

TechStars, Lies & Videotape - PStamatiou
http://melanie.io/?p=258

======
mixmax
Well, that's showbusiness for you.

I have friends in media and showbusiness, so I've seen these things from
behind the scenes, and have a good feel for the dynamics. Media is about
getting customers just like any other company, and their product is stories.
They try to make these stories as appealing as possible, just like any other
company tries to make the product their customers want.Truth plays second
fiddle to a good story.

Oftentimes we think the media is engaged in a search for truth, justice and a
real portrayal of how things work, but unfortunately that's not the how it is.
They are there to sell you entertainment, and if the truth isn't sexy enough
they'll pimp it up until it is. That's how it works.

On a broader note this is a huge problem for democracy - what we believe to be
a guard against lies, bad politics and corruption is in reality just
entertainment created by for-profit corporations with no interest in keeping a
government honest or multinational corporations on the right side of the law.
It's about business. Big business.

~~~
d0mine
_I believed they were asking me because they were looking out for me._
</quote> from the article

> _Oftentimes we think the media is engaged in a search for truth, justice and
> a real portrayal of how things work_ </quote>

I'm astonished that there are people who can think that at any age. Kids are
either too young even to understand the concepts involved or too old to
believe in Santa Claus. It might be culture-dependent.

Maybe I'm too naive in believing that somebody can sincerely write about the
presumed right way good media should work.

~~~
ericd
It just takes a belief in common human decency and fairness. Not that
unreasonable if you ask me. As she describes it, these producers are basically
fraudsters, taking real events, warping them to fit their own desired story,
and then portraying it as a real account of what happened. Fraud should not be
considered the norm.

~~~
d0mine
> Fraud should not be considered the norm.

I agree from a moral point of view. But Nature doesn't know should or
shouldn't it either is or is not. And it doesn't require many observations to
see what the business practices in the media are.

It would be unusual to expect faithfulness from a prostitute; she doesn't make
the rules.

~~~
ericd
It may be a local or even a global maxima for them, but I don't think it's
inevitable, and I certainly don't think that it's a net positive for the
country. I think they're creating huge negative externalities with their
current mode of doing business. Regulation would be very tricky due to the
whole freedom of speech, but maybe the Govt. could fund some higher quality
competition to get the media focused on a less crappy MO.

------
peteforde
While I'm empathetic towards the founders who got the short sticks on this
episode, I just watched episode three (having not been aware of the show
before reading this post) and it was exactly what I'd expect a show like this
to be. If an incubator gave me an ultimatum like "reality documentary or hit
the curb" I'd run the other way as quickly as possible.

Melanie might be strong and brilliant, but there's real live footage here of
her being unrealistic, ineloquent and covering for a weak business model (in
which she appears to have zero unfair advantage) by hiding behind a claim that
"developers just don't get fashion".

This show might be trash but her responses to medium-hard questions about her
business model don't suggest CEO DNA. I've never met a competent CEO that says
"like" constantly and says what they think VCs want to hear.

~~~
ysilver
This isn't a fair criticism in my opinion. Anybody who has a camera in their
face all day can be made to look stupid. That even goes for the most practiced
politicians.

Even the best first time start-up CEO's require hundreds of run-throughs to
get their story polished. TechStars exists in large part to give entrepreneurs
this opportunity to practice.

~~~
ohashi
It just seems unfortunate that the practice which they are supposed to be
doing is filmed, edited and put in front of people in perhaps the worst light
possible to tell the story someone else wants to tell.

~~~
ysilver
I just saw this comment. Very well stated!

------
pedalpete
Do people here think TechStars is somewhat to blame in this? they are the ones
who are running the incubator and hosting the companies. Why would they bring
in this sort of outside factor into an already challenging environment. If
they were unaware of how the show would turn out, I suspect all they needed to
do was speak to reality tv producers (other than those who produced this
show), and they would have been told about the story writers, story
developers, etc. etc.

~~~
staunch
I'm sure YC has been asked to participate in this kind of thing and they've
declined. After watching this show, it's clear that they showed good judgment.

