[bogdan]

They hired a former dev, guinsoo. At the time when LoL was announced dota was being developed by icefrog for a few good solid years already. Most of dota's popularity happened during icefrog's years. Icefrog later joined valve and helped create Dora 2.

[reactormonk]

And some hijacking of the old DotA forums to advertise LoL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13439036