Anyone reading this article needs to remember to never be afraid of putting yourself out there because you are afraid of failure.
I saw the market first, I created picplz, and I went for it. I was a huge believe in the mobile photo sharing opportunity, and I went for it with all of my heart. Clearly, picplz didn't win, but I have ZERO shame or regret for doing my best.
When I read articles like these, which are about myself, my company and people that I know well, I can't help but feel vitriol aimed at me for DARING to create, launch and raise funding for picplz. I am not clear on what exactly people want, an apology for trying?
The fact is, I saw the writing on the wall that we wouldn't win early and pivoted out of photo sharing which I had ~90% of my series A cash still in the bank. It certainly seems like that was the right move, but all of this press makes it look like pivoting was the wrong call(?) The press I read is written in such a way that it assumed that the A16Z investment is dead and my entire company should just be written off to zero today. That is bullshit. If I started to take press like this too seriously I might as well just dissolve my company and stop coming into work.
I say this to the hn comminity: never be afraid of failure. No one knows what will happen. All of this arm-chair quarterbacking is a waste of time. Stop reading this kind of crap and instead put your energy into doing your best work. Sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose, but if you give yourself the opportunity to win enough times, you WILL be successful.
I'd like to add that all of us at AH are very proud of Dalton and his team, and we are highly excited about the new plan (including all the parts that aren't public yet :-).
First off, people like you are my heroes. Please keep on keeping on.
As to what the article said, I think you may be taking this too personally (although it sounds like you're referencing the media in general, and I don't know how much vitriol you may have had to absorb).
"Picplz has languished. After shopping the product around for possible cash deals last year, its founders finally ditched Picplz in July, choosing instead to spin it off to Sporcle, a maker of online trivia quizzes."
To me it sounds like basically saying "they did a pivot", but in language that an average reader can digest. Probably using a word other than 'ditched' would be more tactful though. I guess when one aims high taking punches now and then is part of the game, but in the end it doesn't mean a whole lot; other than well, you aimed high :) Haters gonna hate and all that jazz.
The "vitriol" is mainly things that I read on Twitter inspired by articles like these. I am not going to link to them, but folks can choose to believe me or not.
"It took Picplz six months and two platforms to reach 100,000 users. Instagram acquired that many users within the first week of its launch."
It's a weird, twisted reality we live where 6 months is considered too long to reach 100,000 users.
When I read articles such as these written by the media, I always keep in mind that we entrepreneurs are the men in the arena. It's easy to second guess, and criticize when you're sitting comfortably with zero financial, and emotional risk.
> It's a weird, twisted reality we live where 6 months is considered too long to reach 100,000 users.
I think it's not so much considered too long as considered too long when a direct competitor does it in a week.
If one platform is growing at an explosive rate and the other one is struggling to get users, there's not much you can say beyond "second platform is struggling (comparatively)"
that's true. It's not a bad thing to acquire that many users in a slower rate (just not too slow). You don't want everyone using your product in the beginning when it potentially has warts and all.
I admire you for your tenacity and humility. It's clear to me that your best days are yet to come. I think anyone, whether trying to build the next "big" thing, to the folks like me just trying to build a "lifestyle" company in their free time between child-rearing, can learn a lot from you. Godspeed.
It's depressing reading articles about yourself or things you know personally, seeing how wrong they are, and then realizing that's par for the course -- most journalism is just inaccurate, since the consumers don't actually need actionable intelligence, just entertainment.
Dalton is awesome. Don't know him personally, but he spoke at Hacker School two years ago(?), maybe more. He speaks the truth, here and otherwise. I ran out of the auditorium afterwards like it was on fire ... or inspired.
Interesting side note about the article is VC funds tracking 'developers' early, for me at least.
I read the article as being unnecessarily harsh towards picplz to bolster the 'fumble' that was Andreesen Horowitz's 4,000% return on instagram. This article is definitely a non-article and could easily be changed around to say "Andreesen Horowitz has done it again!".
You're missing an obvious implication of the article, which paints a stark picture of winners vs. losers. Even when talking about Imeem it described it as being "buried" by MySpace - a word you usually use to describe a loser, not a winning sale.
Journalists, especially those writing for the NY Times, choose their words very carefully and are 100% deliberate in their conclusions, even if only implied through artful diction and innuendo.
This is techcrunch-style gossip writ large and it names names. You think NYT isn't doing this on purpose? We all read it didn't we?
The article was spinning a story, the story is that a VC passed on a big win. It's about Andreessen-Horowitz, not PicPlz. They didn't even try to explain why Instagram took off and PicPlz didn't.
> I say this to the hn comminity: never be afraid of failure
It's an important lesson. So important that a prestigious fee-paying girls school in England is having lessons in failing, and avoiding the fear of failure.
EDIT: This post is in no way an insult to the parent comment. This post is meant to show that fear of failure is a problem, and it is being tackled at a very good school. Normally I ignore the downvotes, but this post is toggling up and down a fair bit. Reading my original post I guess I understand that it could be seen as being an insult. I apologise for that.
Hi Dalton, why do you think picplz's user acquisition rate falls behind Instagram's one-platform by a few factor? If travel back in time, what would you do differently to win?
There is SO much arm-chair quarterbacking it's sickening! You and your team have done an outstanding job. HATERS GONNA HATE! conversely ... PLAYERS GONNA PLAY!
Comments
Anyone reading this article needs to remember to never be afraid of putting yourself out there because you are afraid of failure.
I saw the market first, I created picplz, and I went for it. I was a huge believe in the mobile photo sharing opportunity, and I went for it with all of my heart. Clearly, picplz didn't win, but I have ZERO shame or regret for doing my best.
