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This kind of comment is remarkably shitty. Someone performs the extremely unpleasant and stressful task of publicly admitting to his mistakes so the rest of us

This kind of comment is remarkably shitty. Someone performs the extremely unpleasant and stressful task of publicly admitting to his mistakes so the rest of us can learn from them, and xcubed responds by spitting in his face. What's the result going to be if we tolerate this sort of behavior? Well we don't have to guess, it was documented in the original post: most founders are not willing to admit their mistakes in public. In game theory terminology, xcubed's comment is called responding to cooperation with defection. In plain English, it's called being an asshole.

king_jester 12y ago
When someone does a bunch of shitty things that directly affects the lives of others, anger is a wholly reasonable response. While it's nice that the OP is being open about mistakes, you don't deserve a pat on the back for telling the truth, it's the default behavior we expect of people.
- Aqueous 12y ago
  Do we? Human beings tell half-truths and lies pretty frequently. I bet if you examine the history of your own utterances for the past several years. you'd find that you do, too. There are obviously different scales of truth-telling and deception. "It's your baby." is a lot different than, "Ah - I can't make it. I'm just too tired!" But it's still lying. In fact human lying is so frequent that a lot of the smaller lies we tell to be polite or avoid hurting feelings barely even register as lies, even though that's what they are, plain and simple. Clearly Kant's maxim that lying is permissible under no circumstances is false. In business lying is rampant. You are competing with liars. Marketing is institutionalized lying. People are constantly embellishing the features of their product so that it purports to do something magical when on closer inspection most features are much more mundane. Sales is even more about convincing the person you're talking to that they can't live without something they probably can live without. In other words, being a good liar is pretty much a qualification for the position. Does that make it ok? No. But does it mean our expectations are lowered? Yes. So when someone goes out of their way to come clean and tell the truth at great disadvantage to themselves, especially in business, we should recognize that for the exceptional event that it is. I don't think that makes lying more acceptable - but it incentivizes truth-telling.
  - king_jester 12y ago
    I don't agree that lying in business is a requirement to run a business and do so well, although you are right in that lying is common in a variety of ways. But I don't have any intention of lowering my expectations nor should anyone have to. Why should workers just have to live with shitty working situations and bouts of unemployment created by liars that lead businesses into bad situations?
    - Aqueous 12y ago
      I don't think it's a requirement in business but that doesn't change the fact that businesspeople, and sales people and executives especially, lie and lie often. They shouldn't. It would be better if nobody lied in a way that harmed people. But in a world where you have every reason to never disclose that you harmed people by lying, we should be encouraging people to eventually come clean. After all, the moral hazard here is that if you punish people for eventually coming clean you will never know what happened, which is worse than the already bad situation of only knowing after the fact. That's why these failure stories are good, even if they admit wrongdoing. And that's why we should be receptive to them, even if it's something we don't want to hear.
mortenjorck 12y ago
The way it's written, I agree with you completely. It's an example of the sort of wantonly confrontational language that seems to flow naturally from many people when alone behind a keyboard. But the substance of it – suggesting that some apologies are perhaps somewhat orthogonal to the wrongs admitted, or that there may be a lack of thoughts expressed for those let down by the mistakes – isn't unworthy of consideration. It's just a shame these had to be written from a perspective of confrontation rather than of compassion.
nyc_str8tsh00t 12y ago
Whether you agree with it or not, Xcube makes thoughtful reasoned points; you are just name calling and trying to silence critics. There are tons of supportive comments on this thread. Tons. Presumably these are all people who have exactly zero first-hand knowledge of the situation. They are taking Seth at his word that this is an honest description of what actually went down. I hardly think it's obvious that he did this all for the sake of educating the rest of us. He could just as easily be trying to control the narrative as his startup implodes - a very common trait of founders in his position. This guy clearly made more than just a few "mistakes" - some of the things he outlines here persisted for months if not years... and most of this is just an artful description of what "in plain English" amounts to lying to the public, his team, his co-founders, and his investors for a very long time. So personally, I have to ask: what makes YOU (and others on this thread) believe what he's saying here? How do we know there's not more to the story? I agree with others that here that we should all hold our judgement, and our praise, unless we hear more than just one side of the story.
- rwallace 12y ago
  The reason I believe what Seth is saying here is that if he chose to lie to make himself look better, he could trivially have done far better than this. If he were putting someone else down, I would agree with withholding judgment - in either direction - until we heard both sides of the story. But he did no such thing. Nothing in the article contains any hint of blame for anyone except himself.

king_jester 12y ago

When someone does a bunch of shitty things that directly affects the lives of others, anger is a wholly reasonable response. While it's nice that the OP is being open about mistakes, you don't deserve a pat on the back for telling the truth, it's the default behavior we expect of people.

