[teyc]

HackerNews readers, watch and learn. I'm about deconstruct what is going on.

Anybody who brushes off FreshDesk because of its Indian roots is doing FreshDesk a favour. This is a sharp mind at work and it is lethal.

FreshDesk is executing the standard modus operandi of upstart against an incumbent.

Jobs is a master at it (I'm Apple I'm Microsoft), Calacanis too (remember the SEO controversy, and then the Angel controversy?), and Girish is in the same league. The idea is to frame everything as a controversy, and linkbaits people into discussing it.

Notice how a custom domain is used and it is a mini website, not just a blog post? It is a custom website intended to fuel controversy and will drive a lot of SEO juice from bloggers all over the world. Sit back and watch its PageRank explode.

Girish is also running very hungry by executing a social media campaign. People may not buy from Twitter, but it buys mindshare. It will be a matter of time before FreshDesk gets a good recall rate, as long as it acts heads above other people. The name itself enjoys co-recognition from Freshbooks as well as ZenDesk.

Don't forget, Girish comes with a Zoho pedigree, and this is a company that has bootstrapped itself in India and no one would say the software is anything but world-class.

As for ZenDesk, Girish has stuck a fork into Ben Keepes for the lack of disclosure (by the way, I've been a long time reader of CloudAve, always insightful, even if [I now have to perceived it as potentially] biased), and then masterfully weaves ZenDesk CEO's twitter reply with the overtly racist overtone that cloudavesyd (onya Aussies) "Indian cowboys"-tweet. Note that mikkelsvane wasn't party to the "Indian cowboys" comment, but the way it is put, mikkelsvane sounded like he was in agreement (although to anyone who pays close attention to this type of things, he clearly was talking about something else).

Girish, if you are reading - I'm in Australia, if you could - please don't turn this into a wider "Australians enjoy India bashing meme". We already have a hard time here, and race doesn't factor much if at all in business.

As for ZenDesk, the important thing is to stay above the fray, establish their incumbency, but emphasize their own underdoggedness. Both can play the jingoist game and appeal to emotions.

[girishm]

@teyc - I will take what you have said as a huge compliment. I wish I was as smart as you say I am. When this happened, we considered our options -

1. We ignore the comments. But that will seem that anyone can say anything and get away with it. It is wrong.

2. We could engage in a war of words on Twitter. It seemed stupid to go that route.

3.Write the entire story and present how we felt about the whole thing. - That is what we did.

We did not consider SEO or link juice to setup a separate site. Our blog uses Posterous and to my knowledge Posterous does not support embeddable Twitter widgets. So we went the separate domain route. I was actually of the opinion that a post on our blog is better SEO. I posted this on social networks to publicize our response. I posted it on HN for a meaningful discussion which I think happened and I learnt some good things and some mistakes.

I definitely don't want the Australian - Indian racism debate anymore than you do. I think it is disgusting. We were attacked for no reason and we wanted to respond. It's Monday morning here in India and we are back to work on improving our Product.

[teyc]

Kudos for turning a defensive move into PR gold.

Absolutely right about Australian-Indian racism debate. A lot of Indians doing very well here, and the last time something flared up, the news attracted a lot of unwanted attention to the nationals who have settled down here.

I'm sorry to have distracted people from a meaningful discussion. You have executed well, and this has to be discussed.

[ericd]

This kind of stuff, especially Twitter-spamming, really rubs me the wrong way. Some people call it hustle, but I just think it's dirty. I'm much less likely to sign up for FreshDesk in the future if it comes across my desk now.

[jackowayed]

I agree. I interned for a company that was kind of competing with [fairly big startup that most of you have heard of]. At the time, Company was way smaller than it is now, but was still bigger than us. (We had very few customers; no one had heard of us whereas I'd already seen mentions of Company on HN several times; they had fulltime employees other than the founders and we did not.) Despite this, any time anyone mentioned our name on Twitter (not even in dissatisfaction), they got an @reply.

Not only was this annoying and sketchy, but it was totally unnecessary. We were no threat to them. They would have been better off doing just about anything else with their time.

