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Secret Shuts Down

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Re: Secret Shuts Down

#171

Post by lsc »

adamzerner wrote: post #161
quizotic wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One reason is when the investors own > 50%, control the board, and decide to recoup 10 cents on their dollar. But I've known entrepreneurs who made the decision independently, feeling it was the right thing to do. And it is the right thing to do if the company has no other prospects or the team is falling apart. But even so, returning the balance just keeps some salt from the wound. It doesn't make anybody happy.

> And it is the right thing to do if the company has no other prospects or the team is falling apart. Why do you say that? If for moral/altruistic reasons, that doesn't make sense to me - if you have $x million, do you really think the best place to donate it would be to VCs? I don't know anyone who donates to VCs, so I assume the answer is no. (sorry if I come off as harsh, I don't mean to - I just don't know how el…

you don't have $x million. The company you founded, and no longer wholly own has $x million. It's a rather different thing.

I mean, unless you are talking about the money for the personal shares the founders sold, the money, as it was said, that they "took off the table" - if that's the case, then I'm completely with you (but I didn't see any indication that they were giving that money back.)

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#172

Post by adamzerner »

lsc wrote: post #171
adamzerner wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And it is the right thing to do if the company has no other prospects or the team is falling apart. Why do you say that? If for moral/altruistic reasons, that doesn't make sense to me - if you have $x million, do you really think the best place to donate it would be to VCs? I don't know anyone who donates to VCs, so I assume the answer is no. (sorry if I come off as harsh, I don't mean to - I just don't know how el…

you don't have $x million. The company you founded, and no longer wholly own has $x million. It's a rather different thing. I mean, unless you are talking about the money for the personal shares the founders sold, the money, as it was said, that they "took off the table" - if that's the case, then I'm completely with you (but I didn't see any indication that they were giving that money back.)

I was under the impression that someone had decided to give the money back to the investors. That they had a choice, presumably, to do what they want with it. Is that not true? To what extent were they restricted?

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#173

Post by lsc »

adamzerner wrote: post #172
lsc wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you don't have $x million. The company you founded, and no longer wholly own has $x million. It's a rather different thing. I mean, unless you are talking about the money for the personal shares the founders sold, the money, as it was said, that they "took off the table" - if that's the case, then I'm completely with you (but I didn't see any indication that they were giving that money back.)

I was under the impression that someone had decided to give the money back to the investors. That they had a choice, presumably, to do what they want with it. Is that not true? To what extent were they restricted?

that depends on who controls the company, something that usually has to do with ownership percentages, something that wasn't revealed in the article.

The thing is, though, even when you control the majority of the company you do have some legal and ethical obligations to the minority shareholders.

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#174

Post by adamzerner »

lsc wrote: post #173
adamzerner wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was under the impression that someone had decided to give the money back to the investors. That they had a choice, presumably, to do what they want with it. Is that not true? To what extent were they restricted?

that depends on who controls the company, something that usually has to do with ownership percentages, something that wasn't revealed in the article. The thing is, though, even when you control the majority of the company you do have some legal and ethical obligations to the minority shareholders.

I see. Well, my point applies to any situation where someone does have the freedom to do what they want with (a large chunk of) money, and chooses to give that money to a VC, rather than, say donating it to an effective charity. Am I the only one who sees something wrong with that?

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#175

Post by GhotiFish »

Giorgi wrote: post #122
testguy34 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moderation on 4chan and /b/ has increased over the last year. Mostly to prevent the posting of peoples personal information. But the posting of shock images has also decreased. I don't know if they are being removed as well.

Yes, so-called "Social Justice Warriors" took over and made once uncensored board into heavily censored tumbr.

Mootles himself said that the reason 4chan works is because people make terrible asses of themselves every once in a while, and despite that can still contribute to society and culture. Anonimity ensures that even if you do fuck up, you still arn't ostracized, the benefit being that you will take risks and maybe make something amazing.

The idea of individually singling someone out to make their lives miserable, for something stupid they've done, seems anathema to 4chan's culture. Or at least what makes 4chan's culture work. I see no problem with 4chan's mods removing dox.

