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The CEO of Mattermark spent a lot of time and energy in the early days of the company establishing a public presence as a brash, highly opinionated thought lead

The CEO of Mattermark spent a lot of time and energy in the early days of the company establishing a public presence as a brash, highly opinionated thought leader in the “how to run a start-up” intellectual space, which makes the failure of the company a little ironic and is almost certainly contributing to the Schadenfreud I’ve read on Twitter. Take, for instance, this post, in which she seemingly boasts of the company’s massive burn rate: https://medium.com/@DanielleMorrill/is-my-startup-burn-rate-normal-882b2bd20f02 https://medium.com/@DanielleMorrill/is-my-startup-burn-rate-... Or this post, in which she shames a number of “Zombie Unicorns” (including WeWork): http://www.businessinsider.com/mattermark-names-troubled-unicorns-2015-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/mattermark-names-troubled-uni... Why be so publicly hostile and truculent? Also, it appears that the CEO lacked focus: according to her Twitter profile, she’s a VC and a very prolific angel investor. I’d be upset as an employee of the company receiving $0 for my common stock that the CEO was effectively hedging her Mattermark bet with a number of side gigs. The CEO’s job is to be singularly focused on the success of the company.

minimaxir 9y ago
Notably, there's been complaints that the TechCrunch article is too negative (https://twitter.com/sm/status/944087102982995969 https://twitter.com/sm/status/944087102982995969), which has the inverse problem.
- jpeg_hero 9y ago
  Yeah, unreal. Hey @sm give me $17m and I’ll give you $1m back and we’ll gauge your positivity/negativity. This is the stuff that gives SV a bad reputation- the sense of entitlement. That of course we deserve “others people’s money” to do with what we please and should be praised for it. This is real money @sm !!
lenley 9y ago
That aggressiveness gets noticed and picked up by lots of different outlets -- from tech aggregators to mainstream business publications looking for "punchy" topics. E.g. look at who appears on CNBC programs. Unfortunately, people have made that into a marketing strategy -- I'm not sure it is something to really hold against Mattermark in particular.

minimaxir 9y ago

Notably, there's been complaints that the TechCrunch article is too negative (https://twitter.com/sm/status/944087102982995969 https://twitter.com/sm/status/944087102982995969), which has the inverse problem.

jpeg_hero 9y ago
Yeah, unreal. Hey @sm give me $17m and I’ll give you $1m back and we’ll gauge your positivity/negativity. This is the stuff that gives SV a bad reputation- the sense of entitlement. That of course we deserve “others people’s money” to do with what we please and should be praised for it. This is real money @sm !!

lenley 9y ago

That aggressiveness gets noticed and picked up by lots of different outlets -- from tech aggregators to mainstream business publications looking for "punchy" topics. E.g. look at who appears on CNBC programs. Unfortunately, people have made that into a marketing strategy -- I'm not sure it is something to really hold against Mattermark in particular.