How did the founder manage to build a company of 70 employees without a product and securing 30 million fundings after 2 years of not really showing anything? And to top that of, it didn't look like the founder has any track record before this company.<p>I'm not interested in mocking or bashing the company, I just wanted to know the possible mechanism that would result in such ... unexpected scenario. Is hustling really that effective and I have been underestimated that all along?
I feel like this needs to be incorporated into an episode of Silicon Valley.<p>The bit about not actually having a real product in production reminded me of a recent episode of the show where it was mentioned that sometimes it is better to not have a real product and revenue because then valuations can be blown way out of proportion in the frenzy without any real revenue benchmarks to base them on.
<p><pre><code> After four years of work and ridicule, early employees at the company
are said to have been actively encouraging a sale, even if it didn’t
come with a massive acquisition price. Sources say that many employees
didn’t have much to gain anyways. Duplan had offered only tiny shreds
of equity, convincing hires that Clinkle could be a billion-dollar
company and their share could turn into tons of money.
</code></pre>
A lesson I've learned the hard way is to never let your sense of greed impair your judgment, especially around the relative certainty of success of a startup. A stupendously well-funded startup indicates only that the founders are good at fundraising, not that they're good at building a product or a company.
<i>"Yet suddenly, the startup was the talk of the town when it managed to raise $25 million in seed funding in June 2013 from top investors including Peter Thiel, Andreessen Horowitz, Marc Benioff, Jim Bryer, Accel Ventures and Index Partners."</i><p>These guys are all supposed to be amazing predictors of the future. Who really cares whether payment data is transmitted via ultrasound, bluetooth, NFC, or over the wifi/cellular data connection? How does adding ultrasound to the mix shape the future, as all of these guys claim they want to do?<p>I blame the investors in this case more than Duplan. There are 70 people that wouldn't have been hired and fired if those investors hadn't written this apparently very immature 21 year old kid a $25M check for some hokey technology. Duplan clearly had a knack for communicating a believable grand vision, but little ability to deliver on it. Investors at this level - allegedly some of the most sophisticated VC's on the planet - are supposed to be able to identify people like this.
I worked for a company where this happened twice in three years.<p>I joined the company only to discover that the entire development team (sans one guy) had quit. We built up a new team, put up with an amazing amount of mismanagement, gas lighting, etc. For example: not only would they not make a spec, they wouldn't give us details about the features they wanted. We'd ask questions and they would be ignored. Then months later they'd chew us out for not building things they had never even mentioned wanting. And they installed an ex-navy seal who had 20 years in the military, a couple months n the business world and no understanding of (nor respect for) technology. He started finding people to hound out of the company and get fired-- because he always needed a scapegoat.<p>We put up with this for a year, and then all of us, quit again. (well the one guy who was there from the beginning is still there, and a couple people who don't have easy mobility are still there, moistly because they had been on the job only a month or two.)<p>And now they have a new team. Things have not improved at all... but so long as they can continue to hire people they will.<p>Management has decided that the engineering teams that quit "sucked" and that they're the reason there are "problems" today (like not implementing features that were never requested, etc.)<p>So long as they can keep hiring people, they're doing so.,<p>This while the glass door reviews are really terrible.<p>Most people don't read glass door.<p>So that's a lesson: Read glass door. Don't expect that even you and a bunch of others leaving will end the company.
Reminds me of this...
<a href="https://twitter.com/mrgan/status/384780273721696256" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/mrgan/status/384780273721696256</a>
I'm glad seven employees decided to quit a rude/poor boss. Although I'm only basing 'rude/poor' based on quotes from the article, not from personal experience, I think it might have some merit. Props to them.
For those who want a little more information about Clinkle's corporate culture, check out their hackathon music video. (yes, you read that right)<p><a href="https://vimeo.com/99884205" rel="nofollow">https://vimeo.com/99884205</a>
"After approaching Google about a potential deal, a team of Clinkle’s top engineers visited Google to go through rigorous testing to see if the startup was worth acquiring. Sources say Google declined to issue an offer." I have a mental issue of a line of engineers on tables undergoing colonoscopies.
On a slightly (un)related note, clinkle.com doesn't even appear for me (based in SF) in the first page for a Google search on 'clinkle' <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=clinkle" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?q=clinkle</a>
<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-story-of-clinkle-2014-4" rel="nofollow">http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-story-of-clinkle-2014-...</a><p>> “It’s not the kid’s fault,” McCarthy said, defending his flustered boss. McCarthy sometimes took over for Duplan during the weekly all-hands meetings on Fridays, correcting him and referring to him as “kid.”<p>Its a bad play to join any company whose founder and chief executive is at his first leadership post (first real job?).
> While Clinkle’s brand had been tarnished by reports of its internal troubles, the companies were said to eye the variable reward system as a way to differentiate their mobile wallets and get users to demand merchants get on board.<p>Apple, Google, Amazon, Samsung and Visa can't develop their own variable rewards systems?
Going to sound a bit cynical here, but really isn't $30 million just spare change to a VC?<p>To us we see $30 million and think "that's a ton of money!! how could he get that funding?" but to the VC it's like "Here's a bit of spare change, maybe you'll make something out of this, maybe not".<p>From that viewpoint alone I could understand why a VC would fund this. I mean, could you guarantee that it's NOT going to be some breakout hit? What if you did pass on that $30 million investment and the company did actually turn out to be valuable? It's easy to say post-hoc once the company has been stupid that the VCs ought to have known about it, but it looks different if you think back to what the VCs must have known when they were approached.
Ok, I might be an ass for saying this but I find the fact that on their careers page literally everything is open now is funny is a righteous sort of way.
I knew this was going to be a grand failure by simple indications. Their "app" was a total waste of bytes on my phone, even for something as simple, it was buggy and wasteful. Also, their verification system was broken. Never got an SMS and I exceeded their limit of 3 (cheap bastards). I've sent numerous emails, never got a response. A real startup never does this!
Amazing that you can raise that kind of seed money without a working prototype. They must have been claiming some serious IP assets.<p>Also, $25 million seems like a lot for convertible notes. Each one probably didn't exceed a few hundred thousand a piece. This is an excellent example of how once you convince a couple key investors to join, there are dozens waiting behind to follow.
what's obvious to me is that<p>capital is available and flowing towards people who shouldn't really have it.<p>but overall it is working for the smart investors.<p>but really, people are throwing money around for crazy returns.