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Secret Shuts Down

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Re: Secret Shuts Down

#41

Post by teraflop »

narsil wrote: post #32
minimaxir wrote: post #23

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.

Was that a reference to this tumblr: http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/ Pretty appropriate.

Technically, the curator of that Tumblr account created it to criticize acquihires, not shutdowns in general. From the "What is an incredible journey?" page:

> Companies go broke all the time. It’s unfortunate and it may mean a service you love will close. But some things just don’t work out. [...] This is what is galling. A company that can afford to pay millions for some new staff but not for what those staff built. The people who used the service, and invested their belief and time in uploading photos, or forming friendships, or logging data, are left to find new virtual homes while their former hosts enjoy a nice (if possibly delayed) payday.

-- http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/post/89180616013/what...

Although admittedly, from an end-user's perspective, the effects are the same no matter the reason for the shutdown.

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#43

Post by DaniFong »

ucha wrote: post #40
abalone wrote: post #35

"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…

The whole point of taking money off the table is to keep it when the company goes bust. What you're describing is more similar to a loan where the collateral would be a slice of equity.

That is absolutely not true. The much more sensible reason is to take enough off the table to align investors and the management by (a) making sure the management isn't worrying about personal cash day to day, and (b) allowing the managers to prefer a home run swing rather than an early acquisition.

It's always controversial, and never more so in my memory than here.

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#44

Post by abalone »

ucha wrote: post #40
abalone wrote: post #35

"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…

The whole point of taking money off the table is to keep it when the company goes bust. What you're describing is more similar to a loan where the collateral would be a slice of equity.

What? "The point" of selling equity for cash is to get liquidity. That is the justification for allowing founders to do it early, not to reward them when their company goes bust.

In fact, when executives sell a bunch of stock right before public companies announce bad news or go bust it often warrants an insider trading investigation.

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#45

Post by softbuilder »

I hit a speedbump pretty fast when they wanted me to give up my address book. Yik Yak never asked for that. Yik Yak is still on my phone. Both are kind of crappy ideas, but if there was a clear winner it was the people that just let me use the damn app.

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#46

Post by DaniFong »

rdl wrote: post #25

It seems kind of crazy to me that people talk about startups and try to apply completely the same model for everything to: 1) A social app like this, which is essentially hype-based and self reinforcing. Success seems entirely down to virality and adoption, followed by monetization. 2) Some very vertical market focused SAAS offering which can be developed with minimal outside capital, own a niche, and where capital c…

Spot on. A lot of what's very challenging for today's web startups, like hiring, is easy for startups in cleantech, since there's so few funded startups. Conversely, it feels an order of magnitude more challenging to raise the money in clean tech...

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#47

Post by dguaraglia »

austenallred wrote: post #38

I thought secret was a really, really cool idea. I downloaded the app and played with it for a few days. After the hype died down, the app was almost 100% about sexual fantasies, coming out of the closet, and having been beaten/molested as a child. 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 th…

This was exactly my experience, even before the hype died down. 99% of the posts were from my gay friends (and friends of friends) talking about some sexual fantasy or sexual encounter.

It was simply not compelling content, so about two weeks in I deleted it.

I wonder if there was something in the marketing or the initial group of people that created some zeitgeist that eventually killed the idea? I'd be interested to know if they actively made some effort to try and get out of that rut.

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#48

Post by beat »

From my very limited perspective from outside Silicon Valley, Secret looked almost like an exercise in Silly Valley self-parody - like an elaborate joke that went too far. Did it implode? Yeah, sure. Did it ever make sense in the first place? Not really.

pg says that great ideas often look like bad ideas. But I think it's also true that bad ideas often look like great ideas.

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#49

Post by tdaltonc »

abalone wrote: post #35

"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…

The investors got exactly the behavior they wanted. They let (encouraged? obliged?) the founders to take money off the table so that they would double down on a high-risk/high-reward go-big-or-go-bust strategy. The Founders did that, and the dice broke against them. They absolutely should not give the money back, and no one should give them a hard time about keeping it.
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