Thanks for writing this detailed postmortem!

The entire story, though, can really be distilled into one idea: expectation settings.

You always want to under-promise and over-deliver, but it sounds like, in multiple domains, the Newstilt team did just the opposite. They promised a lot to their writers, to their investors, to each other. This happened in both obvious and subtle ways.

What's the problem with the wrong expectation settings?

Where to begin... First of all, it is human nature to raise expectations. You're afraid investors won't invest, developers won't work for you, journalists won't contribute to your site, your co-founder won't carry on: so you raise expectations.

The critical dynamic that screws everything up, though, IMHO, is that inflated expectations attract the wrong types of people. That's the killer.

Paul provided many examples of this. Over-promising to journalists attracted the wrong types of journalists; over-promising to users attracted the wrong types of users; over-promising to potential employees attracted the wrong hire.

If there's one lesson to takeaway from Paul's story it's: under-promise and over-deliver.

Start simply. Don't worry about being too simple. Just be honest, so you attract the right people at the right time.