Aqueous 12y ago
Do we? Human beings tell half-truths and lies pretty frequently. I bet if you examine the history of your own utterances for the past several years. you'd find that you do, too. There are obviously different scales of truth-telling and deception. "It's your baby." is a lot different than, "Ah - I can't make it. I'm just too tired!" But it's still lying. In fact human lying is so frequent that a lot of the smaller lies we tell to be polite or avoid hurting feelings barely even register as lies, even though that's what they are, plain and simple. Clearly Kant's maxim that lying is permissible under no circumstances is false. In business lying is rampant. You are competing with liars. Marketing is institutionalized lying. People are constantly embellishing the features of their product so that it purports to do something magical when on closer inspection most features are much more mundane. Sales is even more about convincing the person you're talking to that they can't live without something they probably can live without. In other words, being a good liar is pretty much a qualification for the position. Does that make it ok? No. But does it mean our expectations are lowered? Yes. So when someone goes out of their way to come clean and tell the truth at great disadvantage to themselves, especially in business, we should recognize that for the exceptional event that it is. I don't think that makes lying more acceptable - but it incentivizes truth-telling.
- king_jester 12y ago
  I don't agree that lying in business is a requirement to run a business and do so well, although you are right in that lying is common in a variety of ways. But I don't have any intention of lowering my expectations nor should anyone have to. Why should workers just have to live with shitty working situations and bouts of unemployment created by liars that lead businesses into bad situations?
  - Aqueous 12y ago
    I don't think it's a requirement in business but that doesn't change the fact that businesspeople, and sales people and executives especially, lie and lie often. They shouldn't. It would be better if nobody lied in a way that harmed people. But in a world where you have every reason to never disclose that you harmed people by lying, we should be encouraging people to eventually come clean. After all, the moral hazard here is that if you punish people for eventually coming clean you will never know what happened, which is worse than the already bad situation of only knowing after the fact. That's why these failure stories are good, even if they admit wrongdoing. And that's why we should be receptive to them, even if it's something we don't want to hear.

mortenjorck 12y ago

The way it's written, I agree with you completely. It's an example of the sort of wantonly confrontational language that seems to flow naturally from many people when alone behind a keyboard. But the substance of it – suggesting that some apologies are perhaps somewhat orthogonal to the wrongs admitted, or that there may be a lack of thoughts expressed for those let down by the mistakes – isn't unworthy of consideration. It's just a shame these had to be written from a perspective of confrontation rather than of compassion.

nyc_str8tsh00t 12y ago

Whether you agree with it or not, Xcube makes thoughtful reasoned points; you are just name calling and trying to silence critics. There are tons of supportive comments on this thread. Tons. Presumably these are all people who have exactly zero first-hand knowledge of the situation. They are taking Seth at his word that this is an honest description of what actually went down. I hardly think it's obvious that he did this all for the sake of educating the rest of us. He could just as easily be trying to control the narrative as his startup implodes - a very common trait of founders in his position. This guy clearly made more than just a few "mistakes" - some of the things he outlines here persisted for months if not years... and most of this is just an artful description of what "in plain English" amounts to lying to the public, his team, his co-founders, and his investors for a very long time. So personally, I have to ask: what makes YOU (and others on this thread) believe what he's saying here? How do we know there's not more to the story? I agree with others that here that we should all hold our judgement, and our praise, unless we hear more than just one side of the story.

rwallace 12y ago
The reason I believe what Seth is saying here is that if he chose to lie to make himself look better, he could trivially have done far better than this. If he were putting someone else down, I would agree with withholding judgment - in either direction - until we heard both sides of the story. But he did no such thing. Nothing in the article contains any hint of blame for anyone except himself.