Secret Shuts Down • Hacker News Board

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#191

Post by girvo » Thu, Apr 30, 2015, 4:43 AM UTC

vonklaus wrote: post #141

zaidf wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to suggest that shutting the company down was definitively a worse outcome for investors vs. keeping it going. It isn't that black and white. For example, if they kept the company going and spent the remaining millions and still failed(most common outcome), it is a worse outcome than shutting it down now and returning the millions.

To clarify, the outcome of any company is unknowable, as is the future of everything. When you take a look at the guys from airbnb trying to make rent selling cereal and renting out an air mattress, that's the hustle. I am just suggesting that, hypothtically, if these guys were that hungry they would do anything to save the company. I saw Byttow's interview with Kevin Rose, he seemed passionate and intelligent, I don…

They also have a high correlation with failure, burn-out and destroyed lives.

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#192

Post by nostrademons » Thu, Apr 30, 2015, 4:45 AM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #162

nostrademons wrote: post #72

This shutdown - and some of the comments here that indicate how nasty Secret had become before it died - is quite interesting in light of the conversation surrounding Google's Real Names Only policy. Secret cofounders David Byttow and Chris Bader-Wechseler were both veterans of Google+. Byttow, in particular, I recall being quite well-respected as someone who got shit done, quietly and efficiently, by the rest of the…

> My take-away from this is that social software is > remarkably hard, ... Agreed > and that whatever you do, people will hate you. Disagree. I think it is remarkably difficult to create a functional community, and it is impossible to do that if you don't understand how communities work. In particular, successful communities often have places where similar members can congregate and effectively shun people who don't…

I think that being able to shard the site into multiple subcommunities is a necessary but insufficient condition. Look, for example, at r/ShitRedditSays. The best you can hope for (above a community of a couple hundred) is people who will grudgingly use what you produce while talking about how useless it is.

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#193

Post by Retra » Thu, Apr 30, 2015, 4:47 AM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #190

Retra wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if anybody has made a 'choose your own community' site. You choose how many people you're given access to (say, 100, 10K, 100K, 1M+) and the only information you get is from those who are nearest to you in location and interests (based on an adjustable scoring algorithm) and anybody you've previously conversed with. Smaller communities could make for more specialized content, and everybody living on the edge…

Subreddits, right?

That's a little different...

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#194

Post by ovechtrick » Thu, Apr 30, 2015, 4:50 AM UTC

lsc wrote: post #183

adamzerner wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

removed regrettable bit - but he or she is right about the options; ethically and legally, they could have continued to try to make it work, or they could shut down the company, sell the assets and distribute the proceeds to the creditors and then the owners of the company (the investors) Really, one could ethically do either one of those things; it's just that depending on the situation and your perspective, well, p…

I guess I just clicked the wrong button. Not really sure how that makes me an ass. Thanks though.

http://blog.ycombinator.com/new-hacker-news-guideline

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#195

Post by dhruvbird » Thu, Apr 30, 2015, 4:59 AM UTC

Secret is probably a very successful social experiment.

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#196

Post by kidgorgeous » Thu, Apr 30, 2015, 5:03 AM UTC

jackgavigan wrote: post #188

lnanek2 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a big success to me. The founders each took 3 million cash off the table on investment and now are closing up the company. Corporations are just a vehicle to make money after all, they got their pay day and ran.

Question is, will any VC want to fund them again in the future?

doesn't matter, had sex

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#197

Post by picks_at_nits » Thu, Apr 30, 2015, 5:08 AM UTC

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…

Nope.

Why did the investors allow the founders to take cash off the table? To align interests. Meaning, to swing for the fences instead of making safe, conservative decisions and building a lifestyle business that would minimize the chance of shutting down.

With the money off the table, the founders would have the freedom to try risky things, to manage the company such that the chance of failure was very high but the payoff for an unlikely success would be even higher.

The company shutting down is exactly the outcome everyone expects to be a likely outcome. The investor has a portfolio of such investments, and does not care that the founders cashed in. The one hit they get will pay for all the founders they pay out.

In fact, investors won't want to blacklist these founders. The message that would send is, "even if you get to take money off the table, you should still manage conservatively, because you will be screwed for life if you have to shut your company down."

Investors do not want founders to be terrified of shutting down.

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#198

Post by lsc » Thu, Apr 30, 2015, 5:10 AM UTC

ovechtrick wrote: post #194

lsc wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

removed regrettable bit - but he or she is right about the options; ethically and legally, they could have continued to try to make it work, or they could shut down the company, sell the assets and distribute the proceeds to the creditors and then the owners of the company (the investors) Really, one could ethically do either one of those things; it's just that depending on the situation and your perspective, well, p…

I guess I just clicked the wrong button. Not really sure how that makes me an ass. Thanks though. http://blog.ycombinator.com/new-hacker-news-guideline

I meant no real insult. I was having a shallow conversation with a troll, I was repeating something someone else said, and misjudged the tone.

You want me to delete/edit my previous post? there, I did; I'm not sure if that's more appropriate or less.

You make a good point with the guidelines; I'm far too cynical and negative to participate in these sorts of discussions with this sort of a community.

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#199

Post by nichochar » Thu, Apr 30, 2015, 5:37 AM UTC

I've only ever heard bad things of that team.

Arrogant, mean, shameless...

I'm happy to see that this happens, when they cloned yik yak it was one of the most pathetic moves I have ever witnessed in the silicon valley

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#200

Post by overdrivetg » Thu, Apr 30, 2015, 5:47 AM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #162

nostrademons wrote: post #72

This shutdown - and some of the comments here that indicate how nasty Secret had become before it died - is quite interesting in light of the conversation surrounding Google's Real Names Only policy. Secret cofounders David Byttow and Chris Bader-Wechseler were both veterans of Google+. Byttow, in particular, I recall being quite well-respected as someone who got shit done, quietly and efficiently, by the rest of the…

> My take-away from this is that social software is > remarkably hard, ... Agreed > and that whatever you do, people will hate you. Disagree. I think it is remarkably difficult to create a functional community, and it is impossible to do that if you don't understand how communities work. In particular, successful communities often have places where similar members can congregate and effectively shun people who don't…

One of the best posts I've read about internet communities discusses this, long but worthwhile:

http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/12/07/socratic-fishing-in-lak...

The relevant point is the dynamic balance between "plazas" (highly accessible areas to anyone) and "warrens" (areas accessible only to an accultured in-group). "Evaporative cooling" is the phenomenon of the best contributing members "boiling off" and leaving due to frustration from excessive noise, flame wars, etc. From the post:

"Warrens are like rabbit warrens: low global visibility, highly personalized corners where small groups can aggregate/self-segregate. Plazas are like grand public town squares with lots of global visibility. Warrens are maze-like: it is hard to break out of your current corner, and it is easy to get lost. You couldn’t get lost in a plaza even if you wanted to.

[...]

'Warrenizing' a site undeniably slows evaporative cooling, by allowing groups to self-segregate. On Sulekha, we had a warren of individual topic boards, and a firehose plaza that consolidated the entire discussion stream at the landing page. When flame wars got too hot, we used to simply turn the plaza stream off, so people were forced to go directly to individual corners. Things would immediately get quieter. Groups would get sequestered, and therefore less likely to leave because of unpleasant activity elsewhere that they didn’t like."