Howler AI

@ryanheybourn Had a very similar experience with another company called Prumio (https://www.prumio.com/) with a very similar proposition (too similar). Lost the money, no PR, no follow up, no way to contact. Highly caution startups thinking of trying out such services.

@ryanheybourn @karthik_mahadevan I had the exact same experience with Prumio. A complete scam. I disputed the charges and got my $$ back.

@ryanheybourn This is a smear campaign. Our service is 100% legitimate. If all the reviews and features on our website aren’t convincing enough, let me run through a close look at our operations & backend through a series of screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/Gvb8fNB. As you can see here Howler is definitely not a scam. In fact, it took us a ton of effort to build, and continues to take us tons of time to run this. We're probably not charging enough. Here's a few more notes regarding your scathing review: 1. Yes, Aidem Network 1.0 was not perfect. Neither was Instaaa. On Instaaa 1.0's reviews, the word "scam" is mentioned 8 times. On Instaaa 2.0's reviews, it was mentioned 6 times. On Aidem Network? Zero. No one is calling us a scam, even if they're unhappy with the service. Likewise for Howler: 0 mentions of being a scam. Go check for yourself if you'd like. 2. Journalist privacy was a big issue for us. We interviewed at Y Combinator, and Paul Buchheit told us to be very careful about this. It's of a little less concern now, so we've actually resolved this and now share the complete email list for premium subscribers. 3. The expectation of a journalist outreach campaign shouldn't really be traffic. Sure you get traffic if they feature you, but the initial email blast, much less so––if any. They really only take a look at the pitch and say yes or no. They rarely click through unless they're *super* interested. 4. We didn't really "not reply to your email for weeks." You came to me asking for a refund. I told you we weren't going to give you one because we did everything promised on our website and had already incurred costs. Then you told us you were going to dispute the charge. We let you, believing we had a good case and trusting the bank. We were wrong, and as far as I know the bank sided in your favor. 5. I also recommend looking into Howler properly. We're legit. 6. We paid our Head of Campaigns for around 3 hours of work on your campaign. You paid $199. The hourly rate for someone like Frances (our Head of Campaigns) is ~$100/hr. I don't see how you can be concerned about the cost. Anywhere else offering a service like this at this price is probably a scam. We've barely made the economics work out. I hope this addresses everything and we can move on. Again, if you need any more proof Howler isn't a scam, see here: https://imgur.com/a/Gvb8fNB.

@ryanheybourn @juhaszhenderson Matt, what a pity you had to address this as anyone following you is well aware you are not out there to scam people. Kudos for addressing it so thoroughly and diplomatically. I would perhaps blur out the client names though? Privacy senses are tingling here...

@ryanheybourn @juhaszhenderson I've been with Matt since the launch of Aidem 1.0 (and Howler 1.0) and met his team in their NYC office. A "scam" is far from what this is. They're constantly working on pitching for their clients and improving the service, and they barely make enough doing it. Even Howlers company's earnings are publicly available for anyone to view. That's the epitome of full transparency. Would a "scam" company reveal their financials? Competition is good, but please keep it clean and have some good sportsmanship. No service is perfect; this subscription-based PR service is still a novel business model that takes time to build. At the price Howler costs, it's still worth it to use them than hire a dedicated outreach specialist.

following this!

@mungerology Thanks man! Yeah, a product launch is a great use-case. You could use Howler to quickly get attention for a new product. You could also just as easily use it for a more mature product that has some credibility in the marketplace already so long as you have some sort of catalyst (new partnerships, fundraising news, new milestone, new features, etc etc) What kind of product are you working on?

@juhaszhenderson That's reasonable. I'm working on a software product. I found you through Indie Hackers and have been following along with your 24 in 12.

@aatsai 🚀🚀🚀