I just left 200 fake parking tickets at YC Demo Day...

Personally, I would be rather peeved to be advertised to in this way. I wouldn't find it clever or cute--I would just find it annoying. I would not end up with a good impression of the company, and I wouldn't want to do business with it.<p>One reason why I don't find it particularly clever, is that it's really not all that different from all the physical junk mail I receive that tries to visually mimic some sort of important government notice.

"You have illegally been subjected to make..."<p>"Try the new app right now, its beautiful:"<p>As clever as it is, it would have been far more effective if you had checked your grammar before printing two hundred flyers.

It's a funny, well-executed idea, but issuing official-looking city documents with "City of Mountain View" as the header and all of your identifying information is a great way to get written up by the police department.

The psychology of a car spam victim (flyer for a local garage band's performance, real parking ticket) is pretty funny to observe. When they pull it off their windshield, some will put it in their vehicle (to throw away later), some will toss it onto the ground (even if seem like they'd never litter any other time), and some will double-put it onto the adjacent vehicle (yes, even with real parking tickets).<p>I think you just left 118 pieces of litter (blowing off the parking lot into adjacent properties) at YC Demo Day. Hopefully you'll perform some sort of "green litter offset" trash pickup to mitigate the environmental impact. Perhaps that may be assigned to you if you're unlucky.<p>Still, some people actually do pay money for the fake v!@gra to keep spammers in business. The difference here is the other 99.99% of spam victims can't physically locate the spammer to clobber or harangue them.<p>A 6-months-later update to recount the results of this experiment would be a real service to entrepreneurs as either an inspirational or cautionary tale.

People (both on HN and potentially IRL) or going to get a little frustrated with you for doing something like this. It's a little self-confident (maybe even pushy), will be very controversial, and walks the thin line between awesome and illegal.<p>Which is exactly why I love it.<p>Heck, let people call the police, go to jail for a couple of days or pay a fine, make a big ruckus about it, and make sure your company gets mentioned in all sorts of PR. Well done all the way around.

<a href="http://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/" rel="nofollow">http://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/</a>

Are windshield flyers now called "fake parking tickets" in order to sound less like spam?

I just want to say something:<p>NOBODY CARES ABOUT QR CODES<p>Yeah, I can go to tripl.com or whatever, also add your twitter/fb/G+ page otherwise you'll just look like some bozo stuck in Web 1.0 (contact by phone?!)

The joke is pretty good but it's unfortunate that the startup (Tripl - discover the world through your friends beautiful travel stories) has nothing to do with the ticket. Seems like it would work better for AngelList or some other company.

It's a novel idea that can sometimes have a great effect. This sort of marketing trick has been used too many times to count. I remember a few years ago there being an ideas festival in my city and someone came up with the idea of using fake looking city issued traffic infringements like yourself that resembled authentic tickets pretty closely that said something like, "A $250 fine for not doing what do you want in life" or something along those lines.<p>What happened next however is the organisers behind the campaign were slapped with a littering charge, warned that it's actually highly illegal to impersonate a traffic fine even if you put a disclaimer on the fake infringement ticket. I don't recall what else they were fined for besides the littering charge, but I am pretty sure it cost them a small fortune combined with the other charges.<p>Be careful, this kind of gimmick could cost you dearly. City councils love a good opportunity to extort money out of people.

Went to the website. It looks pretty enough but maybe you should show screenshots of what it actually <i>does</i>, since it's completely ambiguous unless you click on the tiny "Learn More" button at the top.

I received an email from a company that I did business with that said "urgent: [...]" as the title.<p>The email was a sale information message.<p>I complained to them immediately and haven't done any business with them since. Indeed this sort of dishonesty gets me to avoid as much as possible any support for a company. The message was not urgent in the least.<p>An antisocial attempt to con people in to paying more attention to your company: Hate is a word I seldom use but it seems valid here.<p>Presumably next up you'll be doing something like standing up in movie theatres shouting "fire!" so that people will exit past your friend holding an advertising board ...

Oh man, this is either going end very well or very badly - there is no middle ground.

wow this promotional idea combines all the fun of physical spam with the temporary terror of possibly going to jail. I understand their next promotion will involve donning ski masks and breaking in to your apartment while you shower. good work.

I probably wouldn't respond this way, but: if I see you touching my car, my personal property, and you're not wearing a law enforcement uniform, it would be well within my right to respond as if you're stealing or vandalizing my car. I can't speak to SF, but in many areas, when the police respond to the physical altercation, they'd be asking me if I want to press charges.

This is the next Obama-Os. It might be unappreciated by some, but you definitely just got looked at by some investors.

I must admit -- it's an ingenious way to pitch your company.

I think it works because the joke is clear by the second line. Any further and I bet people would be pretty pissed.<p>I had a friend do something similar to another friend just as a prank. Everything about the "ticket" looked official except for small print at the very bottom, which gave it away. They actually bought a disposable camera, took photos of the parked car (it wasn't illegally parked), and went to develop the photos before the joke was revealed.

Praise from me for the naughty tactic regardless of execution. If you're note sure if you did the right thing then find some consolation in the fourth point on this page: <a href="http://paulgraham.com/founders.html" rel="nofollow">http://paulgraham.com/founders.html</a><p>Let us know how it goes.

the thing i hate about windshield fliers is that there rarely is a trashcan nearby. Thus, being respectful of the wonderful bay area we live in, i end up folding it up and putting in my backseat or cup holder. It stays there for weeks until i go through the annoying stage of picking up all the miscellaneous stuff laying around in my car.

I like this idea because it's polarizing. All risky ideas are, and I think you can get at least one person behind you (appreciating that ballsiness), even at the risk of alienating everyone else. If that's all you need, go for it!

[Update] Ha! Apparently it's tripl.com and not tript.com.<p>If you checkout his site at tript.com it's either poorly designed or people are already spamming his site under the 'Latest Travel Advice' section.

This would be pretty brilliant, if it didn't amount to characterizing the people you're trying to reach as stupid and/or bamboozled into wasting their time.

So many grammar errors...

superb <i>hack</i>. any leads?<p>would be great if you could follow up with any interesting stories that came out of this.

tl;dr for the flyer text:<p>"We weren't good enough to get into YC, but want to piggyback off of pitch day. Please please please visit our site! kthxbai"

Congratulations! You're an asshole!

Interesting idea, and I hope it works out for you!<p>Sadly, it's almost certainly against municipal code.<p>All it takes is one jerk to make a smart street team effort go bad by complaining to the police or mayor.

Who didn't immediately go to tripl.com?

Haha pretty creative. You should scale this up to the entire city of Mountain View!