Jonathan M.
This is a scam
****UPDATE TO RESPOND TO THEIR REPLY*** Original message: This is a scam. Don’t waste your time or money on this accelerator. I joined because I am a non-technical founder. When I was ready to move toward building my app, I had a call with Jake. He promised to get back to me within a week. I have followed up in the Launchpeer slack with him and email for two weeks and have not heard back. The program is elementary, and you can get better support and information from other accelerators. Update: Wow. I love how far Lanuchpeer will go out of their way and flat-out lie in their replies. Please take a look at how they attack every other negative review. Take a lesson out of their own playbook, and to avoid future entrepreneurs from falling for this scam, I wanted to reply and provide documentation to expose the untruths in their reply. First, I reached out to Jake because Jake has always been the point of contact on all my calls throughout the program. I was moved into a general incubator slack, so I reached out to him directly to determine what steps I needed to take to start building my app. We originally spoke on the phone on July 27. I was promised a reply by July 29th. There was no reply, so I followed up on the same message we used to coordinate our call on Aug 3rd and Aug 6th. I also decided to send an email follow-up on August 10th. Neither on Slack nor via an out-of-office on his email was there an indication Jake was out of the office, and I should reach out to someone else on the team. Frustrated, I decided to visit this site to read the reviews to see if others experienced the same thing as me. Low and behold, others have. After several weeks of no response from the founder, I decided to share my experience. Within hours of my Trustpilot review, Joseph from Launchpeer reached out. Also, at the same time, my access to Launchpeer slack was removed with no advanced warning or explanation. Joseph shared with me that Jake has been traveling since August 4th to explain his lack of response. However, that date is still a week after the original follow-up date provided by Jake. So the timelines don’t add up. Additionally, I paid $5,000 to be a part of this program, which I had yet to finish. My access to the program was removed without cause, and my request for a refund has been completely ignored. In good faith, I even offer to remove my post so we could both move forward with goodwill. Instead, they chose to post this ridiculous reply. I am happy to provide the physical exchanges to avoid future entrepreneurs from making the same mistake I did.
Reply from LaunchpeerAug 14, 2021
Hi, Jonathan (and everyone else reading this review response). We like to be thorough in our responses so below we’ll outline our position below. First, about us ‘attacking’ negative reviews, I won’t argue with that, although ‘attack’ is a strong word. We have fewer negative reviews than we have years in business (we've been in business for 7 years), and when we do receive a negative review, we want others to know our point of view. We always back these ‘attacks’ up with evidence and proof, which I’ll be doing below. 1. To your point about Launchpeer being a ‘scam’, I’d like to address that first. You joined the program on January 28th. Not one time between January 28th and the time you originally left this review in early August did you ever mention being unhappy with the program or thinking it was a scam. It was actually quite the contrary, as evidenced below. February 9th - Met with Jake to talk through fundraising. Followed up the next day asking for more feedback on your materials (an odd thing to do if we were a ‘scam’). Screenshot below (I’ve blocked out your Google Drive link to keep your privacy). https://drive.google.com/file/d/1b2qdLehCS23d_1tAz-opm86jAPoNeA5E/view?usp=sharing February 12th - Again, requested and booked a meeting with Jake to talk about fundraising, and shared more materials for review. Screenshot below (again, I’ve blocked out your Google Drive link). https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rAL2gAa7CgKEpdJicEXKvuXSDPfuTGoB/view?usp=sharing February 22nd - Requested another call, and 2 days later requested funding documents from our team. Screenshot below. https://drive.google.com/file/d/13nwuL_OZeTtehKOh8xAUe-DCUgD1NT4g/view?usp=sharing March 25th - You stated you ‘loved’ the work our team did, approving it. Screenshot below. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NovXA74N4Jk0xQfFgBCvfBFqFToKqxwv/view?usp=sharing March 29th - You formally approved the work our team did, again stating that it was ‘great’. Screenshots below. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FlY31rgy_mD7ClZTP4LQxyZNuUcKO4CB/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rj_pxcsfGtxFOW08OgSZsBj0F0MGkKGA/view?usp=sharing Then, to further show how happy you were with the program, our team, and our process, on June 24th you reached out to inquire about hiring our team for a new, larger project. Screenshot below. