Start-Up Lessons From a Cat Fight

Thanks to Mathew Ingram's post, I found out about the cat fight between Shel Israel and Loren Feldman.  For purposes of disclosure, I know, respect, like, and recommend Shel.  You can read Matthew's post for the gory details but the one line summary is one guy (Loren) dumps 40 gallons of sewage on another guy's (Shel) start-up video work and said guy (Shel) gets mondo-pissed off while said instigator (Loren) exploits other guy's pissedoffness, snags his name in URL land, and really gets going. Yeah, really, it's that simple.

After zipping around the blogworld to review all of this (start with Mathew's post), here are some tips for you:

Pray for this type of noise. I dunno, call me crazy, but if somebody drives tons of traffic to me, I'd be playing the odds that somebody will like my work.

Let the other guy get personal first.  It never fails. Everybody laughs, enjoys, doesn't take anything seriously, unless and until somebody goes personal.  Don't fire off the legal threats, talk about their mother, use racist comments, the "N" word, or do any comparisons to Hitler.  Let the other guy do that stuff and relax while they take the hits.  Easy to agree with me, tough to implement.

Make more fun of yourself than the other guy.  The simple fact is: you know yourself better than the other guy.  If he makes fun of you, make more fun of yourself. Loren is using puppets to parody Shel's interviews. Shel should interview the original sock puppet, sell some ads on the page and enjoy the traffic.

If it isn't on Valleywag, it isn't top of mind.  Everything in life needs some kind of reality check, right?

Stick around, the next target is just around the corner. Unless you have the unfortunate luck of latching onto a true stalker, tough it out, they always move on.

And there are many many variations of YASIP, folks.

Shhh, don't tell em.

Comments

[Robert Scoble]

Yup. This kind of advice is great. But, like you said, hard to implement. Some of this will come with experience. After Valleywag has picked on me more than 50 times I've come to laugh at it cause my friends are still my friends, my sons still love me, my wife still cuddles with me, and traffic goes up, like you said.

It's theater. Everyone needs a good villain in their play. I hope Loren's there for a long time.

[Chris S]

Wow, are people this bored?

Solid advice Rick. Plus, if people are going to be public figures, they need thicker skin. I remain to be blog-free and overly sensitive ;)

[Martin Edic]

It's called linkbait and Scoble should know- he's an expert at it. Nothing like a good fight at the playground to draw a crowd...

[Ron]

Yes, Loren was over the top. The Jeremiah Owyang is not a shining example of a video interview - the mic work, the coffee drinking, etc - but is that intended?

Yes, this would have been a non-starter if Shel didn't react.

[Keith Glover]

Rick, from what I learned from you and Larry S, playing with the competition's emotions can not only be fun but also profitable! For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about here is an example:

Rick and Larry are at a Raptor's game in the Skydome and happen to see the CEO of their rival. Immediately they send someone back to the office (only 2 block away) to get a bag full of company shwag and politely hand it to her. Little stunts like that made her sooo angry that she tried to "take over" the company, falling right into their "trap". Gee you want to buy our company for way more than it's worth...let me think about that for a moment...OK!