Even though Freshdesk doesn't @reply everyone who mentions Zendesk (just those who are unhappy with it), and even though Zendesk is an "incumbent" (in the absurd Valley way where anything that's been around longer than a year is ancient), this still gives me a really bad impression of them (as does this whole PR stunt), and furthermore, they'd probably be better off building their product and figuring out how to best meet the needs of their current customers.

[wheels]

> [...] they'd probably be better off building their product and figuring out how to best meet the needs of their current customers

That's nonsense -- a variation on the "Field of Dreams" fallacy of "build it and they will come". Customer acquisition, which PR and marketing feed into, is absolutely essential.

In fact, your advice is the opposite of what most programmer-founded startups should do. You don't win by having a better product that nobody's heard of. And I think anyone that's been hanging around startup-y folks for a while can tell you about a handful of friends who misunderstood that point to their own peril.

All that this post really did for me was make me hear FreshBook's name again. In fact, the ZenDesk naming spat is more likely to make me actually remember the name. And that's probably enough that if my company is looking for a SaaS support tool in the future, that we'll give them a look as well. Which is assume is exactly what they were hoping for.

For all the talk of what they're doing to their pristine brand here and blah, blah, I don't think anyone serious is going to hold this move against them in a purchasing decision. Bringing in new infrastructure software is not done on a whim.

[ericd]

Eh, I would hold it against them. If they're willing to do shady things in their marketing, who knows what they'll do with all that valuable customer data they're holding on to for me. Signing up for them is like taking them on as a business partner, and trust is a really big part of that.

[teyc]

You should have seen Steve Blank relate his tale with a smile when his Stanford Lean Startup students spammed the faculty in order to achieve some traction. Twitter spamming isn't a business model, but there is one stage of a startup's life when you have to do things that any self respecting person is reluctant to do, but for the survival of the company. Even Balsamiq did that.

Over at Mixergy, about a year ago, the founder of a BabySitter service talked about how she sneaked into university campuses to post advertisements, all the time humming the "mission impossible" tune to keep her in the right mental frame.

[ericd]

I wouldn't call emailing bloggers about reviewing your product (given that that's what many of them try to do) something a self respecting person should be reluctant to do. I assume that's what you're referring to with Balsamiq? That's the right way to do it - get the press to give your product some attention because it's really good! Putting up flyers in public places is also fine.

It becomes spamming when you insert an ad for your stuff in a personal place like on the windshield of someone's car, or in someone's twitter client's @ inbox, unless you think it's something they'll legitimately want to hear because they need help that you can offer (this is rare). Predatory customer acquisition from your competitors via spamming is well on the other side of the line. Combined with this reaction site which uses tactics that would be at home in a political smear campaign, and I'm fairly certain that this is a company I don't want to ever do business with.

[teyc]

Listen to Andrew Warner's interview. Peldi talked about approaching people on twitter due early days to try to do sales. He wasn't very successful with the approach, and then went on to try something else.

    I'm fairly certain that this is
    a company I don't want to ever do business with.

That's the respectable side of you talking. If you have a house on the line in your own start up, you'll be crazy not to do everything to give your startup every chance of success.

On a personal level, I loath getting spam as much as everybody else, so please don't spam me!

[ericd]

Oh interesting, hadn't heard that part of the story.

I don't know about that - my thinking is that if blackhat is the only way to get something to succeed, It's probably not a very good idea anyway, and I'm probably better off spending my time doing something different.

[teyc]

The biggest risk to a startup is that people don't know about their product. Spamming is not a long term strategy, but it might be useful in finding the first few customers to get customer development kick started.

[wnight]

This seems like a bad attitude - that whatever sleazy thing people do is excused by them having over-spent their way to desperation.

[luciferous]

> Girish, if you are reading - I'm in Australia, if you could - please don't turn this into a wider "Australians enjoy India bashing meme". We already have a hard time here, and race doesn't factor much if at all in business.

Aussie here. Australia has in the recent years acquired a bad reputation when it comes to its treatment of immigrant populations, for e.g.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_against_Indians_in_Aus....

