tprophet

The amount of personal investment I have in an organization is directly tied to my personal upside. If it's my own company (I have run two startups) then I live and breathe it. If it's a Fortune 500 company or the government or whatever, then I give full effort, but I won't grind up my health or personal life. That's possibly justified with an 8 or 9 figure potential exit, but it's definitely not justified for 5 figures worth of stock.

I hate to break it to you, but the vast majority of press (and certainly blog) articles are written without actually talking to anyone; they're based on public information and--at most--email requests.

If the founders were doing the right thing here, they probably wouldn't have felt the need to dodge all my questions. I'd have gotten clear answers with evidence to back them up. Normal companies do this.

Also, if Airmule wanted an interview, they could have replied asking for a phone call and giving me their phone number.

For folks who claim I didn't clearly represent myself: My Twitter handle identifies me as a Seat 31B blogger, I emailed them from my seat31b.com address, and I publicly stated on Twitter that I was planning to blog about this. I don't know how it could possibly be any more clear. Yes, like many people in the startup community I do more than one thing (I am also involved with multiple startups) but given that these very different lines of business (a dating app and an information security consulting firm) I don't think there could be any reasonable confusion.

None of this actually happened, so I think it's pretty clear what's going on here.

They do - their ToS. And it appears to put all liability on the passenger. They haven't substantively addressed reasonable and fair questions around this.

Relax, I'm not going after you - this is part of a broader conversation. :)

There is no technical issue here preventing a clear answer due to 140 character limits.

These guys had my email address and could have sent a detailed response. Instead, they sent a short (but clear) one. If they actually wanted a phone interview, they could have asked for one and provided a number to call. And it's possible to send more than one tweet if they wanted to respond that way.

They did link to a FAQ which isn't clear, and their Terms of Service is posted on the page as others have noted. This is what raised my eyebrows to begin with and why I started asking questions.

A friend who is a tech reporter said "When they're responding like this, you know you got 'em." Given that Rory has had all morning to dispute any of the facts in my blog post, and has not done so despite being very active on Twitter, it seems clear that my reporter friend is right.

As a startup founder myself, I don't take writing a negative post about another startup lightly.

That being said, I always reserve the right to blog about anything I think is interesting or important to my readers, and this subject meets the bar given the seriousness of the potential consequences here. "Move fast and break things" is something you can do in a social app but lives are potentially at stake here.

It's also fair for me to move quickly. Airmule is out in public advertising $99 flights to Beijing right now. Why should I have to wait until Rory is back in the office on Monday to write about it?

It's fairly normal to write blog posts without interviewing anyone. If the facts are clear, why spend the time? There isn't a law that says that I have to schedule an interview with an airline before I blog about their economy class cabin, and there isn't a law that says I have to schedule an interview with a startup founder around his backyard tile laying project and Costco shopping trip.

Note that my readers are largely young backpackers - think the /r/shoestring and /r/solotravel crowd. I would have written an entirely different blog post--and one that the founder would have been completely happy with--if the answers had been different. It's unfortunate that they weren't.

- Not clear on the difference between you and a collection agency. - Do you guys report to Dun and Bradstreet? - What's the difference between the free and $5 friendly call? - When you do "the firm" call, that sounds vaguely Mafia-like. Are you going to threaten to break the guy's kneecaps? Call him repeatedly at 3 in the morning? I get that vibe from your product name.

Would much prefer to pay for results. And I would want to be able to hear a recording of the call so I can audit you guys to make sure you're representing our company in accordance with our values.

One potential issue is one we're very cognizant of here in Hollywood: being typecast. We considered this carefully before deciding to make our video public.

Keep in mind, we're a very early stage company. Our video reflects that, and our product video reflects the early product we have shipped (although we do hope you download and try Cuddli instead of just watching the video!). With the wide distribution and high profile that anything linked to YC is likely to attract, we may well be creating an impression with potential future partners, investors, and employees. This is likely the reason why most of the startups in this competition haven't chosen to make their video public.

We found out about this at the last minute, already had the video, and didn't have enough time to make new demos and videos. So, YC got the same video we submitted for TC Disrupt.

Note that startups apply for a _lot_ of stuff, and we have seen a pattern that teams that look more professional are more likely to be selected (regardless of stated criteria). We're also based in Hollywood, so the kind of video stuff we just make ourselves in a weekend project tends to end up looking reasonably professional.

At the end of the day, startups are rarely successful based on careful adherence to all guidelines, and we think our business is a lot more exciting than our demo and founder videos. Hopefully the YC reviewers think the same.