Definitive Statements
Our greatest PR coup was a two-part one. We estimated, based on some fairly informal math, that there were about 5,000 stores on the Web. We got one paper to print this number, which seemed neutral enough. But once this “fact” was out there in print, we could quote it to other publications, and claim that with 1,000 users we had 20% of the online store market.
This was roughly true. We really did have the biggest share of the online store market, and 5,000 was our best guess at its size. But the way the story appeared in the press sounded a lot more definite. Reporters like definitive statements.