managers/employers of $companies trying to flag things, but being a YC portfolio company doesn't make that any easier. And yes I'm sure that Sam can't do that. (I also know that he wouldn't try, but that's a separate point.)
Re the FAQ: it doesn't give a detailed explanation (we can't do that without publishing our code) but it summarizes the factors comprehensively. If you want to know more I need to see a specific link. Speaking of which:
Re https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35245626: it was on HN's front page for 4 hours, and at some point was downweighted by a mod. I haven't checked about why, but I think most likely it was just our general approach of downweighting opinion pieces on popular topics. Keep in mind that the LLM tsunami is an insanely popular topic—by far the biggest in years—and if we weren't downweighting follow-ups a la https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que..., it would saturate the front page every day.
Actually we tend to not do that moderation on randomwalker posts (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=randomwalker) - because they're basically always excellent. But a certain amount of randomness is inescapable and randomwalker posts do great on HN most lot of the time. If we made the wrong call in this case, so much the worse for us and I'm genuinely sorry.
A lot of companies can't explain what they do either due to a lack of focus or poor writing, but this particular company's offense can be explained in one line from the post:
> It's important to remember that no one cares about your startup!
That original email was written with a tone of someone who expected the recipients to know who the company is, what they do, and expected the reader to care or be excited.
No one cares about your start up. Your customers might not even care - they just want a problem to go away.
Thanks! It's mutual by the way.
> but sometimes it seems to me that you cross the line into being a busybody
Possibly. But I'm not going to fall over and roll on my back just because it is PG that does something.
Wakemate has a great chance to manage their image here and PG has essentially thrown that away.
> I'd like to be more communicative about my startup too. The reason I don't is that I'm spending all my energy working on the product.
I've worked for enough start-ups to know that you need to do everything right, not just work on your product. If you spend all your energy on that - and you've signed up customers for pre-order - I suggest you do something about it before you copy wakemates mistakes. It's really a pity, I've seen them go from having a ton of goodwill to essentially being damaged goods.
That's wasteful.
And to see PG squelch discussion about a YC company when he's fine with us discussing everything else under the sun is for want of a better description less than elegant, especially if HN has been used as a venue to get initial customers. Another reason why it is bad to do so is because we can all learn from each others mistakes and to see bad stuff discussed in public is a learning experience for all, not just for the company involved.
You simply can't launch off HN and rely on us to do our bit with passing word of mouth to friends if there is an interesting new YC start-up and hit the mute button if there is a legitimate concern by a HN member regarding non-performance by said company. That's what causes the stink.
People that put their $5 or $50 down have a reasonably expectation of in order:
Less simply won't do, and even if it was free you'd still be morally obliged to keep people informed. Stonewalling is the dumbest thing you could possibly do.The OP wasn't trying to kick up a stink, he was simply a concerned customer. And given the way PG handled it now he probably went from 'disappointed' to something a few steps lower than that.
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