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Such negativity in this thread. Do we all love to hate someone who is working hard on their startup just because they are jerks[1]? Even if the CEO is a jerk, t
by hboon 13y ago
Such negativity in this thread. Do we all love to hate someone who is working hard on their startup just because they are jerks[1]? Even if the CEO is a jerk, they have a nicely designed product with a seemingly noble goal, with a talented pool of people working behind the scenes, working towards their objectives.
Sure, they have their bad moments (pun intended), being caught uploading users' address books, spamming user's friends with invites and perhaps paying for downloads. No one's perfect and some of us sometimes do try to stretch things a little to see how far we can go. Don't we?
I remember the joy I felt when they released Path 2.0 and I chanced upon it. The cover photos, pulling down the timeline to see more of the cover photo, the smooth springly animation they use for the actions button, the gorgeous sign up screens. Most of these concepts have been utilized in some form in other apps now. These people create good work.
We should be rooting for them, not cursing them.
PS: Just a fan of the work behind it, not friends with anyone involved in the company. Just someone exercising a little bit of common sense and empathy.
PSS: and to those who want to know, just look at their app in the various app stores and you would already know how much they charge for stickers and subscription. No need to predict or guess.
[1] Seem to be a jerk, according to a single interview. And according to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7039043 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7039043 and write-ups else where, PG seems to be sexist (and racist?). Do we just take things people say as the whole truth, at face value?
- velis_vel 13y ago> Sure, they have their bad moments (pun intended), being caught uploading users' address books, spamming user's friends with invites and perhaps paying for downloads. No one's perfect and some of us sometimes do try to stretch things a little to see how far we can go. Don't we? Are you being sarcastic here? I can't tell. Uploading your users' address books to your servers without permission isn't just 'stretching things a little', it's a textbook privacy violation.
- anonxyz 13y agoI've done business and personally interacted with Dave Morin on several occasions. He's not mean to your face, but he is a little too smug for my tastes. His real problem is he lacks rigor and is not a fundamentally honest person. He glosses over the details and doesn't follow up well. He claims something's going to happen to avoid looking bad, and then it doesn't--or it takes forever. For example, Path has been claiming they were about to raise a $50m round for what, a year now? Dave is a celebrity CEO. He wants to be a celebrity, and maybe a designer, and being CEO of Path is his means towards that end. The best thing for Path would be to bring in a fully capable COO to run the show. This may require eventually transitioning Dave out of the CEO seat to promote the COO if they are able to turn things around. In contrast, I've only interacted with PG a couple of times, but I've read some of his articles. I think PG does try to be an honest person, and sometimes that doesn't come out right, especially in sound bite form. PG is definitely smug too, but it's an intellectual-light smugness that he backs up with explanations and evidence. Whereas Dave's is a celebrity smugness that he backs up with false promises that he doesn't take seriously.