I won't name names, but a YC alum runs a company that is in direct competition with a company in 500 Startups' latest batch.<p>500 Startups just had their Demo Day this past Wednesday, and the non-500 competitor managed to "sneak in" to the Demo Day to (allegedly) "snipe" their competitor's pitch and their competitor's interested investors.<p>The competitor then bought ads online for anything related to 500 Startups, to leverage the increased press surrounding Demo Day and the latest 500 Startups batch of companies.<p>What do you all think? Is this a "dirty" tactic or does it qualify as an aggressive but clever "hack"?<p>P.S. Reminds me of this recent story on Uber ("Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics") that was on the front page of HN:<p>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7115177
If your biggest competition is an un- or under-funded, not yet widely known or used startup, you've got bigger problems than that startup. I find it amazing that startups will consider other startups their main competition, when the reality is both startups need to focus on the larger untapped market rather than think that each other is stealing each other's non-existent business.<p>Another way to put it: If the market is really that small that one small startup can take away business from another small startup, then you don't have much of a market at all, and you should find a larger market.<p>Anyone who goes to such extents to snipe a startup really doesn't understand what it takes to gain market traction.<p>But it sounds like in this case, one startup wasn't really looking to snipe another startup, but rather capitalize on the press that would (potentially) be generated from that startup's launch. This happens all the time in other industries. Whenever Apple launches a product a myriad of other companies piggy-back on the press Apple generates. It's smart marketing.<p>It would only be underhanded if the startup was making false or disparaging claims about the other company in public. And that's borderline libel / slander anyways.
Lets boil this down. The only thing this competitor did was;<p><i>The competitor then bought ads online for anything related to 500 Startups, to leverage the increased press surrounding Demo Day and the latest 500 Startups batch of companies.</i><p>This is marketing 101. Go where the action is. I find nothing dirty or underhanded about this and its a far cry from what Uber was doing which was directly impacting their competitors.
This move is unethical for a very clear and straight forward reason. Demo Day at 500 Startups is "invite only". The YC company was not invited. People are invited for very targeted and strategic reasons. Information will get out, intentionally via press and investor conversations, but the timing is a critical factor.<p>The group is larger, but the logic is parallel to pretending to be an investor to hear a competitive startup pitch for capital, or sneaking into an internal team meeting at the competition.<p>It is a move without class.
> <i>"Founder's tactics crossing the line?"</i><p>No. Demo days are where you share <i>semi-publicly</i> your product with investors, other startups, and hopefully media. What is to stop an investor, or other startup, from sharing your demo with anyone? This might even be considered good form, for someone to give the YC alum a heads up, that "Hey, XYZ, is going after your market".<p>In terms of keyword marketing, I think this is a well known and understood tactic. If your idea/startup is so fragile that someone can market a couple <i>keywords</i> and kill your company -- you have much <i>BIGGER</i> things to worry about!
I'd consider it extremely underhanded, but it's definitely legal. Actually, you should be thankful that you saw this now -- you know what your competitor's values are, and what they may do in the future. I've been at a few startups across a few industries. In some, the competitors didn't care about each other, and everyone played by themselves. In others, we saw tactics similar to what OP describes.<p>You now know which bucket you're in. Plan accordingly. Don't put on your tinfoil hat, but keep this in mind going forward.<p>I'd also recommend bringing this to 500startups. I wouldn't consider them at fault here, but they should know that this happened to one of their companies. They should see if there's anything they could do in the future to curtail this. "Demo day" startups are at the most vulnerable point of their lifecycle, and something like this adds unnecessary complication.
Unless they were lying about their competitors or spreading malicious rumors I would say this is fine. Welcome to business, people are going to claw their way to the top with whatever legal means they can. I would think that, if anything, 500 startups should do more diligence on the people attending their pitch day to prevent this from happening.
Doesn't sound too dirty and not that similar to the Uber matter. By "sneak in" you mean "got invited"? And advertising against "500 Startups" doesn't sound very effective.
500 Startups Demo Day is hardly invite only - I attended once and had the option to buy a ticket to attend demo days. The slides are publicly available anyways. Unless they were impersonating you when talking to investors this is irrelevant.<p>Buying Adwords on things related to 500 is definitely aggressive, but well within the lines of fair play. If this is actually hurting your startup then both companies need to reconsider the size of the market they are in.
Seems like a vague story. Nothing is obviously underhanded even if true. Moreover, it's not actionable in any sense.<p>It's too early for customer impressions to shaped by bad press, not important enough to put off early hires and not relevant to investors.<p>More importantly it sounds like just a he said / she said type of thing.
My guess is this will get killed. The owners of the site don't want it to devolve into complaints for or against existing companies when there are other forums to do that. (If it were allowed, that's all people would talk about, and it's not a customer service or investor relations site)
Well, one of YC's guidelines is "don't worry about your competitors". This is a guideline for practical rather than moral reasons. Worrying about your competitors wastes your time and energy.<p>So (dodging the moral and legal questions), this behavior may be counterproductive.
It's a hack when a YC company does it, but it's a dirty tactic when anyone else uses it to the detriment of a YC company.<p>This is, after all, a site sponsored by YC.<p>That being said, I'm surprised this conversation wasn't junked