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Cool episode! I really liked how they admitted that not all of the music they release are hits and that they make a lot of mistakes.

I was also surprised to hear that music streaming was their #1 revenue channel.

Thanks for posting this @spark3k.

I'm the founder of Receiptful and happy to answer any questions here. :)

If that's the case, I'm happy to issue a full refund, no questions asked.

There's a major difference between trying to scam someone and pushing the boundaries to validate (and de-risk) an idea. If our ideas are shit, I will never take someone's money for that (hence the no questions asked, full refund).

You did read that we never took anybody's money, right?

You realize that the title is obviously exaggerated and that I didn't gain $4000 on day one. I did however gain the kind of validation that eventually allowed me to gain $4000 in cash when we launched a month later.

For every person that has criticized this, I have had another one saying this is great. I also know for a fact that I'm not the first startup entrepreneur to do this.

I have already apologized to each and every one of our customers. I have also mended the relationships (AFAIK) to the extent that the "angry" customers would consider being customers in future.

Ultimately, I think that this was ballsy publishing this and being open about the pro's & cons of this. I'm not saying that this is the best technique ever and neither am I saying that everyone should follow this approach. I am however saying that it worked for us and I am keen to engage others on this topic.

Sure, I could have just done customer interviews without requiring CC details. I truly believe that this feedback is however still hit-or-miss and we might've optimized for the wrong thing thereafter. Paying customers' feedback is always better than the feedback from any kind of "free user".

Well, that's like reactive transparency. For some people this means that I / we have broken their trust and any future relationship is thus dependent on earning back that trust. Being open, honest and apologetic after that fact, helps with mending those relationships.

Just to be 100% clear: we never took any money for anything we didn't have. When we eventually opened the doors to our V1, there was actually something there and only at that point did we charge anyone's credit card.

Sure, maybe that is a worthwhile trade-off to consider for anyone considering something similar in future.

I'd like to clarify two things:

1) The intention was always to produce the videos / content. And it still is too (we have just deprioritized this and tweaked the roadmap from our initial plan). 2) The customer interviews we had (along with the survey we did thereafter) gave us insight into what our founding customers really paid for and for the majority that wasn't the content.

This isn't excusing bad behaviour at all. In fact, I've been very up-front about the fact that this technique relies on deception and that I didn't like that bit.

I stick to what I've said though, which is that putting up a landing page with an e-mail signup and a "Request Early Access"-kinda thing is similarly deceptive. The only difference is that I actually asked for CC details. To that extent, I'm willing to do whatever I need to do to see my startup succeed.

This is obviously not for everyone and that's why I posted the quote from Lincoln.

Do I think that this technique can be refined? For sure. :)

One of the reasons for publishing this and being open about how this worked is to be a catalyst for a conversation around this, which would hopefully see a refinement of the technique.

Responded to your comment on there now. :)