The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
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O'Hear: Building Consumer Startups Is Significantly Harder in Europe
“When you write about this stuff every day, you're under no illusions about how difficult it will be, about how arduous the fundraising process will be, and how most consumer startups fail, right? Especially coming from Europe, it's much harder.”
O'Hear: Fundraising Creates Conflict When Founders Pitch VCs
“There's, like An absolute conflict of interest in that stage when you're fundraising, because essentially you're telling your VC, in a way, you're trying to tell them what they want to hear, because you want to close the round. But the minute you close the rou…”
O'Hear: Press Outlets Like TechCrunch Do Not Make or Break Startups
“And I don't think TechCrunch or anyone like TechCrunch Makes or breaks a startup. I think that's a slight myth.”
O'Hear: US Single Market and VC Reach Accelerate Consumer Startups
“I think because America is a single market with one language, and you've got a lot more high-profile VCs on Twitter, you know, other, like other entrepreneurs, that they can, like, amplify your message a lot quicker in the consumer space.”
O'Hear: Europe's Tech Sector Historically Excels in Enterprise Software
“If you look at what Europe does best, or has historically done best, it's a lot of enterprise software, and sort of less You know, less consumer and less sexy.”
O'Hear: TechCrunch Coverage Drives Initial Investor and Media Interest
“Is I think the biggest impact my coverage made on a startup was often that we would, like my coverage would either lead to the first interest the startup had from investors or from mainstream media.”
O'Hear: Great Products Earn Press While Weak Products Fail Regardless
“If you make a really awesome product, you'll get found out by the press because we can't ignore it. And if you make a bad product, You'll get found out by your customers or users, regardless of how much publicity you've gone out.”
O'Hear: Widespread PR Coverage Made Little Difference for Startup Beeple
“Beeple was covered everywhere. Like, because of my journalist background, we got in anywhere from CNN to Next Web, TechCrunch, obviously Fast Company magazine. Like, we were, at one point, we were everywhere for about two days, and I can tell you it made very …”
O'Hear: Unrestricted Early Community Onboarding Loses Conversational Tone Control
“You think that the way to launch a community is just to like invite everyone in. Everyone's welcome and the more the merrier, right? Especially when you're trying to grow your user numbers. But it's really interesting how, if you're not careful, you do lose co…”
O'Hear: Media Publications Enforce Tighter Editorial Control as They Grow
“I think as publications grow, then more structure or more editorial control is put in place, and we just seem to strike a really good balance.”
O'Hear: Cheap Listicles Subsidize Expensive Long-Form Journalism
“So, I don't know BuzzFeed's model entirely, but I would imagine that perhaps The listicles, in a sense, subsidize the long-form content, because the latter is much more expensive to produce.”
O'Hear: Citing Prior Press Coverage Is a Major Pitch Red Flag
“When someone says, hey, you should, like, cover my product or my startup, because we've just had coverage in, and then they list five other publications. That is probably the biggest red flag, you know, because we like to be first.”