The FYGW Funding Prank and some Revelations of the Startup World

While people around the world were busy today fooling each other with some crazy pranks, the tech world was not going to stay behind either.

While most of the tech biggies like Google are well known for their pranks, even the Indian startups outdid themselves this year -the notable ones include Hike’s Direct Cash transfer, iXigo’s premium auto rickshaw service – RickAir, Snapdeal’s entry into the matrimony business and many more.

We thought of trying out something different.

Earlier today we published a post – FYGW raises $2 Mn in funding led by UK & US based angel investors.

Well as you’d have guessed by the tone of this post, that was a prank. Amit and the team behind FYGW were all in on this.

Besides the fact of this being an April Fool’s prank, we also wanted to get a basic insight of how funding news spread in the startup ecosystem.

A special thanks to Amit for allowing us to do the same. Within two hours of publishing the news, Amit was flooded with a number of mails, calls, messages congratulating him over the funding round. The fun part was he was even approached by investors asking if he was looking to raise more funds. So it is true then – investors come after you once you don’t really need the cash 😉

Amit adds, “We had to launch our Online job board apart from the 3 super successful startup jobs fair, I just thought that the online entry of FYGW should come with a bang. I also apologize to all those who got troubled due to this prank, but that’s the spirit of entrepreneurship. I’d like to add a note lastly, a famous quote rather, ‘No wind favors he who has no destined port’; An announcement needs to be made on that note, we’re going live on 6th April ’14 with the startup job board – India’s only exclusive job board for Startups that’s also coupled with offline hiring events, a 360 degree initiative by FYGW, wish us luck guys.”

Further on some of the notable publications seemed to have picked up the story. Hope they would have confirmed with FYGW for the same!

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