Rap Genius And The Problem With The Venture Capital Fueled Growth Hack

http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2013/12/26/rap-genius-and-the-problem-with-the-venture-capital-fueled-growth-hack/

by 001sky • 13 years ago

39 11 13 years ago

forbes.com

prostoalex• 13 years ago

The premise that "venture capital and growth hacking go hand in hand" seems like author's personal opinion and not a widespread maxim. Would the tactics have changed if RapGenius' funding came from a private equity group, friends and family, or an old-school bank? Unlikely, since it was business requirement, not requirement spelled out in terms of financing.

In fact, someone using far more egregious and manipulative "growth hacks" has been self- and customer-funded http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/01/the-dark...

dmk23• 13 years ago

Without venture capital RapGenius "growth hacking" tactics would never attract as much scrutiny.

If RapGenius were not a company going out of the way to promote their "VC pedigree" (even if this is what happened indirectly, because that's what the people / press / bloggers wanted to talk about), they would be a lot more likely to fly under the radar.

Even if someone were to write the same kind of post about their "growth hacking" that started the whole "scandal", it would be less likely to make the top of HN and attract a close look from Matt Cutts...

They were trying to have it both ways - generate huge publicity and do something that does not go well with increased scrutiny. Live by PR, die by PR.

minimaxir• 13 years ago

Without investors expecting a 10x return in a couple years, risky growth hacking tactics to sustain exponential growth aren't necessary.

stevesearer• 13 years ago

What they were doing is no different than what thousands of other websites do to game Google. Except that instead of paying for links with money they were paying for them with traffic from tweets.

I don't really understand why buying links is suddenly called "growth hacking" when a startup does it.

lazyjones• 13 years ago

What the investors want or do is their responsibility; what funded companies do is their own and expectations of VCs are no excuse for such practices. They're not "necessary" by any means unless the company has a business model centered on spamming.

rch• 13 years ago

It's not quite a growth hack yet. They need Bieber to tweet out a link to his artist page. Preferably on Thursday.

rememberlenny• 13 years ago

Between the hours or 8am-9am.

fleitz• 13 years ago

Growth hacking is just high ROI activities. Sometimes the techniques don't work out.

There is risk to any action, not growth hacking is just as much a risky choice as growth hacking. If one can make billions of dollars based on how many page views they get, it would behoove them to not try anything that would get them users for less then a few billion dollars. Amongst the horrible things that happen everyday to make money link spam isn't a huge problem...

I've seen this kinda stuff done for thousands of dollars, the internet is just a tragedy of the commons, link spam, link bait, etc can pay off handsomely. Find your technique, exploit the fuck out of it, put some money in your pocket and call it a day.

Rapgenius just got busted before they got the pay off. Too bad so sad. If they're smart they can probably still exploit the fuck out of the "You'll cry after you hear these 5 words from Justin Beiber" upworthy type crap on FB before that game is played out. I hope they can pull off a Cuban an unload their stock before the gig is up.

morganb180• 13 years ago

Dumb SEO != growth hacking

What the author does get right, however, is that the need for growth puts a lot of pressure on a founding team and sometimes that pressure can push teams to take more risks than they should.

Rap Genius And The Problem With The Venture Capital Fueled Growth Hack

Related Stories