kurtvarner

Some solid points here, but I gotta disagree with this one...

If a product grows huge quickly, which almost always requires it to be free, it will probably be acquired for a lot of money. Free products that don’t grow quickly enough can usually die with an “acquihire”, which lets everyone save face and ensures that the investors get something out of the deal.

I think this way of thinking is the product of a very frothy market over the last few years. Now, I'm not one to scream series A crunch from the mountain tops, but it's unrealistic to think that thousands of these startups that "don't grow quickly enough" will be acquihired. In 2012 Google and Facebook combined to make 21 acquisitions. That doesn't put much of a dent in the number of failing startups. And with the Formspring shutdown announcement last week, it seems that even companies that have achieved impressive scale (30M users in since 2010) cannot rely on being bought.

Ok, this is something that I cannot seem to understand - why is it impossible to create a well-designed remote for a TV device? Look at (seriously, look at them now) your remotes for your TV. What the hell? Compare this to the design of your actual TV. Or how about your laptop or phone.

I'm blown away that they insist on designing their remotes like kids' toys.

You can't really blame them for taking the path they chose. Check-ins were what the market wanted at that time. Gowalla was guaranteed to be building for a market that existed. Yes, they could have said, "Screw check-ins, let's focus on photos", but that would have been a much bigger risk than going to war with an equally early staged startup.

Imagine if they would have drastically pivoted away from check-ins and failed. I'm sure Gowalla would be contemplating what could have been if they stayed true to check-ins and went to war with Foursquare.

I think it's too easy to say in retrospect that they should have "played by their own rules." Even though they were playing by the check-in rules, at least they were playing in a real game.

Here's a copy of his statement.

--

(This is for Groupon employees, but I’m posting it publicly since it will leak anyway)

People of Groupon,

After four and a half intense and wonderful years as CEO of Groupon, I’ve decided that I’d like to spend more time with my family. Just kidding – I was fired today. If you’re wondering why… you haven’t been paying attention. From controversial metrics in our S1 to our material weakness to two quarters of missing our own expectations and a stock price that’s hovering around one quarter of our listing price, the events of the last year and a half speak for themselves. As CEO, I am accountable.

You are doing amazing things at Groupon, and you deserve the outside world to give you a second chance. I’m getting in the way of that. A fresh CEO earns you that chance. The board is aligned behind the strategy we’ve shared over the last few months, and I’ve never seen you working together more effectively as a global company – it’s time to give Groupon a relief valve from the public noise.

For those who are concerned about me, please don’t be – I love Groupon, and I’m terribly proud of what we’ve created. I’m OK with having failed at this part of the journey. If Groupon was Battletoads, it would be like I made it all the way to the Terra Tubes without dying on my first ever play through. I am so lucky to have had the opportunity to take the company this far with all of you. I’ll now take some time to decompress (FYI I’m looking for a good fat camp to lose my Groupon 40, if anyone has a suggestion), and then maybe I’ll figure out how to channel this experience into something productive.

If there’s one piece of wisdom that this simple pilgrim would like to impart upon you: have the courage to start with the customer. My biggest regrets are the moments that I let a lack of data override my intuition on what’s best for our customers. This leadership change gives you some breathing room to break bad habits and deliver sustainable customer happiness – don’t waste the opportunity!

I will miss you terribly.

Love,

Andrew

Trust me, I don't like GoDaddy either. But they're the most popular registrar, and I think it'd be foolish of me not include them. The market much, much larger than the subset of people like us.

Our thinking was to emulate the experience of watching previews in the theaters. You don't know anything about the movie, making it more intriguing. That's why we chose not to fade in the title until the last 15 seconds of the trailer.

We built MovieDip over the last few days as a way to easily watch movie trailers. We have a lot of ideas of what we'd like to continue to build, but wanted to ship it quick and get some feedback.

What do you guys think?