31–40 of 144 posts
I wonder if some sort of anonymous reputation system could have saved them from making product decisions that were counter to the reasons for using the app in the first place.
> The payments processor paid less than $3 million for between five and ten of Yik Yak’s engineers I feel like they could have saved money and created happy engineers by offering each employee a hefty sign on bonus.
It's called an "acquisition" as a face-saving mechanism for the company's founders and investors. It lets them go to investors for their next startup [or fund] saying "Yeah, we [our portfolio company] were acquired by Square", which sounds a lot nicer than "We shut down the company and then Square hired all our people." The acquirer wins, the employees win, the founders & investors save face, and the losers are future investors who don't delve too deeply into what "acquired" means.
Pity, mainly because there seems to be a market for local anonymous communications, but a relatively small, and very vocal subset of users can ruin it for everyone. I wonder if some sort of anonymous reputation system could have saved them from making product decisions that were counter to the reasons for using the app in the first place.
I think the key problem was the hype train and the lack of product-oriented/technical leadership. remembered them doing very well on campus last two years of college. They had on campus reps to hand out "schwag"; probably not very fun to scale. The obvious bullying was the problem. If they had found some way to solve that and snuck their way back into high schools... then again, kids can be so cruel.
The unique commentary was what made it, there was essentially humor that everyone could relate to and the unique perspectives people felt were too uncomfortable to share with their persona attached. It was fascinating to watch what would come up over the day
Pity, mainly because there seems to be a market for local anonymous communications, but a relatively small, and very vocal subset of users can ruin it for everyone. I wonder if some sort of anonymous reputation system could have saved them from making product decisions that were counter to the reasons for using the app in the first place.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you speak more on the ATL tech scene? I've always been interested.
Not OP but I'm a software engineer working for a startup in ATL. I'm not sure how we have a reputation for being "dominated by business types", but we do have a relatively high contingent of fintech and b2b companies here (our only unicorn, Kabbage, plus several others like Square, Salesloft, Salesforce). I think though that our pool of engineering talent is relatively high - I'd guess it's the most likely landing sp…
http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/blog/atlantech/2014/03/un...
I think the key problem was the hype train and the lack of product-oriented/technical leadership. remembered them doing very well on campus last two years of college. They had on campus reps to hand out "schwag"; probably not very fun to scale. The obvious bullying was the problem. If they had found some way to solve that and snuck their way back into high schools... then again, kids can be so cruel.
I think the key problem was the hype train and the lack of product-oriented/technical leadership. remembered them doing very well on campus last two years of college. They had on campus reps to hand out "schwag"; probably not very fun to scale. The obvious bullying was the problem. If they had found some way to solve that and snuck their way back into high schools... then again, kids can be so cruel.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you speak more on the ATL tech scene? I've always been interested.
Not OP but I'm a software engineer working for a startup in ATL. I'm not sure how we have a reputation for being "dominated by business types", but we do have a relatively high contingent of fintech and b2b companies here (our only unicorn, Kabbage, plus several others like Square, Salesloft, Salesforce). I think though that our pool of engineering talent is relatively high - I'd guess it's the most likely landing sp…