
Rap Genius And The Problem With The Venture Capital Fueled Growth Hack - 001sky
http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2013/12/26/rap-genius-and-the-problem-with-the-venture-capital-fueled-growth-hack/
======
prostoalex
The premise that "venture capital and growth hacking go hand in hand" seems
like author's personal opinion and not a widespread maxim. Would the tactics
have changed if RapGenius' funding came from a private equity group, friends
and family, or an old-school bank? Unlikely, since it was business
requirement, not requirement spelled out in terms of financing.

In fact, someone using far more egregious and manipulative "growth hacks" has
been self- and customer-funded
[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/01/the-
dark...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/01/the-dark-lord-of-
the-internet/355726/)

~~~
minimaxir
Without investors expecting a 10x return in a couple years, risky growth
hacking tactics to sustain exponential growth aren't necessary.

~~~
stevesearer
What they were doing is no different than what thousands of other websites do
to game Google. Except that instead of paying for links with money they were
paying for them with traffic from tweets.

I don't really understand why buying links is suddenly called "growth hacking"
when a startup does it.

~~~
calbear81
Seems like anything that is "hustling" is called "growth hacking" now a days.
We applaud startups that make it to the big leagues and idolize how much they
hustle and break the rules and then when someone does break the rules,
everyone jumps in to tell them how bad they are.

------
morganb180
Dumb SEO != growth hacking

What the author does get right, however, is that the need for growth puts a
lot of pressure on a founding team and sometimes that pressure can push teams
to take more risks than they should.

------
fleitz
Growth hacking is just high ROI activities. Sometimes the techniques don't
work out.

There is risk to any action, not growth hacking is just as much a risky choice
as growth hacking. If one can make billions of dollars based on how many page
views they get, it would behoove them to not try anything that would get them
users for less then a few billion dollars. Amongst the horrible things that
happen everyday to make money link spam isn't a huge problem...

I've seen this kinda stuff done for thousands of dollars, the internet is just
a tragedy of the commons, link spam, link bait, etc can pay off handsomely.
Find your technique, exploit the fuck out of it, put some money in your pocket
and call it a day.

Rapgenius just got busted before they got the pay off. Too bad so sad. If
they're smart they can probably still exploit the fuck out of the "You'll cry
after you hear these 5 words from Justin Beiber" upworthy type crap on FB
before that game is played out. I hope they can pull off a Cuban an unload
their stock before the gig is up.

------
rch
It's not quite a growth hack yet. They need Bieber to tweet out a link to his
artist page. Preferably on Thursday.

~~~
rememberlenny
Between the hours or 8am-9am.

