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A comment on VCs Promised to Help Black Founders – My Experience Shows a Different Reality. Parent comment

Re:VCs Promised to Help Black Founders – My Experience Shows... by dlivingston on Wednesday July 08, 2020 @03:56PM (#23773605)
The US reviews are very peculiar: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-bright-app/id1471800945?ls...

101 ratings with all but two being 5-stars. I hesitate to say that the positive reviews are largely fake, but it sure seems like it. Broken English and vague praise for the app characterize most of the reviews.

For example: "My friend recommended to me for experiencing this app. At the fist time, I didn't know this application could bring benefits to me. However, after all I use this app more frequently because its advantages. Very useful!"

What? Further, all 5-star reviews with the exception of one were written between 01/28/2020 and 01/30/2020. That leaves exactly three reviews of the 101 written outside this two-day window. Massive red flag.

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Re:VCs Promised to Help Black Founders – My Experience Shows... by perseusmandate on Wednesday July 08, 2020 @06:29PM (#23774905)
I was a customer at one of their gyms and the app was garbage. It frequently crashed and there were huge bugs with basic stuff like the dates I'd be billed for renewal being wrong. I didn't realize I was still subscribed and they charged me ~$250 for a month where I didn't even go in.
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Re:VCs Promised to Help Black Founders – My Experience Shows... by dumpsterdiver on Wednesday July 08, 2020 @07:29PM (#23775407)
Unethical Life Pro Tip (takeaway): Pay people to submit five star reviews about your competitor’s product that obviously look fake. Bonus points if they're all submitted on the same day.
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Re:VCs Promised to Help Black Founders – My Experience Shows... by Jommi on Wednesday July 08, 2020 @04:31PM (#23773912)
Let's just refrain from going too far with any ambiguous quips at the product. I dont think anyone is going to gain from that.
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Re:VCs Promised to Help Black Founders – My Experience Shows... by mad182 on Wednesday July 08, 2020 @04:40PM (#23774001)
But this is relevant. If both the product and her CV are weak, the racism card doesn't hold up. If I was deciding if I want to invest money in some app, I'm pretty sure seeing most of the reviews are poor quality fakes would be a lot more important factor than founders race.
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Re:VCs Promised to Help Black Founders – My Experience Shows... by Jommi on Wednesday July 08, 2020 @09:14PM (#23776051)
You're mistaking the forest for the trees. You could go look at a handful of other funded apps and evaluate their reviews. You're going to find similar things.

My point was that you don't need to get into a more subjective, personal quip, as the arguments brought by others (eg. The CV) here are already strong enough to dismiss the racism claim.

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Re:VCs Promised to Help Black Founders – My Experience Shows... by jjeaff on Thursday July 09, 2020 @01:37AM (#23777232)
I think you are also missing the forest for the trees. The point of her post is that she submitted the exact same proposal to the exact same VCs from her husband's email instead of her own and actually started getting responses for the first time.
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Re:VCs Promised to Help Black Founders – My Experience Shows... by lightgreen on Thursday July 09, 2020 @02:13AM (#23777437)
Or maybe that’s because her husband has a LinkedIn page which is easily googleable and mentions three years of working in Google, and she has zero relevant experience.
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Re:VCs Promised to Help Black Founders – My Experience Shows... by jjeaff on Thursday July 09, 2020 @07:12PM (#23786352)
Her husband is on both decks. So at best, they didn't so much as glance at her pitch deck until the husband sent it.

Or maybe they only look up the senders of the emails before deciding to even open the pitch deck. Seems rather odd.

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Re:VCs Promised to Help Black Founders – My Experience Shows... by paulchap on Thursday July 09, 2020 @09:13AM (#23779787)
I don't think any VC would like to be attached to the app if the author were to be committing fraud under the FTC Act. Not only are the app reviews suspicious, but the testimonial pictures[0] are definitely faked.

[0] https://getbright.app/

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Re:VCs Promised to Help Black Founders – My Experience Shows... by anon102010 on Thursday July 09, 2020 @03:20PM (#23783986)
I thought this unlikely but doing a quick look

This:

https://reductress.com/post/the-best-haircuts-for-what-youve...

is very close to the person (Sonya) on get bright's testimonials.

https://getbright.app/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/testimonial...

It could be the same Sonya just doing other things (hair shots etc) of course so not certain they are fake testimonial photos but certainly weird.

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Re:VCs Promised to Help Black Founders – My Experience Shows... by paulchap on Saturday July 11, 2020 @03:55PM (#23805332)
The one you found is the most ambiguous, since there's no background in the (cleverly) cropped testimonial photo, but Google Images turned up pictures for every single testimonial[0,1,2,3]. The timestamps from these websites go severy years back, as well. [0] https://www.stclairdentist.com.au/smile-makeover/ [1] https://www.dmdentalgroup.com/articles/professional-teeth-wh... [2] https://helpingminds.org.au/new-geraldton/ [3] https://reductress.com/post/the-best-haircuts-for-what-youve...
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Re:VCs Promised to Help Black Founders – My Experience Shows... by graeme on Wednesday July 08, 2020 @05:40PM (#23774542)
Ah that’s almost exactly the same timeframe as the Android reviews.
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