I would've never understood the appeal of these anonymous apps over something like Reddit (in which you can be as anonymous as you'd like) if I hadn't had a job on campus, where YikYak is well-frequented, and a far better source of breaking trivial news (i.e. what is all that yelling outside about?) than anything else...using YikYak periodically has made me realize again how easy it is to underestimate the appeal of less friction...including the friction of having to deal with users and their user histories. On the other hand, it's a shitshow when some topic like Greeks vs. non-Greeks or Middle East politics comes up...and having no way to filter the noise, either by user or by topic, ends up killing the enjoyment of the app. Yikyak is interesting because of its popularity on campus...but anywhere else, and it's not something I'm compelled to check at all. I imagine the same thing happened with Secret after it stopped being the gossip platform for Silicon Valley people
Secret Shuts Down
11–20 of 253 posts
Re: Secret Shuts Down
#12For 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…
Investors (and the team) were looking at the wrong numbers. In apps, it's basically all down to having meteoric growth week over week. It can't be based on spikes as this was. Taking money off the table in a B makes sense for the founders, and I can't blame them for leveraging their situation. Ultimately this falls on the investors for biting on hype, and not having a deeper understanding of the product (and it's pot…
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.
Re: Secret Shuts Down
#13I would've never understood the appeal of these anonymous apps over something like Reddit (in which you can be as anonymous as you'd like) if I hadn't had a job on campus, where YikYak is well-frequented, and a far better source of breaking trivial news (i.e. what is all that yelling outside about?) than anything else...using YikYak periodically has made me realize again how easy it is to underestimate the appeal of…
YikYak added muting by user just recently.
Re: Secret Shuts Down
#14I stopped using it when they changed the app design to what it currently is. I loved it when it was a picture app.
Re: Secret Shuts Down
#15For 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…
Crunchbase says they have 11-25 employees... how did they burn through all of that money? Is it possible they are pivoting or returning money to investors?
Re: Secret Shuts Down
#16For 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…
Investors (and the team) were looking at the wrong numbers. In apps, it's basically all down to having meteoric growth week over week. It can't be based on spikes as this was. Taking money off the table in a B makes sense for the founders, and I can't blame them for leveraging their situation. Ultimately this falls on the investors for biting on hype, and not having a deeper understanding of the product (and it's pot…
It's high risk for the investors. For every Uber, there are many that don't pan out. It's the nature of the game, and why they make lots of investments.
Re: Secret Shuts Down
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Investors (and the team) were looking at the wrong numbers. In apps, it's basically all down to having meteoric growth week over week. It can't be based on spikes as this was. Taking money off the table in a B makes sense for the founders, and I can't blame them for leveraging their situation. Ultimately this falls on the investors for biting on hype, and not having a deeper understanding of the product (and it's pot…
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.
Re: Secret Shuts Down
#18For 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…
Crunchbase says they have 11-25 employees... how did they burn through all of that money? Is it possible they are pivoting or returning money to investors?
They haven't. The article says they're returning the money.
Re: Secret Shuts Down
#19For 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…
Crunchbase says they have 11-25 employees... how did they burn through all of that money? Is it possible they are pivoting or returning money to investors?
From the article it doesn't sound like they ran out of money, sounds like the growth has stalled and key talent has left. I bet the money goes back to investors, it doesn't sound like the team is still in place to pivot.
Re: Secret Shuts Down
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Investors (and the team) were looking at the wrong numbers. In apps, it's basically all down to having meteoric growth week over week. It can't be based on spikes as this was. Taking money off the table in a B makes sense for the founders, and I can't blame them for leveraging their situation. Ultimately this falls on the investors for biting on hype, and not having a deeper understanding of the product (and it's pot…
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.
Exactly right, this is a very important message here that should be taken away by future (and current) entrepreneurs.