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Comment by jdswain | Hacker News Reader

In the case of startups this adds a lot of credibility. Yves Behar has designed some really well known products, and fuseproject is (from what I have read) almost like an incubator for hardware projects with great design. So for a small startup to have Yves Behar working with them is a big thing and well worth mentioning. I'd certainly love to have the chance to work with him.

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No, it doesn't. The vast majority of gardeners have never heard of Yves Behar. It's a crutch for having a product anybody cares about.

Other than that, there is a difference between "mentioning" it and working with him, and having it in the title of everything.

I do see your point. Probably from a gardeners point of view this is not really important, I'm maybe biased a bit in that I'd look for a product with good design, that looked like the people cared about what they built, rather than something that looked like it was built to minimise cost.

The article was in wired though, and that's the kind of readership that maybe will care about the company and the people behind the product. It's one of the traps that a lot of startups fall into though, that a lot of their messages seem targeted at the startup community rather than at their actual customers.

Founder and CEO here-- working with Yves has opened a number of doors that we wouldn't have had access to, and has resulted in a well-designed product that our customers love.

No doubt.

But your real customers aren't going to care even a little bit.

You certainly could be right in the long run, but so far many of our early adopters do care.

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