I do think there's room to do a quality documentary on YC or TechStars, but
the dramatic reality show format is inherently crap.

~~~
awfycooper
This wouldn't work in the YC environment since people don't actually work at
YC's offices. The startups just meet every Tuesday for a group dinner then
outside of that will only appear at the YC office if they have office hours
booked with one of the partners.

~~~
ElevenElOwl
I think that YC would be better for something about Startups and less about
drama and entertainment. I always liked the importance of space that YC has,
and that people don't work in an incubator environment. I would think you
could make a quality documentary that doesn't have that reality show flare.

------
revorad
It's nice that the startup founders are defending Techstars, but as a
potential applicant, this whole thing does raise red flags for me.

Doing a startup is hard enough with your personal emotional ups and downs. To
add a reality tv show to that just seems like the worst idea ever. Maybe it's
good for media startups to get as much press as possible, good or bad. But
this blog post seems to suggest otherwise.

If the people running Techstars really got fooled by Bloomberg, then how can I
trust these people about giving good startup advice?

The title of this blog post doesn't help. Why isn't it Bloomberg, lies and
videotape?

------
badclient
This actually reflects poorly on TechStars that they gave so much access to a
media source without proper negotiaion and/or enforcement.

To the OP I say "what did you expect?". If you are not versed with the media
and yet agree on giving them hours and hours of access, you will get some
twisted final product more times than not.

Also why PR firms still exist.

~~~
melanie_io
You are right - this is exactly what I DID expect would happen - even though
it was sold to us as a documentary on a business channel. Unfortunately, every
company in our TechStars class was forced to participate. So, the decision for
all of us was: drop out of TechStars or do the show.

~~~
dannyr
Melanie,

Props to you for showing up at the reunion show despite how you were
portrayed.

I guess that last show was part of the contract too right?

~~~
melanie_io
I did not have to show up last night. But I also did not want Bloomberg to be
able to guide / direct the last word on ToVieFor. In addition, Tisch and Cohen
fought VERY hard to make sure the finale episode was positive, which I knew
ahead of time. They felt just as disappointed and betrayed by Bloomberg as I.

~~~
dpe82
We've been working hard on our application to TS Cloud and this story gave me
reason to pause. When the series started I was super excited - I hoped it
would be a real look into the program we hope to go through. After the second
episode it became obvious it was all about the drama. I watched the rest of
the series, but by the end I was pretty confused by the whole thing.

Shame on Bloomberg.

~~~
melanie_io
Please do not let the show color your opinion of TechStars. I would do the
program over in a heartbeat, and made lifelong friends and mentors along the
way. Tisch / Cohen / Feld and the entire organization is fantastic.

~~~
dpe82
I'm not. Friends and advisors who have gone through it or are otherwise
related to the program have very highly recommended it so we're still full
speed ahead on the application.

Incidentally, our company is working in technology around video editing. :-p

------
garbowza
This seems so obvious in hindsight. Despite "The Social Network"-generated
interest, startups are simply too boring to make for great ratings without
some manufactured drama.

I feel for those who applied to TechStars NY, not knowing about the circus
they were getting into. Startups are hard enough without additional, external
distractions.

~~~
jswinghammer
I would find a show about start-ups without drama interesting. There are
reality shows that seem to be fairly drama free like "19 and counting" (so I'm
told anyway). I honestly feel like the producers of the show weren't giving
the audience enough credit and just made up normal reality show nonsense.

~~~
robryan
If they are targeting those interested in startups and not just the lastest
trashy reality show they would be much better served doing it documentary
style. It's something I would gladly pay a fair amount to watch, following the
ups and downs on young startups in a level headed and unbiased way.

I think another good setting for this would be a coworking space, I know
techstars is essentially that but at a regular coworking space you get a heap
of diversity in what people are doing which adds interest.

~~~
melanie_io
Check out The Founders series mentioned above - it is fantastic.

------
zach
Here's a cached version since the Wordpress database has gone south:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:melanie...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:melanie.io/&strip=1)

Just as true here as elsewhere: if you're not a customer, you're probably the
product. Being someone else's content can suck.

------
TWSS
Holy shit. I'm in a tech incubator now (<http://www.piepdx.com>) and this
sounds nightmarish to me. To be frank, I hadn't been following the show all
that closely, but I can't even imagine the added stress of having cameras
around filming me with my co-founders.

Melanie, I'm really glad you called bullshit. Keep rocking.

------
jswinghammer
This doesn't surprise me considering how it's clear they were trying to play
up the drama angle in some of the other startups on the show. I honestly
thought after seeing it that she was starting a Groupon like thing for fashion
and found that it didn't work. That LinkedIn thing was particularly weird too.
It's good that she wrote this because the show sort of made her look foolish.