You're an idiot, so are we all, but people don't forgive as easily as they should.

So have an upvote, make another post, and try again! Stick around Giorgi.

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#176

Post by lsc »

adamzerner wrote: post #174
lsc wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that depends on who controls the company, something that usually has to do with ownership percentages, something that wasn't revealed in the article. The thing is, though, even when you control the majority of the company you do have some legal and ethical obligations to the minority shareholders.

I see. Well, my point applies to any situation where someone does have the freedom to do what they want with (a large chunk of) money, and chooses to give that money to a VC, rather than, say donating it to an effective charity. Am I the only one who sees something wrong with that?

that seems like an astonishingly unlikely situation.

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#177

Post by adamzerner »

lsc wrote: post #176
adamzerner wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see. Well, my point applies to any situation where someone does have the freedom to do what they want with (a large chunk of) money, and chooses to give that money to a VC, rather than, say donating it to an effective charity. Am I the only one who sees something wrong with that?

that seems like an astonishingly unlikely situation.

Maybe. It's just that I hear of stories that talk about founders giving money back to the investors as if it were admirable. Admirable implies that a decision was made. But maybe I'm just misinterpreting.

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#178

Post by rajatrocks »

I still think there's a lot of room to do something interesting with social and mobile on the spectrum of Real Identity (Facebook) "Complete" Anonymity (Whisper).

Yik Yak and After School have taken a small step to the left by focusing on specific geographic areas (schools) and that has worked well - a community centered around a shared context/life experience. Secret also took a step to the left with the "Friend" and "Friend of a Friend" concept - one which was ultimately unsuccessful, I think because it threatened to pierce the veil of anonymity, so many people didn't feel safe posting their real "scandalous" content.

And of course with all of the anonymous apps you have the problem of bad behavior. So far we've seen community solutions to this (flagging, downvoting, karma - like here, Reddit, Yik Yak) and company solutions (moderating with 100 people in the Philippines, like Secret and Whisper - http://www.wired.com/2014/10/content-moderation/). It would be interesting to think if there might be others.

So the current "anonymish" apps have started from the right (anonymous by default) and either stayed there or moved to the left a bit. One of the things I've been thinking about recently is what would happen if you started from the left (Real Identity/FB) and moved to the right? Would the outcome be any better? I'm actually going to try it out and see with a new mobile app I've been working on - http://www.IAmOffTheClock.com

And as for them taking money off the table in their funding round - good for them. They weighed their offers and took one that eliminated their risk while giving the company enough cash to grow and still giving them a chance for a big payday. If Secret had hit it big, that would have been a very expensive $3M they took off the table. Investors wanted more stock, founders wanted some small amount of liquidity, and at the time everybody was happy, everyone believed, the graphs were all up and to the right, and nobody had a perfect crystal ball.

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#179

Post by dools »

barrkel wrote: post #147
sethbannon wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure it's wise to call G+ a "dead" social network. According to recent research by Pew, it's more popular than Twitter and just as popular as LinkedIn. http://www.journalism.org/2014/10/21/section-2-social-media-...

It's currently impossible to create a Youtube playlist without a G+ profile. Every time I want to create a new playlist, I create a new G+ profile, then delete it immediately afterwards. It is tedious. I'm sure many other people, when faced with roadblocks like these, create a do-nothing profile but don't bother deleting afterwards.

I made this a few years ago:

http://www.cueyoutube.com/

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#180

Post by ovechtrick »

lsc wrote: post #176
adamzerner wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see. Well, my point applies to any situation where someone does have the freedom to do what they want with (a large chunk of) money, and chooses to give that money to a VC, rather than, say donating it to an effective charity. Am I the only one who sees something wrong with that?

that seems like an astonishingly unlikely situation.

> It's just that I hear of stories that talk about founders giving money back to the investors as if it were admirable.

The other option is they keep the company alive until $0 is left and return nothing.

Donating to charity isn't an option.

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