[galois]

Is getting featured on such a list a bad thing?

Why do you think these people had to pander to journalists to make this list? They were just doing their own thing.

There's so much thinly-veiled jealously in this thread, which, sadly, is exactly what I expected.

[axod]

It's not jealousy, I think it's great the companies were featured. It's always cool to get your photo/product mentioned somewhere :) Interesting to note that 1/3rd of the people featured were Women. Higher than I'd imagined.

I think it could be a bad thing if you make decisions in order to get on such a list, if you're spending time trying to get on such lists rather than doing what you think is best for the business. Getting featured on Techcrunch/Inc/etc won't make or break your business.

My comment about pandering to journalists was a more general point. As was stated by TechCrunch, they ignored "Visual Website Optimizer" basically because they thought the name was unfashionable. I'd be very doubtful that any customers or potential customers would care.

Journalists write about what people want to read about - extremes/freaks/car crashes/drama/soHotRightNow/epicFails etc. Which may well not be your business or your product. But that doesn't mean you have a bad business/product...

[lkozma]

Another excuse they gave was that the founder wrote them emails on Sunday. As if emails could not be read anytime later.

[axod]

Perhaps they get their email split into 140 character chunks and tweeted to them ;)