~~~
rokhayakebe
They do paint her as a clueless girl when in fact reading her posts suggest
the very opposite.

~~~
epnk
As Melanie's co-founder for ToVieFor, it's true that they painted her in a bad
light. She's super intelligent and very very good at grabbing onto a vision
and propelling it forward. She may have hung on too tight to that vision at
times, but I'd take that any day over a co-founder who was aimless and did not
know what they wanted. We were up against a very difficult, entrenched
industry, and she made as good of progress as I could expect any new
entrepreneur to make.

I too am a bit disappointed in Bloomberg. The fact of the matter is that you
have a lot of strong, driven entrepreneurs in the same program, and while some
of what you saw is accurate, Bloomberg really made an effort to polarize and
make extreme the various personality types. Reece does not _always_ talk about
sports or use athlete analogies. Jason Baptiste doesn't walk around constantly
saying he'll own the internet (although if you prod him for it, he'll probably
say it), and Melanie is not clueless. I'm super excited for her current
startup, she definitely shows more wisdom in leaner methodologies.

In short, TechStars++, Bloomberg--.

~~~
melanie_io
Thank you Eric.

------
reecepacheco
disclaimer: techstars founder here...

while the finished product that Bloomberg aired is not the most amazing piece
of journalism i've ever seen, i don't think TechStars is to blame for that.

the TechStars ethos is to be open and encourage entrepreneurship. to this end,
TechStars asked us if we were ok with putting ourselves out there to the world
and we all agreed to it before the program started.

at the end of the day, 10/11 companies got funded, a few are driving great
revenues already and all are on track to build great companies... it's hard to
argue with that.

and if anyone out there learns from what we went through on the show, or is
excited by startups or encouraged to go start/join a startup... then the show
is a success.

~~~
deepkut
So, you believe the ends justify the means, and I couldn't disagree more. TS
is respectable, but this show is a bastardization and misrepresentation of
startups and more importantly, those behind them. However, this comes at no
surprise... 'Reality shows' tend to screw everyone's perception of true
'reality.' Ironic.

~~~
reecepacheco
never said 'the ends justify the means'

while i agree that the show is not all-inclusive of the complexity of
startups, i think it's funny how much noise is made about the show itself,
when the good news is people are excited about startups enough to 1. make a
show and 2. to watch it

some of us are going to succeed and some of us are going to fail... some
publicly, some not so publicly

TechStars chose, and we agreed, to doing this in the public eye

------
leemhoffman
Hey we were in the TechStars NYC class and in the TV show (Veri). I'm not
going to spend a lot of time on this, but TechStars was the best thing to ever
happen to us. We came in with a prototype and in three months had a product,
traction, funding, and a great network of mentors to help us. We couldn't have
done this without them. Regardless of how people feel about the idea of a TV
show, I'm very grateful to TechStars for everything they've done and I think
any TechStars CEO would say the same.

\- Lee Hoffman (CEO, VERI)

~~~
shanedanger
We're a TechStars NYC class this year (Contently), and the program has been an
amazing experience. Harvard has good and bad students; YC turns out great
companies and duds alike (though not very often, for sure!). I'm sad that
Melanie had a bad experience, but TBH it wasn't for lack of support in the
program, or for lack of amazing mentors and networking experiences.

Reality TV is a pretty bogus misrepresentation of actual reality, anyway. I'm
glad they didn't film our class!

~~~
melanie_io
TechStars is an absolutely amazing program, and we had a fantastic experience.
I could not be more complementary of the program itself. My post was only
commenting on the TV show, and trying to clear up some events that were
portrayed by Bloomberg.

