Sorry to hear about The Messenger. Reading your post it sounds like they had a pretty big staff for such a young organization. Was it their plan to start from the beginning as a well established organization and hit the ground running, ready to compete with everyone instead of growing organically? Or did it start small and grow too fast?
In any case, I hope you find the right opportunity quickly. Wherever you end up will be lucky to have you!
Thank you! And yeah, their plan was the former -- they wanted to be big right away and go for traffic. To say they misjudged the ad market badly would be the understatement of the century.
I was sorry to see the news about the Messenger. Glad you had a lot of positives come out of your time there, though! Looking forward seeing more of your work on the ‘stack!
Sorry man. I'm hopeful that when the story of the Messenger is written, I can call it something other than a giant scam that hoodwinked a lot of writers whose work I value, but that's where I'm sitting today at least. I wish you the best with round two on substack.
I think it was a giant scam for SOMEONE (whoever invested that seed money), but I don't feel personally hoodwinked in the sense that I got paid for a while and got to work with a lot of amazing people. (Seriously, our sports team was really good. We just never had a chance.)
Sports wasn't the only all-pro team. It almost seemed too good to be true, and now we know....
Whenever a guy who just sold a company for $100MM+ has a startup end like this 2 years later, you can bet on a messy resolution. Hopefully the investors go to the mat and at least make him spend a few mil on legal fees to defend whatever's left of his bankroll.
100%! The way he handled this was shameful. We found out about it via the NY Times, and Slack shut down within minutes of that. Disrespectful way to run a business.
After the dotcom bubble burst, there was a book written about The Industry Standard called Starving to Death on $200MM, as I recall. I'll bet this story is just as juicy once the lawsuits start flying.
Sorry to hear about The Messenger. Reading your post it sounds like they had a pretty big staff for such a young organization. Was it their plan to start from the beginning as a well established organization and hit the ground running, ready to compete with everyone instead of growing organically? Or did it start small and grow too fast?
In any case, I hope you find the right opportunity quickly. Wherever you end up will be lucky to have you!
Thank you! And yeah, their plan was the former -- they wanted to be big right away and go for traffic. To say they misjudged the ad market badly would be the understatement of the century.
I was sorry to see the news about the Messenger. Glad you had a lot of positives come out of your time there, though! Looking forward seeing more of your work on the ‘stack!
Oh that’s tough to hear! Best of luck on next steps, but glad to read your content here
Sorry man. I'm hopeful that when the story of the Messenger is written, I can call it something other than a giant scam that hoodwinked a lot of writers whose work I value, but that's where I'm sitting today at least. I wish you the best with round two on substack.
I think it was a giant scam for SOMEONE (whoever invested that seed money), but I don't feel personally hoodwinked in the sense that I got paid for a while and got to work with a lot of amazing people. (Seriously, our sports team was really good. We just never had a chance.)
Sports wasn't the only all-pro team. It almost seemed too good to be true, and now we know....
Whenever a guy who just sold a company for $100MM+ has a startup end like this 2 years later, you can bet on a messy resolution. Hopefully the investors go to the mat and at least make him spend a few mil on legal fees to defend whatever's left of his bankroll.
100%! The way he handled this was shameful. We found out about it via the NY Times, and Slack shut down within minutes of that. Disrespectful way to run a business.
After the dotcom bubble burst, there was a book written about The Industry Standard called Starving to Death on $200MM, as I recall. I'll bet this story is just as juicy once the lawsuits start flying.
Unfortunate about The Messenger, but glad to have you here, Neil!!