[rrhoover]

Adii isn't forcing anyone to pay and as he stated in his essay, he personally reached out to customers to inform them the video content was ready YET. Adii isn't doing a bait-and-switch without intention of delivering a quality product. He left his successful startup, WooThemes, to build a platform to help entrepreneurs. Before criticizing his approach coming from the outside (with less context), I'd prefer to hear directly from his customers.

[rayiner]

He's doing exactly a bit and switch, and he's proud of it judging by his writing.

Let's consider a meat space analogy. Say I'm establishing a maid service. I don't have any maids or cleaning equipment, but I want to gauge interest in the neighborhood by signing people up for appointments and take their billing info. I don't tell them that this is what I'm doing. If I "reach out" to my customers and then say "J/K, I don't have an actual business yet, but I will soon!" that doesn't make it all okay. If I took any money on top of that, that's fraud. Indeed, even if I didn't take any money, taking billing info for a product that doesn't exist without telling customers as much is sketchy as fuck at best.

[USNetizen]

I believe they call that "deception", the definition of which is telling people something exists which does not in order to get their buy-in. Had he taken so much as a single dollar in revenue from someone, it will be fraud. It ruins the reputations of legit startups everywhere.

[j_s]

  > Adii isn't forcing anyone to pay

Everyone who did not opt-out was billed (eg. if anyone missed, misread, or otherwised ignored the email explaining the pivot).

I'm more discouraged this guy was given a platform to promote this approach at MicroConf Europe. How sad to 'hear directly from his customer' that he only discovered how he was being scammed when he attended the presentation! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6515095