

Attention founders: Here’s how you respond to an unfair post about your company - guiambros
http://pandodaily.com/2012/11/30/attention-founders-heres-how-you-respond-to-an-unfair-post-about-your-company/

======
kevinconroy
I'd like to point out that this is NOT an isolated incident for Ben. I've
replied to the MailChimp newsletter before with my thoughts or questions and
on multiple occasions have gotten a response back from Ben within an hour or
two with a thoughtful, specific response to my email. I also sent a rant to
him after we had some trouble with MailChimp and he apologized and worked to
make it right within a day.

The lesson you should take away from Ben isn't how to respond to unfair post -
it's that you should be always open to communication (positive or negative)
and that you should respond as a polite, respectful human, not as a "company"
voice.

As a result of my interactions with Ben and his incredible product, I'm a
loyal MailChimp user and regularly recommend them to people looking to setup
newsletters for their companies.

~~~
jonathanjaeger
Agreed. With a great product, you'll think even better things about the
company. If you have a buggy, not-so-great product, more can be forgiven.
Lesson: always have great communication regardless.

------
DigitalSea
Ben is one of few modern day startup founders who actually give a damn and
take the time to respond to customer queries. We live in a society where the
startup industry is overpopulated by pretentious Harvard drop-outs who think
they have some kind of sense of entitlement and are revolutionaries. It's
refreshing to see Ben is anything but a decent, humble and respectable guy who
finds the time to write a well-thought out response to even the toughest of
critics.

I tend to use Campaign Monitor for emails, but this makes me want to try
Mailchimp because I've never fully given it a chance and the fact the company
is being run by a decent guy makes me even more motivated to do so.

~~~
tyang
"pretentious Harvard drop-outs"

I have no idea who you're talking about. Could you please elaborate? :)

------
adwf
Reminds me of some of the advice in "How to Make Friends and Influence
People"; a very good book for teaching people how to deal with difficult
situations (like criticism of things you're close to).

------
CountHackulus
A really good job there, he doesn't put down others at all, he just plays his
strengths. Quite respectable.

------
16s
It has been my experience that technology is full of naysayers who have strong
opinions (it matters not if those opinions are based on actual experience).
___You are doing it wrong... I would do it with ABC.... I would write that in
XYZ. No one uses that database anymore... etc._ __You should expect to be
contradicted and told you are wrong by a lot of people. I always listen to
them and try to learn why they think that because a few of them have insight,
but the majority just want to tell you how they would do if they were you. You
should expect this sort of thing. It's going to happen a lot.

------
ciupicri
Why the fuck does he use the work "fuck" only to censor it afterwards? You
either use it completely or not at all.

~~~
JshWright
It's possible it was uncensored in the original message, then censored when it
was published to a broader audience.

~~~
officemonkey
But why use it at all? Casual swearing has very few positive benefits,
especially since the rest of the email was well-written and expletive-free.

~~~
EwanG
For the same reason it tends to get used in Alternate Rock? A way to say, "we
both know we're hipper than the average dude, and can use this word to shock
Joe Q Public while just adding an inside emphasis for us cool dudes who won't
over react to a four character word". Or that could be me overinterpreting :-)

------
kcarruthers
nice example of how to respond factually and with grace

------
snowwrestler
I agree that Ben's response is excellent, but I want to focus on the other
half of the interaction for a second. Ben needed to send that email because
Paul wrote something ridiculous. As Ben gently pointed out, Paul did not
actually know what MailChimp (and, presumably, ExactTarget) are doing lately.
From the post, it sounds like he fielded a pitch call and basically published
what he heard. Sadly that does not seem unusual on tech blogs these days,
although I'm surprised Paul fell prey to it.

------
drivebyacct2
I'm so thankful that my parents taught me rationalism and manners. So many of
these types of things are just common sense to me. Pay attention in your
technical writing class and don't be an arrogant hothead.

