That site (mixergy.com) gives me that oily feeling that only comes from visiting a skeezy site. I don't know what it is about the site or the guy who's in every video, but gah.
Andrew's a good guy; I just think he resides at the the opposite end of the spectrum compared to most of the readers of Hacker News. Although some of the tactics expressed in the interviews make me shake my head, many more have been entertaining and informative.
It's always interesting to see people's reactions when they see how the sausage is made in the kitchen (look at this thread). This is especially true when it comes to businesses in highly competitive markets like cars, computers, coupons, software, tickets, finance, marketing and insurance. Many big brands are just as guilty as anything this guy talks about (e.g. AOL's love.com, BMW SEO spamming, the shady stuff that goes on with Google PPC, the amount of paid links almost any consumer-facing Fortune 500 co buys). They're usually just better at PRing a cover up and/or keeping it behind the curtains. It's one of the joys of being a public company: massive consequences for failure to satisfy short-term earnings expectations and a huge incentives to employ shady tactics to ensure that doesn't happen.
Edit: Here's an example more closely related to venture capital. Guess who two of Cash4Gold.com's biggest investors are? General Catalyst and Highland Capital Partners. You won't find Cash4Gold on their portfolio pages.
Or maybe even more telling: look at all the major companies that have affiliate programs. The companies know what they're getting in to; they're just outsourcing the dirty work.
Agree 100% about the typical Mixergy interview being terrific. The Reddit and OJByrne interviews were great. This one's just too sketchy for my tastes.