------
joshfraser
As a TechStars alum, I can say that this show painted a very distorted view of
the real TechStars program. The drama was fabricated by Bloomberg because
that's what makes good TV. Don't let this show ruin your view of TechStars. I
wouldn't be surprised if they end up regretting doing this show, but of
course, hindsight is 20/20. It would have been hard for me to turn down that
amount of national exposure too.

~~~
melanie_io
I agree. I think TechStars had nothing but the best of intentions, and they
were sold a bill of goods from Bloomberg that the show would be a documentary.
I think this is why they were so adamant about each company participating:
because they honestly believed the exposure would be good for our companies.

~~~
abbasmehdi
But still, forcing companies to do something or drop out? That is not how an
accelerator should treat its companies, like they were your bosses. The only
boss a startup should have is its customers, and now TS, due to its poor
judgement has done the opposite of what it was meant to do. Not only do they
make poor calls, but they also bulley founders?

------
genieyclo
Speaking of Bravo, they're looking for people to be in their new Silicon
Valley reality TV show, I submitted a story about it a week ago:
[http://www.psfk.com/2011/10/bravo-seeking-young-
professional...](http://www.psfk.com/2011/10/bravo-seeking-young-
professionals-for-silicon-valley-reality-show.html)

------
jasonlbaptiste
Seems to be a lot of assumptions going around. Let me clarify anything you
want to know. AMA.

~~~
il
It seemed as if you were typecast as the villain/arrogant/guy-you-love-to-hate
reality show archetype. Did you expect this during filming? Did the producers
try to steer you into behaving in a certain way?

~~~
jasonlbaptiste
We knew how to handle certain questions. There was a lot of liberty with
editing. In real life, I'm an aggressive, confident, and quirky person. I'm
also quite nice :).

------
asignorini
Hello everyone, this is Alessio Signorini (@a_signorini), CTO and co-founder
of Immersive Labs, which was one of the companies on the show.

At our final interviews to get into the program, they told us that we were
accepted before telling us about the show. They actually asked us "would you
mind being part of a documentary on your experience filmed by Bloomberg?". We
didn't mind. I did not feel it was forced on us. They asked politely, and we
agreed enthusiastically. We really wanted to be in TechStars.

TechStars was a great experience for me. I lived/worked for 4 months, 20 hours
a day, shoulder-to-shoulder with 40 among the brightest people you can find in
the US which now become my closest friend. It did not matter what we were
doing or where, we were all helping each other succeed, sharing experiences,
contacts, reviewing pitches, etc. And even now, 6 months later, we still speak
often and have tons of fun every time we see each other. It's a family.

But that's not all, TechStars allowed us to meet and bond with dozens of the
greatest and smartest investors and CEOs of the United States. They helped us,
coached us, and pushed us to the our best at all time. And even now that the
show is over, they are reaching out, helping out, and creating connections for
us. It is great. Simply great.

We really all feel part of a big group which I am sure will last forever.

Having the cameras around during the program was actually fun, at least for
me. The crews became friends and it was normal to have them around. They did
not change a bit what we were doing and how: they did not tell us what to say,
they did not create drama, they did not ask gotcha-questions. Of course,
compressing 5000 hours of video in less than 2 hours of show forced them to do
some liberal editing. And I am sure that lots of things changed at Bloomberg
between January and last Tuesday. They had to focus on 6 companies instead of
11, pick some characters instead of the teams, and reduce hours of meetings
into a few seconds.

Melanie is great and is already running with a new idea. The show did not
portray her that way. Too bad. Same thing for the meeting with my co-founder,
they should have skipped the money troubles of Jason, it did not help anybody.
But that's show-business I guess, and since everything during the program went
so smooth and it was so positive, they probably had to focus on those two
moments to create a bit of drama, which, given the amount of "reality" on TV
nowadays, seem to be necessary.

I highly, highly, highly, highly, highly, highly, highly... :) recommend
submitting your application to TechStars and do your best to be accepted into
the program. It may just be the best thing you do after coming up with the
idea for your company.

------
swanson
I was aware that stuff was probably being edited and I think Melanie and Jason
Baptiste got an unfair shake. If I am reading this blog post correctly: the
production crew spliced together two unrelated bits of audio ("LinkedIn for
fashion") and then played it off like it was actually said? And that it was
the new pivot for the company?

