I met a group of 6 living social employees in 2011 at a local meetup. They spoke so negatively about their company AND their partners/customers. This wasn't just run of the mill complaining about work or customers, it was really vile and made me sick. I vowed to never use their service and encouraged others to not use them. Why am I posting this? Because it is fundamental to any startups culture to be careful about how they present themselves to the rest of the tech community and the world.
> As executives reflect on LivingSocial’s fatal moment, all point to a security breach in April 2013. Hackers gained access to the account information of 50 million subscribers, and LivingSocial forced all of them to reset their passwords. About 20 percent never came back.<p>I don't know how they came to this number, but at least it's something to point to when the c-level executives decide password security is something that they can just skip doing. Obviously part of that 20% is are just dead accounts but still, something to show next time you're in this situation.
> As the longtime manager put it: “When I look at LivingSocial’s legacy, more than anything else, we basically gave a lot of people their MBAs in scaling a company very fast.”<p>Oh nice, the people at the company that grew too quickly learned how to do it again. Tight.
They raised a billion dollars, were valued at one time at 6 billion, and in the end were worth $0. Their lasting impact is other smaller startups who might or might not ever become anything. What a strange world we live in.
The key takeaway I've got is that sometimes it's hard to see when you're inside the fad.<p>Interesting that the VC (Jeremy Liew) is the also behind Snapchat. You win some, you lose some, and in Venture investing, the wins take care of the losses.