[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.