If you truly care about avoiding an "Australians enjoy India bashing" meme, then make sure to hold Christian Marth (@cloudgroupsyd) accountable to his tweet, and other Aussies who say things like this. It belies an insensitivity toward other cultures, and we should really address this seriously.

[benkepes]

Guys - as it happens I'll see Christian in Sydney next week and I'll be sure to tell him that his comment was insensitive and racist...

My original tweet was an off the cuff remark, I didn't like Freshdesk's choice of name and I still don't. It's nothing against the founders, the product or anything else. And it sure as heck isn't some dodgy conspiracy aimed at ensuring that Zendesk succeeds....

[teyc]

Bear in mind, it is very difficult to convey tone in a tweet. The larrikin in Australia gives a lot of colour to life here, and I'm sorry to see it go if all communication go electronic.

There used to be a time when a gentle jibe in the ribs between friendly groups included off-colour remarks making fun of race. I grew up in that environment in Malaysia. The only problem is on the internet, you are not anyone's friend, and there is no nuance at all.

[cloudgroup]

I understand that my remark was un called for and offensive, I apologise sincerely to the whole community for the comment I made, sorry

[teyc]

Being a migrant myself, it is kind of hard to take him to task.

[idspispopd]

Thank you for pointing out this obvious PR campaign.

The whole point of highlighting this exchange, the surrounding publicity, the custom url/etc is to raise the profile and get people to pick sides to generate discussion.

This PR technique is as old as the sex tape and about exhausted as it gets. It's the online equivalent of reading "britney spears vs lindsay lohan".

[deskamess]

If you want to call it a PR campaign that is fine. However, lets not forget that this campaign was made possible by the statements and responses from ZenDesk and an associate.

[teyc]

This is what makes it masterful. It is a campaign in any sense of the word because he worked his ass off on this site.

However, it doesn't detract the truth of what he said. In fact, even as I deconstruct it, I still find myself siding with FreshDesk. Mind control at its best.

[jbail]

Buying a domain and slapping together a one-page website hardly qualifies as working your ass off. This whole thing is childish on both ends and a crappy website just illustrates this overall immaturity.

[vnchr]

Oh, that my own childish efforts and crappy web development would develop this much brand awareness, customer education and unpaid publicity!

[jbail]

You missed my point. A couple of kids name calling on the playground generates a lot of attention too, but it's not the right kind of attention. The brand awareness you tout is counter-productive to building a brand that I want to interact with (read: give my money to).

I'm aware of Freshdesk because they made a retaliation website in response to something stupid that somebody said on Twitter. It doesn't inspire confidence in their ability to provide help desk software. They are spending time worrying about what other people think of them and say about them instead of just rocking out their product. I'm not impressed by that at all.

[larrys]

"custom URL"

which was just created yesterday (12/3/11):

Domain ID:D164025278-LROR

Domain Name:RIPOFFORNOT.ORG

Created On:03-Dec-2011 14:26:48 UTC

[user24]

well yeah, it's not like they're going to have been preparing to be called a rip off for the last 6 months.. Of course they registered it in response to this... ?!?!?

[larrys]

What is obvious to you is not obvious to everyone on HN. And by the way what conclusion would you come to if the domain was registered 3 months or 3 years ago?

[smosher]

I've used ZenDesk. It's not the worst, but if things are as you say I would have thought the FreshDesk folks would have picked a different target.

One judgment I can make is that the cloudgroupsyd comment was xenophobic on its face. I wouldn't stand for that, defend it or excuse it. If there's any kind of software in this world that ranks high on the Global Village factor it's the kind with Desk in the name. The kind of attitude that permits someone to utter stuff like that publicly is toxic to this environment.

Suppose the recipient is trying something underhanded—does that make it okay?

Edit: correct an attribution.

[larrys]

"This is a sharp mind at work and it is lethal.

FreshDesk is executing the standard modus operandi of upstart against an incumbent."

Agree. Compete.com numbers (no bashing please) show 1.28 million monthly for zendesk to 2.4k for freshdesk. Should be interesting to revisit this in 3 to 6 months and see what has happened.

