Cullen King

After all the discussion surrounding the dissatisfaction with WakeMate’s silence, most sane business people would have gotten the hint: be more transparent when you borrow people’s money. Their promises to be more vocal on Twitter and their blog have been mediocre at best. I know that talking to your users can be a time consuming task, but it’s a large part of success especially when you ask them to go out on a limb and loan you money for an untold number of months. The worst part is they could have turned this sequence of events into an educational opportunity for fellow entrepreneurs. By talking about the difficulties of bringing a product to market, getting things tested/bugfixed and otherwise being vocal about the process, much of the ill will could have been avoided. Possibly, they could have even made a good name for themselves; just as readers of Hacker News know Patrick McKenzie due to his frequent posts and writeups about the trials of running his business, WakeMate could have fostered a sense of community support.

The one thing that keeps bugging me about this situation, is this company is a Y Combinator funded startup. YC is there to mentor and support startups and their founders in becoming successful. Are they failing to give the WakeMate team decent advice, or is the WakeMate team failing to take it? Is my concept of decent advice, to communicate and be open with the people placing pre-orders, wrong? Either way, this is not how I want to do business or want people to do business with me. I know it’s a measly $5, however I feel like I am being scammed, which is a dirty feeling even if it’s only five bucks. I am pulling my preorder.