I was unimpressed by Jessica's failure to disclose that Eventbrite is a "paying customer" because its CEO is an investor.
I think the product has potential. I have worked on something similar for many years myself. I'll have a hard time rooting for its success, though, when Jessica seems to routinely make mistakes like this.
"I'll have a hard time rooting for its success, though, when Jessica seems to routinely make mistakes like this" is both pompous and mean. She's 20, and seems to be doing a pretty good job all considered. If you really believe she's screwing up, perhaps you should email her directly.
Last time I did it was with a customer service issue with InDinero. No one replied, so I canceled my account.
Also, I started consulting at age 11 and incorporated at 15, so I think I have the right to call out young people in business when I feel like they could do better.
I made an InDinero account to kick the tires a bit, and made a few comments when closing the account. I received several emails from Jessica within 24 hours and an offer to discuss things on the phone.
Maybe she has increased her attentiveness since you canceled. Maybe she is only attentive to people who are closing accounts. However it came about, I was impressed with her responsiveness to my comments.
I think its a little hypocritical that her youth seems to be the primary reason she's notable, but can also be used to defend her actions when she screws up.
Yeah in the business world it doesn't matter how old you are, all the same rules apply. I think it's great that younger entrepreneurial types are creating things of real value, but we are in the real world with real customers spending real money.
If Eventbrite actually uses it, it doesn't matter to me whether they heard about it from their CEO or not. In fact, lots of great businesses had their investors (or their friends) as first customers.
The point isn't whether or not relying on your investors' resources is a good way to get started in business. It is. It's just proper to be honest about it when asked.
If InDinero has so many paying customers ("hundreds" according to the interview), there should be no problem referring to one that isn't also controlled by an investor.
Who asked her that question? I didn't hear anything like that from the interviewer.
We, the internet, need a little more back up for your insinuation that she "routinely" makes these mistakes. Or that a mistake was even made in this case.
Also, there are famous people/businesses that use Dropcam, but I would never disclose them as customers because I don't have their explicit permission. Our friends and investors, however, are mostly happy to be named.
Full disclosure, I met Jessica for about 2 minutes at a Dropbox party once. Do you have anything to disclose?
I'm basing the word "routinely" on the Hacker News thread (which I'm sure someone can find) where Jessica admitted to copying another site's design wholesale. That's copyright infringement. She apologized for the mistake.
Everything I have to disclose is disclosed. If you'd like to try to poke holes in the TechCrunch interview I did with Evelyn a few weeks ago, feel free.
5:56: "So Eventbrite is one of your customers?" "They are one of our customers"
Truth value of this statement: 10/10. And it's a video interview, so you don't add caveats like "oh, and they heard about us because their CEO is an investor" to everything you say -- Eventbrite is just a representative of a customer archetype. If Evelyn had asked how Jessica got Eventbrite as a customer, it'd be a different story. But she didn't, making your comment misleading at best.
RE: web design, I side with http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=989295. I remember when Scribd ripped off Xobni's jobs page almost verbatim, at Xobni we had a laugh and moved on. It's not like they duplicated the core product.
This really comes across as trollish nitpicking to me. What's your real beef?
In the context of the conversation it was pretty clear that many of the early customers already had some kind of relationship with them.
She'd already said how they had signed up early stage web startups at PG's suggestion, which implied a relationship there, and she'd said how many of the investors had ideas on how to use the product.
I see this as normal business. For example, in enterprise software it is not abnormal at all for customers to invest in a startup vendor company so they have some say in the business and some way of guaranteeing they remain around.
I think the product has potential. I have worked on something similar for many years myself. I'll have a hard time rooting for its success, though, when Jessica seems to routinely make mistakes like this.