

I got a bad review from TechCrunch, lessons learned - ximeng
http://www.joshliu.co/i-got-a-bad-review-from-techcrunch-lessons-le

======
patio11
_All tech entrepreneurs are hoping to get coverage from TechCrunch. It is the
best way to get early adopters, early traction and recognition. It gives you a
sense of pride as well. Once your start-up is covered by TechCrunch, you feel
you are finally a proper tech entrepreneur._

Can I suggest caring less? You can take external validation from many places.
Users are a good option: they pay money, care about the space, are less jaded,
and are friends with people like themselves.

TC is not a good place to recruit early users, unless you are building an app
for poor geeks with short attention spans. If you are, you have bigger
problems.

~~~
pmoehring
I'd say, the review was actually good for Josh, as it gave him very honest
feedback, probably much more frank than what he heard from people in person.
People tend to say either "great, keep on going" or are very negative about a
product, without being specific. It's easy to ignore the negative comments and
write them off as 'hating'. I would venture that TC is an authoritative
source, and therefore he took a hard look at what maybe needs to change.

~~~
benreyes
Another point Steve Blank talks about this in Stanford series of talks on
customer development:
<http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2060> [video]

He mentions any type of PR, Press including TechCrunch coverage shouldn't be
sought after before contact with the customers and is part of a strategy and
not a random tactic. And this is typically after you figure out what business
you are in, who your customers are and how do you scale demand for the company
(Product Market Fit).

A lot of the valuable lessons and negative comments that Josh took in that
early TechCrunch post could have been gathered and learnt in a non-public
fashion during customer discovery and development.

~~~
pmoehring
Absolutely, good point. It's hard to resist the urge, though - seeking
coverage (to get confirmation or otherwise) is only natural when you are
passionate about your start up and want to tell the world what you are doing.

Customer development is still massively undervalued, though.

~~~
NiloParedes
Customer development is very much like the screening of a unreleased movie. A
studio will get a nearly finished product in front of movie-goers before
releasing it using that feedback to tighten plot points, editing, etc. The
difference with a web-based product and a movie is that continually feedback
loop never ends for the web-based product.

------
axod
> All tech entrepreneurs are hoping to get coverage from TechCrunch. It is the
> best way to get early adopters, early traction and recognition. It gives you
> a sense of pride as well. Once your start-up is covered by TechCrunch, you
> feel you are finally a proper tech entrepreneur.

Rubbish.

Get users, get revenue. Ignore bad reviews/haters.

------
QuantumDoja
First thing, TechCrunch isn't the be-all-end-all of tech sites. Number two,
Mike Butcher's self proclaimed description of himself is "Butcher by name,
Butcher by nature"

It's a real shame that a lot of people think TechCrunch is the place you need
to go to "Make It"

So you got a bad review, pfff

My only advice would be, pick yourself up, dust yourself off and try, try, try
again.

~~~
nhangen
While that may be true, let's be real...being featured on TechCrunch is a step
in the right direction. Some press is better than no press, etc. If you get on
one tech site, you have a higher chance of getting on others, which means more
traffic, which means more users for customer development.

Is it the difference between making it and not making it? Probably not, but it
can't hurt.

------
boreacrat
I really liked your site, however while browsing a couple of things struck me
as odd:

1\. The yellow "we're in beta" alertbar. The alertbar usually tells you that
the website is trying to do something fishy you don't want it to, like popups.

2\. The inconsistent menubar. On the front page, if I just want to check out
your site without signing up, there isn't one. When I click "Browse MinuteBox"
a menubar shows up, but it disappears when I click "Profile" and forces me to
hit the back button instead of going to another page.

On another note, I know you're beta and everything, but I see no requests.
Which means I can't really check out what that (the most important) side of
your site is about. I don't know what you could do about it besides making
fake requests, but I can't really see what your site is about at the moment.

~~~
uniquejosh
Hi there,

Sorry, we are waiting for Paypal's approval of using their new API, Paypal X.
Therefore, we are now only recruiting experts to join us. That is why there's
no requests there just yet. Once we are ready to go, we will push it and let
people to post requests and arrange sessions.

Cheers

Josh

~~~
bobobjorn
Is it realy a good idea to lure in experts to find an empty page? I took the
time to register and so on to take a look, but only to find empty listings,
now i will most likely forget the site and never come back.

~~~
uniquejosh
sorry, I put the note at the end of my post. We have not launched our website
yet and that is why the site is empty. I was just sharing a post in my
personal blog and did not really expect great responses like this.

------
kloncks
_At least that’s the theory. In reality I think this site has about a
snowflake’s chance in the white hot cauldron of a collapsing star, and it’ll
probably be overwhelmed by porn merchants faster than you can say “charge for
online video.” Assuming they find it._

I don't remember reviews on TechCrunch being _this_ harsh. Wow.

