investmentdek.com playdek.com fundsgo.com fundingdek.com - funding for your project

[Clinton]

Note that this thread is in the Due Diligence and Gotchas!

Do you have an idea for a fantastic web business? Or perhaps have an existing website that just needs a bit of marketing for which you don't have funds? Why sell the site when you can find an investor to hand over a chunk of cash to help you realise your dream?

This company (investmentdek.com) claims to be a good way to get funding for your business or, if you're an investor, to find investment opportunities.

You register and pay a subscription fee, but they do offer a free two week trial which you can use to test the service. (Strangely, they don't verify your email address so you can sign up with any non-existent email address to try it out and see if you get any leads.)

You can be reassured because they have a testimonial page with glowing references from customers such as Mike who says "My one man fishing business was made possible by finding a retired angel investor on Investmentdek" and Layos who says "With the help of Investmentdek, we were able to create our first music video."

Funny thing is the same Mike and Layos and the others also appear on another testimonial page at a different site saying respectively "My one man fishing business was made possible by finding a retired angel investor on FundsGo" and "With the help of FundsGo, we were able to create our first music video."

And then another testimonial page on a different URL (PlayDek): "My one man fishing business was made possible by finding a retired angel investor on FundingDek" (Oops, isn't he supposed to be thanking Playdek, not FundingDek? Or have the site owners not got around to "tweaking" the testimonials on this one yet?)

And is this a fourth/fifth site in the wings waiting to give Mike and Layos some funding?

What do you make of all this? Do they really put people in touch with investors/investment opportunities or is it all a ploy to get people to pay for the subscription? Is there something else fishy about this that I haven't spotted.

Even if it is legit, to what extent is it acceptable to make a material modification to a testimonial to change the name of the company the customer is giving credit to?

I'm eager to see your replies to my investigative journalism piece of the day.

[3Six]

Nice catch!

I'm disappointed that nobody commented in this thread after all that effort you put in

To me this isn't any different from fake testimonials and don't all internet marketers use those? Anyone have any tips for spotting that a testimonial is fake?

[bryanon]

Nice catch indeed. But while what they've done is definitely condemnable I wouldn't draw any conclusions regarding their legitimacy based on the above fact alone.

A situation where I would find something like this acceptable is where there is indeed one company behind all these sites and the only difference between the sites is the name. If everything else (the investor database, the employees etc.) is same across all those sites then I would say it's (almost) OK to cross-use testimonials as in fact it doesn't matter whether Mr. Mike got his financing through FundingDek or PayDek - as both sites offer the exact same service.

This obviously brings us to the reasons why there's a number of identical sites in the first place. There might be a legitimate explanation for this (FundingDek is marketed in one way whereas FundsGo another way - allowing the company to easily track how well their marketing efforts pay off) but most likely this is not the case.

In conclusion, I would certainly be very careful and conduct a thorough background check before doing any business with a service provider that does something like this but wouldn't automatically qualify them as an illegitimate business.

[Clinton]

I'm not saying that it's an illegitimate business but, to me, any modification of the customer's exact wording is dicey. Changing the name of the company they are recommending comes across to me as fraud. Nothing less. Every Ltd company is a separate legal entity and its ownership can change. If a client has done business with one company it does not automatically follow that he's done business with all the companies owned by the same individual and a customer's recommendation of one company cannot be implicitly taken as a recommendation of other companies he may not have even heard of.

Even if it's one legal entity using different trading names, such cross name exploitation leaves open the possibility of the business owner scamming people on one of the trading names and then dumping it. He has nothing to lose - he transfers goodwill to one of the other names.

But maybe I'm too old in the tooth and am applying 19th century business ethics to this. Am I alone on here in thinking that if there isn't a law against this already that there should be?

[bryanon]

Actually I agree with you, Clinton. (reading through my post above I might have justified these actions a bit more than I had intended)

The only point I was trying to make was that I wouldn't draw conclusions about the quality of the services the firm is offering based on their dodgy marketing tactics.

But yes - having thought about it a notch further, such practice it is definitely something that should be illegal (similarly to fake testimonials which already are illegal in the US), as even though Mike & Layos might have given the above testimonials, as soon as any part of the wording is changed they become fake testimonials.

[benitez17]

The only point I was trying to make was that I wouldn't draw conclusions about the quality of the services the firm is offering based on their dodgy marketing tactics.

Why not? If they are obviously bending the truth (to be kind) with their marketing practices, why should I just assume that they aren't doing the same with other aspects of their business?

[eppie]

When you make any modification to a person's quote, you're supposed to do so in brackets. Journalists do so frequently to clarify a sentence (substituting a pronoun with the actual noun referenced), or improving the grammar of a sentence. If the company name changed, they should write:

"My one man fishing business was made possible by finding a retired angel investor on [FundingDek]."

But that looks super dicey because you can't give the context that the company might have another DBA -- it just looks like you're subbing in your name for someone else's.

It's also possible that they received permission from the people they received the testimonials from to alter their quotes, specifically allowing use of other DBAs. Unlikely, but possible. Even if the author of the quote agrees to the change, is it ethical to do so? I think Clinton raises a good point about the possibility of scamming people under one DBA and then transferring only the goodwill to another.


As a side-note, I always thought it would be hilarious for a poorly reviewed movie to take liberties with ellipses when using critic's quotes in advertisements. For example, the critic's quote reads:

"The best thing about this movie is it was only 87 minutes -- it mercifully ended quickly. Despite it's brevity, it was quite possibly the worst movie ever."

And the movie poster shows:

"The best... movie ever"

[bryanon]

Why not? If they are obviously bending the truth (to be kind) with their marketing practices, why should I just assume that they aren't doing the same with other aspects of their business?

To clarify - I never said that you should assume that they aren't doing the same with other aspects of their business. What I said was that you should *not* automatically assume that other aspects of their business are dodgy as well. A good example here are tons of local businesses that have very poorly designed/built websites. The fact that the person in charge of marketing (or IT) can't properly represent the company doesn't necessarily mean that the company doesn't provide good services.

Of course all of this is strictly theoretical. As far as this particular company goes (and I've said this above as well), I would be *extremely* cautious before paying them any money.

[benitez17]

To clarify - I never said that you should assume that they aren't doing the same with other aspects of their business. What I said was that you should *not* automatically assume that other aspects of their business are dodgy as well. A good example here are tons of local businesses that have very poorly designed/built websites. The fact that the person in charge of marketing (or IT) can't properly represent the company doesn't necessarily mean that the company doesn't provide good services.

Of course all of this is strictly theoretical. As far as this particular company goes (and I've said this above as well), I would be *extremely* cautious before paying them any money.

To each his own, but I pretty much automatically write off any person or business who is essentially lying to try and drum up business. There are plenty of honest people out there in most market segments, so it's not worth my time to try and find out what else they are lying about.

A poorly designed website is something I can easily look past.

[hooperman]

A good example here are tons of local businesses that have very poorly designed/built websites. The fact that the person in charge of marketing (or IT) can't properly represent the company doesn't necessarily mean that the company doesn't provide good services.

To me there is a difference between doing a bad job on the website and deliberately trying to mislead people with faked testimonials, though. I wouldn't draw any conclusions about how good their service is from that, but I'd be wary about doing any business with them.