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For the curious, pulled their deal history from PitchBook: Secret raised their B last July at a post valuation just over 130M ( http://i.imgur.com/jNXw5PZ.png ). They had some major investors backing them up, and then the hype train just... stopped. I remember so many people being so high on it when it launched, with several friends all raving about how fun/addicting it was, then just poof it disappeared from convers…
Here's the official Medium post by the cofounder, in which there is confirmation that they are returning the money to investors: https://medium.com/secret-den/sunset-bc18450478d5 The post also includes the phrase "incredible journey" verbatim.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Totally makes sense - but I also completely get why the investors would bite on hype - missing the next billion dollar company is way worse than incorrectly picking a few duds.
A $35m dud, though. That's not small fry.
For the curious, pulled their deal history from PitchBook: Secret raised their B last July at a post valuation just over 130M ( http://i.imgur.com/jNXw5PZ.png ). They had some major investors backing them up, and then the hype train just... stopped. I remember so many people being so high on it when it launched, with several friends all raving about how fun/addicting it was, then just poof it disappeared from convers…
Here was the intended use of the $25M: "The funding will be used to implement two new features, a Facebook login and the ability to follow posts on a certain topic". This is what is wrong with Silicon Valley today. An afternoon project for a single developer gets $25M from investors. Please, someone give me just $10M....I've already implemented Facebook login for my apps.
Minus the $6M the founders took off the table?
If they keep it.. if ever there were a case for blacklisting founders, this is it.
It is definitely NOT cool to pull a move like that. You want to cash out early a little because you've been boostrapping, ok, but if you then bail on the company and shut it down within a year, then you start to look like a fraud who knew the company was in trouble and took advantage of investors.
I can't be sure, but it seemed to me that the "upvote/like" mechanism boosting posts to the top (with no validity required) turned Secret into an enormous, "Who can say the most absurd clickbait thing" contest. It got tiring, and I deleted the app.
Having talked with a few other people about Secret, they said the same thing.
For the curious, pulled their deal history from PitchBook: Secret raised their B last July at a post valuation just over 130M ( http://i.imgur.com/jNXw5PZ.png ). They had some major investors backing them up, and then the hype train just... stopped. I remember so many people being so high on it when it launched, with several friends all raving about how fun/addicting it was, then just poof it disappeared from convers…
> http://i.imgur.com/jNXw5PZ.png Here was the intended use of the $25M: "The funding will be used to implement two new features, a Facebook login and the ability to follow posts on a certain topic" . This is what is wrong with Silicon Valley today. An afternoon project for a single developer gets $25M from investors. Please, someone give me just $10M....I've already implemented Facebook login for my apps.
"Secret will hand its remaining cash back to investors" Minus the $6M the founders took off the table? If they keep it.. if ever there were a case for blacklisting founders, this is it. It is definitely NOT cool to pull a move like that. You want to cash out early a little because you've been boostrapping, ok, but if you then bail on the company and shut it down within a year, then you start to look like a fraud who…
