1. Write an angry blog post insulting New York, New Yorkers, and ibanks.
2. Ride the popularity wave as a heated discussion rages about whether New York is the greatest place on earth or an over-priced, roach infested pit of assholes and prima donnas.
3. Get on Techchrunch.
4. Profit.
As an ex New Yorker, the only thing I can say is "Why didn't I think of this myself!".
1. Recognize an under-served market segment with huge potential.
2. Build a product which fills that segment's need
3. Profit.
Our views on the East Coast tech scene are completely orthogonal to those goals.
The amount of press we got on those posts was completely unexpected (cf. my follow-up post about our imploding blog server). A happy bonus maybe, but we'd rather people love us (or hate us) based on the product.
I ask that seriously. Obviously their goal is to build a great product, and to get people to use it.
They posted that article on the AdGrok blog because it drove a shit-ton of traffic and it received a ton of inbound links. Why wouldn't they capitalize on that?
As far as the product is concerned, it's fantastic. I've been using it in private beta for a few weeks. I would bet on these guys in a heartbeat.
Startups drive traffic and signups any way that they can, and their company name was hitting mainstream media before they even launched.
Maybe antonio can give us some signup stats to go with the wave of traffic? I'd certainly be curious about the effect it had, even if it was very general (up 4000%, etc.)
and as marketing plans go for unknown products, it's not bad.