Comment by mihaaly | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mihaaly | Hacker News Reader

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They seem to be real entrepreneurs running the thing from a farm in rural settings [1] where the director lives (same personal address declared). If I read it right they are in ca. 400k debt so far, working it down slowly. I am wishing them quick success as their product looks great. Perhaps if I will be patient enough waiting 5 month for delivery after payment and will not worry about if warranty (or even shipment) could be ever fulfilled by a tiny new company I will make a try myself. On paper this is a quality laptop that is so hard to find in the sea of trash. But perhaps will wait until more experiences are gained by other customers in a year or so (considering the half year delivery lag). I also wish they used less pompous text in the very first two senences of the headline in the style of hustlers with more mouth than content: "exquisitely crafted", "sets a new standard", "groundbreaking technology", "ultimate choice", "users who demand the very best". It is off-putting for me. No need to sugar the honey this hard.

I genuinely root for them.

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Star+Labs+Systems/@51.1863...

That’s impressive, they are really bootstrap. The quality of their hardware and their support has been fantastic I highly recommend them if you can afford the weight

It is very promising they are having such good customer feedback.

Frankly, if it's three people, you're lucky it's not riddled with typos and grammatical errors. If "we aren't polished at PR" is your big criticism, it's a nit.

If they are successful, they'll eventually hire someone and likely get some polish on those details.

I think this criticism is missing the point of the OP. It’s not simply “PR”, it’s how the company views or thinks about their products that matters. It’s disingenuous at best to make such claims with presumably almost no laptops shipped, fraudulent at worst.

I'm a freelance writer and blogger. I see it as a noob mistake sometimes made by sincere, well-meaning but naive folks who don't know anything about PR.

It's, yes, potentially also fraudulent if they don't remotely live up to the claims. In a world of "fake it til you make it" where most small shops have little hope of competing with people with VC money, it's counterintuitive for most people that click bait style PR can come back to bite you.

/2 cents

I wish them good luck, I just wish as you pointed out with the hyperbolic statements they weren’t trying to poorly emulate Apple marketing. I found the page very harsh graphically and full of elementary design mistakes (font ratios, spacing, layout, etc), and not great copy writing. I know people feel the need to maximize their product marketing, but if you’re going to swing this hard, hire someone who is good enough to do it for you.

“Sugar the honey” is a great turn of phrase and new to me. Thank you!

See also “gild the lily”.

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