That's messed up.

~~~
melanie_io
No, they literally just made it up, and paid a narrator to do a voice-over.

~~~
swanson
Yikes - that's even worse...

------
softwaregravy
We were in that class of TechStars (ThinkNear). Not featured in the show --
though in retrospect it makes sense given what they were going for. They had a
lot of footage they left on the cutting room floor, and I guess we were just
too heads down to be very interesting. My cofounder and I also get along quite
well, so we had very little drama to bring to the table.

I recommend the TechStars program to anyone, without any reservation
whatsoever. It was really awesome for us. We started basically at zero, along
with Lee (Veri), and another team not featured (who's now
FourSquareAndSevenYearsAgo). We came out much stronger at the end than we
could have been without TechStars with an awesome network, some great mentors,
and were able to raise a bit over $1.6. Tisch and Cohen are awesome.

Seriously, don't let the show sour you at all on the program. Some companies
will have drama early on, and the show really played it up.

------
redrory
Site is down Cache :
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Q8QO-
LX...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Q8QO-
LXmhBgJ:melanie.io/%3Fp%3D258+http://melanie.io/%3Fp%3D258&hl=en&gl=jm&strip=1)

------
JonnieCache
Not wishing to be rude to any of the participants, but what were you
expecting? You have _seen_ television, right? If you're clever enough to run a
startup then the editing tricks and other manipulation should be pretty
transparant.

I suppose in that situation the publicity is very hard to turn down.

Hopefully lessons have been learned.

------
chrislloyd
This American Life's "Gossip" episode had a story from someone working on a
reality TV show. TL;DR Everything is staged and drama is fabricated if it
doesn't exist.

[http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/444/g...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/444/gossip?act=2)

~~~
hncommenter13
I don't doubt that you're correct overall that everything on "reality" shows
is staged: my neighbor was on a dating reality show on national tv and lots of
it was fake. Just for the record, though, as a huge fan of TAL, their site
describes that story as based on a work of fiction.

------
drags
It's possible to make "process" and "strategy" interesting without twisting
facts: "The War Room" is a great example. It's unfortunate that the producers
of this series weren't up to the task.

------
veyron
Bloomberg in general is terrible. From the financial side, they leak
information to others, so the rule of thumb is to never talk to them unless
you are absolutely desperate to raise monies.

~~~
wensing
I agree they messed up here, but Bloomberg in general is amazing. The terminal
is invincible, the news network is the best on television (have you seen their
interview with pg or their feature on Elon Musk?), their revenues are insanely
great. On what evidence are you basing this "leak info" rumor?

~~~
veyron
I'm not arguing about bloomberg the terminal. I and many of my other friends
in trading have had conversations with really chatty Bloomberg reps who
wantonly leak information. In particular one rep mentioned by name that I was
a customer when discussing smaller firms using Bloomberg :/

~~~
apaprocki
Did you complain? If you're interested, email me (profile).

~~~
veyron
I don't see an email in your profile ...

~~~
apaprocki
Sorry, updated it so it is in about: now.

------
robjohnson
This is the worst kind of marketing for tech stars. I wonder how many people
who held them high esteem are seriously questioning any motivations of
attending.

------
megamark16
When they showed the scene where that one guy admitted to embezzlement I
thought "wow, that's intense." Now I know that the participants were told that
none of the audio from their private mentor meetings would be used. They
thought they were having a private discussion about a team members hardships.
Talk about lost trust, sheesh.

------
nl
If it is any consolation, I've enjoyed the series.

I can understand how her portrayal would upset Melanie, but I thought she came
across as enthusiastic and polished.

Also, ToVieFor is a great name!

~~~
geedot
+1

I actually found the shows entertaining. Then again I feel I'm competent
enough to understand the difference between the bits that were added for drama
and the bits covering the real startup process.

Speaking of which, chracterisations aside, I feel the show did a good job of
explaining the highs and lows of the startup process to non-startup people
I.e. it's not all about ripping an idea off a couple of brothers, building a
site in a night, serendipitously running into a former tech startup superstar
who helps you rip off your friends before creating a multi-billion dollar
business, all while wearing a hoodie with secret symbols sewn into the lining
and wearing flip flops.

Just sayin...