When I read articles like these, which are about myself, my company and people that I know well, I can't help but feel vitriol aimed at me for DARING to create, launch and raise funding for picplz. I am not clear on what exactly people want, an apology for trying?
The fact is, I saw the writing on the wall that we wouldn't win early and pivoted out of photo sharing which I had ~90% of my series A cash still in the bank. It certainly seems like that was the right move, but all of this press makes it look like pivoting was the wrong call(?) The press I read is written in such a way that it assumed that the A16Z investment is dead and my entire company should just be written off to zero today. That is bullshit. If I started to take press like this too seriously I might as well just dissolve my company and stop coming into work.
I say this to the hn comminity: never be afraid of failure. No one knows what will happen. All of this arm-chair quarterbacking is a waste of time. Stop reading this kind of crap and instead put your energy into doing your best work. Sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose, but if you give yourself the opportunity to win enough times, you WILL be successful.
I'd like to add that all of us at AH are very proud of Dalton and his team, and we are highly excited about the new plan (including all the parts that aren't public yet :-).
First off, people like you are my heroes. Please keep on keeping on.
As to what the article said, I think you may be taking this too personally (although it sounds like you're referencing the media in general, and I don't know how much vitriol you may have had to absorb).
"Picplz has languished. After shopping the product around for possible cash deals last year, its founders finally ditched Picplz in July, choosing instead to spin it off to Sporcle, a maker of online trivia quizzes."
To me it sounds like basically saying "they did a pivot", but in language that an average reader can digest. Probably using a word other than 'ditched' would be more tactful though. I guess when one aims high taking punches now and then is part of the game, but in the end it doesn't mean a whole lot; other than well, you aimed high :) Haters gonna hate and all that jazz.
Thank you for the kind words.
The "vitriol" is mainly things that I read on Twitter inspired by articles like these. I am not going to link to them, but folks can choose to believe me or not.
"It took Picplz six months and two platforms to reach 100,000 users. Instagram acquired that many users within the first week of its launch."
It's a weird, twisted reality we live where 6 months is considered too long to reach 100,000 users.
When I read articles such as these written by the media, I always keep in mind that we entrepreneurs are the men in the arena. It's easy to second guess, and criticize when you're sitting comfortably with zero financial, and emotional risk.
> It's a weird, twisted reality we live where 6 months is considered too long to reach 100,000 users.
I think it's not so much considered too long as considered too long when a direct competitor does it in a week.
If one platform is growing at an explosive rate and the other one is struggling to get users, there's not much you can say beyond "second platform is struggling (comparatively)"
that's true. It's not a bad thing to acquire that many users in a slower rate (just not too slow). You don't want everyone using your product in the beginning when it potentially has warts and all.
I admire you for your tenacity and humility. It's clear to me that your best days are yet to come. I think anyone, whether trying to build the next "big" thing, to the folks like me just trying to build a "lifestyle" company in their free time between child-rearing, can learn a lot from you. Godspeed.
It's depressing reading articles about yourself or things you know personally, seeing how wrong they are, and then realizing that's par for the course -- most journalism is just inaccurate, since the consumers don't actually need actionable intelligence, just entertainment.
If journalists knew how to start Companies, they would not write about it but just do it. Please keep on keeping on. You are the real deal.
History is written by the winners...I hope you can focus on being the winner in your market, and then tell your story the way you would want ;-)
Dalton is awesome. Don't know him personally, but he spoke at Hacker School two years ago(?), maybe more. He speaks the truth, here and otherwise. I ran out of the auditorium afterwards like it was on fire ... or inspired.
Interesting side note about the article is VC funds tracking 'developers' early, for me at least.
Do you have a link to a video of the talk? I'm guessing this wasn't his 2010 Startup School talk about why not to do a music startup.
I think you're reading something into the article that isn't there. I saw no vitriol aimed at picplz.
I read the article as being unnecessarily harsh towards picplz to bolster the 'fumble' that was Andreesen Horowitz's 4,000% return on instagram. This article is definitely a non-article and could easily be changed around to say "Andreesen Horowitz has done it again!".
You're missing an obvious implication of the article, which paints a stark picture of winners vs. losers. Even when talking about Imeem it described it as being "buried" by MySpace - a word you usually use to describe a loser, not a winning sale.
Journalists, especially those writing for the NY Times, choose their words very carefully and are 100% deliberate in their conclusions, even if only implied through artful diction and innuendo.
This is techcrunch-style gossip writ large and it names names. You think NYT isn't doing this on purpose? We all read it didn't we?
The article was spinning a story, the story is that a VC passed on a big win. It's about Andreessen-Horowitz, not PicPlz. They didn't even try to explain why Instagram took off and PicPlz didn't.
> I say this to the hn comminity: never be afraid of failure
It's an important lesson. So important that a prestigious fee-paying girls school in England is having lessons in failing, and avoiding the fear of failure.
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-16879336)
EDIT: This post is in no way an insult to the parent comment. This post is meant to show that fear of failure is a problem, and it is being tackled at a very good school. Normally I ignore the downvotes, but this post is toggling up and down a fair bit. Reading my original post I guess I understand that it could be seen as being an insult. I apologise for that.
Hi Dalton, why do you think picplz's user acquisition rate falls behind Instagram's one-platform by a few factor? If travel back in time, what would you do differently to win?
There is SO much arm-chair quarterbacking it's sickening! You and your team have done an outstanding job. HATERS GONNA HATE! conversely ... PLAYERS GONNA PLAY!
I'm interested in hearing how Instagram won, if you have the time.
ultimate boss level