[OpenAmazing]

Can you (or another SEO) comment on why the mini-site is better than just a blog post on their site? Don't they want the PageRank juice for their main site and not the mini-site? Or is the plan to redirect the mini-site at a later date?

[chrisguitarguy]

A few reasons:

1. You can host a separate site on its own IP (and, even better, an IP in a different C subnet than their main site) and point links from that domain to the home domain. Thus link juice gets passed to home domain in a roundabout manner.

As far as the domain becoming irrelevant in two weeks time: it doesn't matter. If it gets some coverage and links from authoritative sources (ala Hacker News, which doesn't nofollow), the domain will gain authority and that authority gets passed on to the other domains it links out to.

2. Buzz. As larrys pointed out, ripoffornot.com is a great, controversial domain name. That alone could inspire a bit more buzz, which -- generally -- means more authority getting passed to the site via links (see point 1) or via social sharing.

3. Highly targeted. When someone searches for zendesk vs. freshdesk, this domain has an extremely high chance of ranking. It uses both terms extensively and includes a bit table comparing the two services. Good for users, great for bots. more over it's attention grabbing and reads well.

4. Reputation Management. Having an influential person talking smack about your brand is obviously not a good thing. What happens if that negative review starts ranking for you name or, even worse, the term "[Brand] Ripoff" starts showing up in google instant results.

No good.

Freshdesk is owning this bit of bad press. When someone searches for "freshdesk ripoff" or something similar there's a good chance this domain will show up because it's targeted (see point 3) more than a blog post could be.

All of those factors mean that this domain is telling one helluva compelling story. People like stories and are happy to spread them around.

[anthony_franco]

Having it as a blog post would increase the domain authority in Google's eyes. But on the other hand, having a blog post dedicated to talking about your main competitor would probably be detrimental in converting more customers.

This is the best compromise. A separate site to discuss the situation. With many links to the main product site to pass through some of the domain authority as well.

[techhacker]

The domain will become irrelevant in a week's time. So where does this SEO story comes into the picture?

[larrys]

SEO is only one factor. The name they registered (on 12/3) is ripoffornot.org - This will help feed (edit: aid) the controversy as well. It's similar to "ripoffreport.com (.org redirects to .com) which is a fairly well know site which people bitch on about companies. On a quick look you see "ripoff..." and you click the link. That's a decent touch in itself.

[ZoliErdos]

@teyc, I publish / edit CloudAve, and as such, let me clarify a few points.

- We're definitely not racist, don't have an anti-Indian angle . In fact my fellow Editor, @Krishnan is Indian. And for all I care he could be an Indian-African-Martian mix, he is there for what he knows, not where he comes from.

- Ben is a syndicated contributor, and as such he expresses his opinion, which we may or may not agree with. As Editor, I select which of his - and other authors' - posts we publish, and I try to filter out bias - probably not 100% successfully.

- CloudAve can't control what guest authors say on Twitter. All we can do, and again, try really hard is make sure what gets published on our site is unbiased, and hopefully valuable information.

- Personally I find his attack Tweet and the lack of disclosure of his past involvement with ZenDesk unfortunate. I even tried to make light fun of it, saying Freshdesk is actually a rip-off of FreshBooks, which in turn is a rip-off of Fresh Choice. Apparently some did not get the irony, taking my tweet literally, even though Fresh Choice is a restaurant chain. Go figure ...

- In the grand scheme of things this tweet was a mistake, yet Ben continues to write (mostly) insightful posts, of which we get to cherry-pick and so far our readers seem to like it.

- Kudos to FreshDesk for turning this into a PR coup - I suppose this incident brought them more visibility than they would have gained in months without it. Furthermore, now Ben will feel compelled to actually review their product:-)

[teyc]

We all know that [there is no racism]. This is a stoush between competitors, brothers in arms. This is why I want to check on any unintended escalation.

[te_chris]

Ben Kepes is a New Zealander, f'n Australians....;)

[teyc]

I was referring to Christian Marsh, who has "syd" in his twitter moniker.