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zQisNhg0Y3Tv9O8Vi_SAuVdoSli6q9FZ/view?usp=sharing That would have been a very odd thing to do if our team was a ‘scam’. After having that meeting, on Aug 3 you provided me the follow-up information our team needed in order to have our development team do the needed research to see if we can support that new project. Again, in this messaging, you were excited about moving forward with us and seeing if we had the capacity. Screenshot below. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iSOTvNGB1ZTObjj6Yv5-4qY8Fotio4bB/view?usp=sharing The issue here is that it was the same day my family made arrangements to travel to visit family in California on short notice. Screenshot below: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HmbTipykN5hiSs8neC8oGYQeljBr-Y9J/view?usp=sharing During my travels, you ended up direct messaging me personally in Slack on Aug 6th, and also emailing me once on August 10th (again stating how you were ‘eager’ to move forward). Screenshot below. https://drive.google.com/file/d/11iwJdTQea3K9Eur4gHYfyrz474Gt69dv/view?usp=sharing Normally this wouldn’t be an issue as I’m always willing to work one on one with our founders to help them (as evidenced by several screenshots above), but as I was out of town dealing with last minute family issues, I wasn’t able to respond. But instead of reaching out to any number of other people on the team, posting in any other Slack channel, chatting in through our publicly available support widget on the site, attending a coaching call, etc, you instead decided to jump straight to writing your initial negative review on Aug 10. We also outline all these support methods everywhere in the program, most recently before your review on July 28th. Screenshot below. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1v32DA2BFzaqyh99N7fmxyuTEyqELQa32/view?usp=sharing We also send out weekly proactive surveys to everyone in the program so they can let us know if there are any issues they’re dealing with or things they need one on one help with (this is outlined at the bottom of the previous screenshot). We received no response from you on either the Aug 6th or 13th surveys. If we had, a team member would have reached out immediately. Bottom line, help was available from any number of resources, but instead of tapping into it, you jumped to writing a negative review, calling us a scam, despite your actions above stating quite the contrary. Not receiving a response to 2 slack messages and an email over the course of 10 days doesn’t justify that, quite honestly. 2. To your point about removing you from the program, I’d like to address that as well. Once our team was taken aback by your negative review, we decided it best to remove you from the community Slack workspace to ensure communications were kept private and we could address this one on one. We immediately reached out via email to address your concern. Screenshot below. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ft-H1RyEBr3tDzRyxrC3-Fpcwt_rU0rt/view?usp=sharing Our team offered to coordinate a call with you on multiple occasions over the next week, but you refused each time, instead requesting a refund. You even went as far as to threaten us with a ‘worse review’ if we didn’t refund you. Screenshot below. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nhXd4IMjYpN13XTZmi2Mso7x376sWFkH/view?usp=sharing Despite that, I wrote you on Aug 17 once I was back in town from traveling and offered to hop on a call, and continued to offer a call but you refused each time. Screenshot below. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OgytIswcsEvzqZILiL5FwJgQ7Ip2Vfnz/view?usp=sharing After you continued to refuse that offer, I then gave you our final offer of adding you back into the program if you agreed to a phone call, but again you refused. 3. TL;DR You say that we’re a scam, though from all your actions since you joined in January through until mid-August you never expressed that, and to the contrary seemed to enjoy and get a lot of value out of it. So much so that you wanted to hire us for another, higher-tier project. You say that we’re a scam, but seem upset that you were removed from the program, and then when given an offer to get added back in with a simple call, you refuse that offer in favor of writing a negative review. You say that we're a scam, but threaten us to make your 'negative review' worse if we don't offer you a refund, despite the fact that you completed the entire program to the point where you wanted to work with our team for a higher tier project. It’s an interesting 180-degree turn to go from happy enough to hire us again, to thinking we’re a scam, because you didn’t receive a response to two private Slack messages and one email over a 10 day period despite not tapping into any other means of communication prior to writing a negative review. It truly has our team scratching their heads. Our offer still stands, but regardless of what you decide to do, we wish you the best of luck in the future.