There's constructive criticism. And then there's this.

~~~
ebaysucks
What's wrong with being overwhelmed by porn merchants?

------
btipling
The stock photography on your FAQ has to go. Asap. In fact, the picture of the
lady in the call center was recently used on a blog that makes fun of bad
stock photography.

I think call center stock photography is probably one of the worst things you
can put on a site.

~~~
uniquejosh
Thanks for the comment. Will pass that to our designer.

------
uniquejosh
Thanks for all the comments.

Yes, I agreed that TechCrunch is not the place or only place to get
validation. Probably it helps you to get the attentions from echo chambers.
But, users are the real judge to decide if you are building a solid business
or not.

~~~
zecho
I liked your lessons learned, but you should add a lesson 5:

/etc/hosts 127.0.0.1 techcrunch.com

------
maukdaddy
Honestly, fuck them. It's a blog with dubious editorial standards anyway.

Focus on finding users, marketing, generating revenue, etc. If you're worried
about TC then you're wasting energy that could be used elsewhere. Once you get
a few paying users, find a PR firm to issue a release that can be forwarded to
smaller blogs and new outlets.

------
MicahWedemeyer
Nice to see someone forging ahead instead of throwing in the towel and saying
they failed fast. A startup is a long series of ups and downs, and bad reviews
will be part of that.

------
uniquejosh
Hi guys,

Thanks a lot for your feedback and comments. Am thrilled with all the
response. I will be very happy if the post is useful to you guys.

Josh

------
john2011
TC especially europe is nothing to stress, it hasn't got many people watching
it anyone, looks at alexa for traffic reviews. You'll get better feedback on
HN

~~~
callumjones
Totally agree, TC Europe seems to be lacking any real support from the
TechCrunch brand.

~~~
leon_
There's a TC Europe? (I'm from Europe and I didn't notice.)

~~~
ldng
It looks more like UK TC and there's even a France TC ! I think nobody know
about them.

[edit] Well not only UK, first page just happened to be very UK oriented but
if you read further there is a bit more diversity.

~~~
leon_
Hmm, it's sad. We need a stronger start-up/tech entrepreneur scene in Europe.
Everything is so valley centric :(

------
_pius
I feel bad for the OP ... that was definitely a harsh review. That said, I
notice that he called this a "Minimum Viable Product," which is a term of art
from the Lean Startup methodology.

That very same methodology says you're _not_ supposed to have some big
TechCrunch launch with that MVP ... precisely because it is almost certainly
not ready for primetime. The point of the MVP is to get it in front of real
customers, learn, and iterate.

Taking concepts, decontextualizing them down to buzzwords, and then acting on
them is a path to fail.

~~~
uniquejosh
Totally agreed that it was one of my mistakes. It was wrong to get TC review
so early. Another lesson learned. :)

~~~
_pius
Awesome writeup, by the way, thanks for posting this!

------
frsandstone
TechCrunch Article: [http://eu.techcrunch.com/2008/05/20/minutebox-does-not-
box-c...](http://eu.techcrunch.com/2008/05/20/minutebox-does-not-box-clever/)

------
michael_dorfman
Congratulations-- you did a nice job of deriving some useful lessons from this
experience. And, as you no doubt realize, none of the lessons have anything to
do with TechCrunch at all, but are things all start-ups should always be
keeping in mind.

------
pacifika
"We cannot learn real patience and tolerance from a guru or a friend. They can
be practiced only when we come in contact with someone who creates unpleasant
experiences. [...]" Dailai Lama ;)

------
arctangent
There is no such thing as bad publicity, as someone once said. Now, that's not
strictly true in general - but for a startup a bad piece of press does at
least get your product/service out there. It also gives you a great
opportunity to show that you listen to feedback by iterating on your offering.
Fix the things people don't like and then put up a blog post saying: "Hey, we
fixed it!"

~~~
brudgers
_I don't care what they say about me, just make sure they spell my name
right!_ \- PT Barnum

<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:P._T._Barnum>

------
markbao
Thanks for writing this up—usually being TechCrunched is a very positive thing
for a startup, but sometimes it's not.

I'd actually say that it was, in the long run, a positive experience. You
improved your product. The negative press probably brought in a lot of users.
And now you're in a better position.

Good on you. Keep working at it.

~~~
ximeng
OP here. Just to be clear, I'm not Josh, just saw this in his twitter feed and
thought it would be of interest to HN.

------
stevederico
Thanks for documenting this process. I appreciate the opportunity to learn
from your experiences.

PS- I love the homepage video, did you outsource that? If so where? Design is
also very good.

------
leon_
> No, journalists will probably not do that.

What do journalists do anyway? I mean there has to be a reason why they call
themselves 'journalists' and not just 'bloggers'.

I always assumed journalism would somehow include a little bit of research but
... nada. From my experience with the online "press" I just can assume that
all those online journalist do not deserve that label.

Whenever I'm preparing a press kit I feel like I would be doing all the
journalist's work and they only need (and most presumably will) take my copy
1:1, smack some Adsense on and republish it.

I have not much experience with print media so I don't know if the print
journalists, too, are such a lazy bunch but online it's ridiculous.

