So You Want to Buy: Startup Office Snacks | Hacker News Reader

So You Want to Buy: Startup Office Snacks

refer.ly

19 pointsdmor22 comments

I am using Referly (my YC startup) test this idea, but hopefully it will help some of you as well. One my most frustrating yet fun statup jobs has been trying to order food for everyone (this becomes quite challenging as a company gets to be 40 or 50 people). I tried to compile office snack ideas into a single shopping list along with commentary and advice. Is this useful? How could we make it better?

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Ah, so straight-up referral spam becomes acceptable when done by somebody who should know better? Cool!

Next up: Top 5 sites for buying V1agra and C1a1is for ma5sive gr0wth hack1ng at l0w 1ow pr1ces.

This is really interesting to me, because it could be helpful and useful (I mean, I just bought $900 worth of stuff for my startup so it's not just a random collection of crap) but it comes of as spam. Can you help me understand what it is that sets off the "spam bit"?

Also, what does "should know better" mean? If I wrote this as a blog post on Svbtle and it was a story with a bunch of referral links instead would it be different? Is the credibility of it damaged by the fact I could make money if you buy the things I suggested? Or something else...

And lastly, is this unique to the HN community and its acceptable methods of communication, or a broader turnoff you would notice even if you hadn't found this link here?

So is this the part where you engage with criticism, as the worst that will happen is fanning the flames of controversy which just drives more attention? But I'm not saying that your comment isn't in earnest either - you're wishing to figure out how to categorically make spam look like not spam, as your startup is based on making it easy for people to spam their friends and associates, and so is highly vulnerable to the social repercussions of bad first impressions.

A simple and easy first step to making your site seem less spammy would be to register a whole bunch of different domains composed of relevant keywords. These can be used to mitigate being banned from link aggregator sites and to delay users noticing the pattern. Markov chain generated text surrounding the links would do wonders on the less savvy users, too. I'm sure there are plenty more of such tips if you hang out in the right forums.

What you fail to realize is that credibility has been destroyed by each and every detail of the situation. The earnest blog that has the occasional spammy referral post can be mostly forgiven (although the users that upvote it shouldn't be), as it's clear that the writer has a life purpose besides referral links. I see no such redeeming qualities here.

"Should know better" refers to the fact that you present yourself as part of the tech community, while simultaneously disrespecting the general consensus on spam. Although maybe it's just that the shark that was jumped has died of old age.

Oh, I just remembered it's Sunday - I've got to go do a bit of sanitation hacking.

Yes, creating lot's of domains is precisely what other affiliates do and what I have been trying to avoid - it feels very dishonest to me. I am extremely aware of how this looks, how affiliates are viewed, and how credibility is destroyed at every step. That's why it is so fascinating to me and why I'm trying to understand if there is a problem to solve for affiliates.

There is also a good chance that this is just not the right kind of content for this community.

How would you feel if Referly much more clearly said "hey, if you decide to buy through my links that is totally up to you - but if you do I am going to earn 6-8% commission. This doesn't change the price of your products, but I hope it will serve as a nice tip to me for organizing all this info in one place for you. If not, no worries"

Personally, I'm a lot more tolerant of referrals the more "credible or responsible" the referrer is.

1) If the author of a book writes a ~10 page article (free) or posts a chapter, and includes a link to "buy my book", I have zero problem. In fact, I'm glad he made it easier for me to buy the book from Amazon, saving me a step.

2) If someone sets up a site (like Box O' Truth, an ammunition/firearms performance test), then includes links to purchase tested products (and potentially discloses that Federal gave him a bunch of Flitecontrol #00, and Benelli loaned him an M1 for testing), I have no problem buying through those links.

3) An author who has a following (say, a known expert in cycling) who throws some links to products he likes and reviews, especially if it's a product he owns already.

4) Someone who is a domain expert and reviews products he doesn't really like, slightly disingenuously. Although in some cases it makes sense for say a skiing expert to review a beginner product that he personally doesn't use; that's closer to 3. A Canon shooter who includes a Nikon body for comparison (without actually reviewing it) is more like a 4 or 4.5.

...

6) Random lists of products, like "top 10 new items for the new year" from publications like Stuff or Wired or whatever, largely selected through vendor promotion and who buys display ads.

...

9) Ubuntu stripping out referrals from some packages and replacing them with their own (some audio package?)

10) Malware which secretly appends an affiliate tag to everything a browser goes to, without a choice.

