[7Figures2Commas]

At least Wedding Crashers was entertaining. Your post, not so much.

According to your company's AngelList page, your startup has funding, you generated $500,000 in revenue last year on 80% margins, and you're profitable on $15,000/month in paid subscription revenue.

Notwithstanding the fact that the numbers don't add up (I don't see how you produce 80% margin on $500,000 in revenue while supporting an 8 person engineering team and paying yourself and co-founder a salary, or how a thriving photo sharing service that claims 270,000 users only has "over 8 million photos & videos uploaded"), if you're profitable and doing as well as claimed, why are you engaging in unethical and possibly illegal behavior to save a few hundred dollars here and there on conference tickets? Not only should you be able to afford the tickets, any highly-profitable company like the one you supposedly run usually welcomes business expenses like these.

[sashaeslami]

You are assuming that we crashed those events when we were profitable. Incorrect.

[7Figures2Commas]

I get it. You steal only when you need to.

I guess it never occurred to you that in choosing to showcase the techniques you used to attend paid events without paying for them, you have merely demonstrated your character, or more appropriately, lack thereof.

Some words of wisdom: the number of people who have lied, cheated and stolen their way to success is much greater than the number who have lied, cheated and stolen their way to success while being foolish or unrepentant enough to brag about it publicly.

[sashaeslami]

Steal? Please. The poor founder or student who crashes the event, he couldn't have afforded it in the first place, so wasn't gonna attend that event anyways. Instead, now that he has attended that event, has more knowledge and network, goes onto creating something better that can help the world.

Look at the big picture brother!

Sometimes it doesn't hurt to bend the "norms" if you're not hurting anyone and in fact, you will use the new opportunity created as something that can help the rest of the world.

An example,

we crashed a wedding almost three years ago, and as a result, we thought of a way to help wedding couples capture their guests' photos & videos.

Imagine, a wedding couple, that just had their wedding the night before, the next day they are in the airport and on their way to their honeymoon, they open their Eversnap app and they see all the guests' fun photos & videos from the night before.

They get an immense amount of joy from that.

In addition to that moment of joy those photos and videos are what is going to strengthen their bond 10 years from now, when they look back and they remember the best night of their lives. That results in a better marriage, therefore, a better family, and therefore better kids, and therefore successful kids that will do good in their life and make the world a better place!

To date, over 15,000 weddings have used Eversnap to collect their photos & videos.

Now, what was the cost of creating 15,000 happy couples who will have successful kids? Crashing a wedding. Who did it hurt? Who did it steal from? I'd happily pay that price anyday if it means that I can make a global impact and create something better in people's lives.

& that's just weddings. Now we've had over 100,000 group experiences where people are collecting the complete stories of what happened during their group experience and sharing it with each other. What does that mean? That means now for the first time ever people can easily document their group trips, parties, anniversaries, graduations, mitzvahs, from everyone's perspective. But the most amazing thing that we see is that people start having a deeper bond with each other now that they have documented and shared their group experience between themselves. What does that mean? That means documenting history & creating a stronger bond between people's families and friends. Why is creating a stronger bond important? Human beings are social animals, the value of the whole is bigger than the sum of individuals. A stronger bond means, stronger friendships, stronger families, more good deeds, more happiness, and more opportunities to happiness for more people in their lifetime.

What was the cost? Crashing a wedding. What was the benefit: Eversnap has made 270,000 people happier than they were ever before. And not only that, those 270,000 people will now share their happiness with millions of other people. What's the goal of life anyways? Isn't it to make other people happy? Isn't it to bring opportunities to people who've never had them before?

Please brother, look at the big picture.

[7Figures2Commas]

The poor founder or student who steals the car he couldn't afford wasn't going to buy that car in the first place. Instead, now that he has a car, he can drive to Sand Hill Road and get funding for his world-changing idea. Right?

If you lack the moral compass to understand that ends don't justify means, and can't comprehend that by sneaking into a paid event without paying you are stealing from others to benefit yourself, I pity you and anybody naive enough to trust you, including your investors.

A person with an ounce of decency and any character whatsoever would not be gloating about the fact that he lied, cheated and stole to gain access to what wasn't his. He would be ashamed of his actions, not posting photos of conferences he didn't pay to attend, after-parties he wasn't invited to and liquor that wasn't purchased for his consumption. He would cringe at the thought of encouraging others to use his tactics, which in your case include "identity theft" (stealing another attendee's badge by representing that you are that person).

You are not as smart, slick or persuasive as you apparently think you are. I don't know if you truly believe your "I'm doing it to help the world bro!" spiel, but here's some humble advice: if you mistake your ability to fool some people some of the time for an ability to fool all people all of the time, you will ultimately discover that you're only fooling yourself.

PS: I am most certainly not your brother.

[sashaeslami]

7,figures,000 We agree to disagree.

The car example, is miss-using an analogy in an attempt to prove a point. That's a logical fallacy. Also you use a lot of personal insults to drive a point that you do not drive. But you seem to be a logical person in the other HN posts's comments, so it must be the anger that is causing more of an emotional response than a logical one. I'm really sorry to cause you anger.

and I know I'm going to get a -1 point for this comment, since I'm commenting on the person and not the comment itself. But since you keep making emotional responses, the issue is not the argument anymore but the source.

Unfortunately I rather spend my time in other ways that will benefit the world than to argue in comments in circles and accumulate HN points that way. So this will be my last comment to you. Feel free to reach out to me so we can talk without hidden faces and names.

I wish you happiness. And a life where you can maximize your value-add to the world, rather than just commenting on others' value-add.

Sasha

p.s. English is not my first language (hence the grammatical mistakes)