A nitpick that is somewhat related to the thesis, but I think still relevant: I dislike how success in this context is completely centered around raising money, and nothing to do with actually running a profitable company and delivering value.<p>The main point of the article was to run a LinkedIn ad to get accepted into AngelPad and raise money, and that's totally fair (and commendable!).<p>But sprinkled throughout the article, there are quotes like:<p>> I've co-founded two startups that have raised ~$90 million in venture capital (Shyp and Vungle) and have created hundreds of jobs in five different countries.<p>> Vungle has grown to hundreds of employees and over $25 million in funding.<p>Is that really the metric of success we're going for? Give anybody $90 million and they can pretty trivially create hundreds of jobs.<p>I don't know what Vungle's revenue is, but if we're not in a bubble yet, raising a bunch of money, leaving the company, and touting it "hustling" isn't helping.<p>EDIT: I'd like to clarify briefly that I'm not downplaying raising money. Going out and fundraising is really hard (I've done it), but so aren't dozens of other tasks at a company.<p>+1 to anybody who is able to successfully bring in funding, but I've met too many people who have felt like their company has "made it" once they've raised money -- when in fact that's just the beginning.
The best part about this 3-year old hack is that it's still working, on us this time :)<p>The story starts in 2012 when it was a "Adwords hack" -><p><a href="https://pando.com/2012/05/02/vungles-co-founders-hustle-their-way-to-a-2-million-seed-round/" rel="nofollow">https://pando.com/2012/05/02/vungles-co-founders-hustle-thei...</a><p><a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2012/06/25/dont-try-this-at-home-how-vungle-broke-in-to-silicon-valley/" rel="nofollow">http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2012/06/25/dont-try-t...</a><p>And the wheelworks started again in April of this year -><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-linkedin-hack-that-turned-a-penny-into-100000-2015-4" rel="nofollow">http://www.businessinsider.com/the-linkedin-hack-that-turned...</a><p>I am writing the above with respect - I do the exact same thing, re-use and re-cycle great content as often as you can, it's a might harder to create the story than to perpetuate it and market it.<p>The basics are covered brilliantly in PG's "The Submarine" if you haven't seen it <a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html</a>
> LinkedIn provides some of the most detailed targeting options of any ad-platform I’ve ever seen (though I’d say that Facebook has now eclipsed it)<p>Someone did something similar using FB to prank their friend:<p><a href="http://mysocialsherpa.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking-my-roommate-with-targeted-facebook-ads/" rel="nofollow">http://mysocialsherpa.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking-...</a><p>HN discussion:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8330931" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8330931</a>
I have a LinkedIn with ~50 connections, but I know of no one who uses it for anything other than an online resume. People i know might go on once every two weeks, if that. It's strange to me that someone would be active enough on here to notice an ad like this. Whose experience is abnormal here?
Jaksmit if you are still around responding I am curious...if only 2 people clicked your ad including the target himself, then how is it the very next day after the ad was created the target was "inundated with emails from his friends telling him to check out our landing page"?
Here's a free idea to b2b startups: before you go into a sales meeting with someone, spend some pocket money putting your ad in front of them via linkedin / facebook.<p>They'll likely attribute it to "frequency illusion" and you'll gain a much higher profile in their eyes.<p>Then close it. :)
Unfortunately, now this method will be flooded, and everyone of note in SV will be inundated with similar ads. But it is an interesting case study in how to be creative and think outside the box.<p>Facebook recently paid me a bounty for pointing out a problem that enabled this type of pinpoint targeting accuracy on their ad platform despite a policy that greatly limited it. It's interesting that LinkedIn doesn't consider it a privacy problem. I noticed that you could create custom audiences for ads by simply using anyone's FB vanity URL and appending @facebook.com to target by email. So if the vanity url of the target was facebook.com/mark, then you could target an ad to that person by simply adding mark@facebook.com to a custom audience list. They have now fixed it, but this same thing the author did here could have also been done on FB until about 2 months ago (and can still be done, but now you need their actual email address to target them).
Smart, but are you legally allowed to use people's photo in ads without their permission? (Not a big issue in this case and probably it would have worked even without the photo, but I'm curious.)
Lovely beginning, but the narrative suddenly goes dark 3 paragraphs from the end, with the line: "Whilst I'm no longer at the company ..."<p>So what happened!?!? I'd love to believe that anyone with such a clever hack could get some mileage out of whatever came next. Alas, it sounds as if this is the classic Cinderella story with only mice and pumpkins at the end. Darn! A follow-up post with the rest of the story would be very welcome.
On a more serious note, targeted ads when implemented incorrectly can lead to privacy violations by leaking information about the viewer of the ad: <a href="http://theory.stanford.edu/~korolova/Privacy_violations_using_microtargeted_ads.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://theory.stanford.edu/~korolova/Privacy_violations_usin...</a>
I'm not getting how this is a hack and any different to just using LI's targeted ads as they are intended. Last time I checked the minimum was 1000 people.
The beautiful thing about this hack is it subverts the modern consumers expectation about how advertising works. We have an assumption it is a broadcast medium - and that has changed radically, and totally.<p>This hack will continue to work for as long as we fool ourselves as to the new nature of the world
Using something as intended is now a "hack"?
(Get off my lawn!)<p>And wouldn't this have worked just as well if he had targeted <i>all</i> employees of AngelPad? The CPM would still be pretty low...
Really cool trick. The title is misleading, it lead to $120k in investment for his company, it did not 'make him 120k'. Also it seems strange that Thomas was<p>>inundated with emails from his friends telling him to check out our landing page.<p>when later we learn only 5 people viewed the ad and 2 people clicked. Either way, cool story, the details really do get to me.
TLDR: This guy used LinkedIn's targeted ads to target an investor and 6 of his friends to get their attention, leading to a $120k investment.<p>Side-note: Similar and just as amusing story, but with FB ads - <a href="http://mysocialsherpa.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking-my-roommate-with-targeted-facebook-ads/" rel="nofollow">http://mysocialsherpa.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking-...</a>