Antipathy starts around 5, and jihad starts around 8.

I think Referly in this case is around a 3, and in the worst case is around a 5 or 6.

I just don't see the angle. A respected blog posting affiliate links is about my limit of 'earnestly recommending products and happen to be making commission'. Referly seems primed to create low-authority (quality is irrelevant) lists which are then posted to various community sites, much like you have just done.

You might be able to save some credibility by also including non-affiliate links so users are given an easy-to-act-on choice, but I cringe for even possibly helping.

Don't worry, you won't burn in the pit of spam hell... we don't want to be a spam site. The sad thing is that my credibility is poorly reflected in this Referly post, but if you were to read it in the context of distributionhacks.com, daniellemorrill.com or the Twilio company blog it would have a totally different meaning. And that is the secret we have uncovered I think... the results of my experiment will be forthcoming

This is also why Klout is such a bunch of crap.

FWIW, my original comment was written in the context of what I've seen of distributionhacks (which I am not interested in, to put it mildly). I don't know if that changes your data point or what. I don't really think you've uncovered a secret - perceived motives matter a lot (for example how your account has remained unhellbanned, whereas as a 1-week old 'affiliateseo7132' would have been gone quite quickly). I actually didn't doubt that you sincerely compiled a list of recommended snacks, but the context of 'how can we put stuff in people's faces and cause them be interested' coupled with affiliate links for junk food puts you in spamming territory no matter how much meta thinking or startupspeak you have going on (these things just make for the ridiculousness of it). Though I'm sure the strength of various audiences' mental immune systems will vary considerably.

I've made a similar list directly on Amazon. It's awesome, as I can just click "re-order" when we're running low for the items I don't have a subscription to.

What sucks is Amazon carries nothing but garbage food (like the items you listed); no healthy snacks that don't make a keyboard greasy, or orange.

What I've consistently bought: peanut butter crackers, trail mix snacks, water.

I wish Amazon carried more _naturally_ sugar-free snack food!

I agree, I was really struggling to find healthy stuff on their (at least the almonds and beef jerky are a bit better but still, not by much). I have been considering setting up subscription, but not sure how long stuff is going to last. What do you subscribe to?

Strictly non-perishables that we can never have too much of. In short, trail mix and water :)

There aren't many subscription options on Amazon, either.

Something that will mature over the next few years, I'm sure.

I've found that having plenty of fruit on hand is key to being able to work long startup days without feeling like crap at the end of the week.

Non-perishables are somewhat overrated: most food will be eaten (especially once you know what people like and what they don't like), and having a few dollars' worth of fruit go bad each week is a tiny amount of your food budget.

Yeah, we get fruit and other perishables, of course. I was just describing the items I can (and do) order off Amazon.

I'm puzzled why people buy popcorn in bags (with nasty fake butter, etc. -- there's actually a disease, Popcorn Workers Lung http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronchiolitis_obliterans).

You can just use regular paper bags, put some popcorn in, and pop it. It works fine. There isn't a microwave susceptor or anything like that in the bag. (some tv dinners actually do include materials designed to heat up from microwaves to directly cook the food, particularly foods with low water content which would otherwise not get cooked well in the microwave.)

Maybe it's just a result of us being in the Midwest, but most of the snacks displayed here aren't all that cheap to me. I can get things cheaper if I go to Woodman's (local grocery store) or Costco.

In the Boston area, Boston Organics will deliver a tasty assortment of organic fruits weekly. We get this at my office, and it goes fast. http://www.bostonorganics.com/

I'm sure there are equivalents in other cities.

Would love to see a healthy version next.. :)

Also anyone who buys Diet Coke on Amazon is crazy.

I will work on the healthy version, but have found it is surprisingly hard to come up with at a reasonable price, it has always been a challenge in companies I've worked at. I usually buy Diet Coke at Costco, where do you get yours?

Gross, this list is a 1-way ticket to the Cancer Ward!

Also, Jack Link's brand beef jerky is disgusting. Really. almost any of the commercial stuff is disgusting.

If you don't make your own, my favorite is http://www.bigjohnsbeefjerky.com/

It's actually made from tolerably good meat, not overly processed, and is cut into nice thin slices which are easy to eat.

The food on there is pretty disgusting. Not sure why startup culture goes together with junk food. It's like buying poison for your team.

i don't have a problem with the referral links, but all this so - called food is the worst stuff for your health. If you want to poison your employees then go ahead feed this to them. You should learn a little bit about living healthy.

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