Does it needs to be asked? Isn't it transparency in operations and responsibility to people who believed and invested before in terms of effort or money? It is unbelievable, if they are hidden/undisclosed to remaining stakeholders.
>>> Why so many globally reaching, internet based, in every home in the world companies think that they absolutely must be positioned in the mecca of startupdom
Why people join twitter or facebook or any other virtual social network? I think both have similar answers.
Almost anywhere in Europe and the US. If people are out at night drinking and there aren't easily accessible public toilets, then there really isn't much of an option for non-public urination.
It's not when you go to Germany and the public toilets you find cost money to use.
Mind you, at least you get clean,working toilets for your money, I was rather disgruntled in Brussels when I paid a euro to use the toilet and there was urine all over the floors and half the urinals were out of order.
Compared to stripe[0], balanced[1] took very less funding as per the data. Reading from the comments here, their service seems to be liked by users.
In that case, may be they should have looked into funding aspect rather than shutting down and funding might have helped them to become large,independent player as they wished.
Since YC backed, funding should not have been much difficult either. So it is surprising,seeing from outside. Am I missing anything here?
So let's not make this story about Balanced, but let me spin you a yarn of a totally hypothetical company named FooCorp, which has a plan to disrupt a sclerotic two-sided marketplace.
FooCorp has a team of talented product people working for it. They've got a gleam in their eye and a story on how they're going to attack a ridiculously large market. FooCorp easily sails to an angel round sized in the high six or low seven figures based on this.
FooCorp then hires, say, a half-dozen engineers to help their founders build things out. These engineers have AmaGooBookSoft pedigrees and cost $8k apiece... every two weeks.
FooCorp's product is quite beloved by early users. They accelerate hiring and marketing. Things are going swimmingly.
The founders of FooCorp, having the best of advice from mentors and friends, start trying to put together an A round, which will be millions or tens of millions of dollars raised from professional investors.
"People love us."
"How many?"
"... Well, a growing number."
"What's the monthly growth rate."
"We've got a wonderful graph."
"Kid, I'm a professional at this and have heard every possible dodge. Give me numbers. What's your marketplace volume?"
"Millions."
"NOT A RESPONSIVE ANSWER."
"... Two million."
"Per what?"
"... Total."
"Cool. OK, I think we have what we need here. Keep us apprised of your progress. We really like you and the team." which is VC for "We will not invest but if you want to give us a free no-obligation option on investing because you're new at this then we'll take it."
Seed is raised on the dream. A rounds are raised on the metrics. If you don't have the metrics, you don't raise an A round. If you've hired in the expectation of an A round, and you don't either hit profitability before your money runs out or hit metrics which justify an A round, your company unceremoniously dies. This is by far the most common outcome.
This is sort of the talk-of-town right now, generally phrased as "Series A Crunch."
I guess it may have been too late in the end to get further funding but it they had raised something like Stripe's $100m rather than their $1.55m things could have been different. Not sure what this says about startup strategy - maybe bootstrap if you can but if you raise, raise big?
Wow I am shocked to see how little money Balanced raised. Considering their pedigree and name recognition I would have expected a lot more. They must have either not been interested in raising funds or had really bad financials that scared off any Series A prospects. Hopefully we get some kind of post-mortem once the dust has settled.
We expect freedom and transparency in all aspects across the world irrespective of personal/social costs associated with it. Isn't it? So why exception in this case? Just because it is unwritten and some sort of convention inducing hypothetical fear? Won't it help future employees from joining such toxic work places? Just a view point.
>>> Oh, and be sure to get your regular work done too.
In a fixed day, is it possible to do regular work and also extra projects?
I think, if offered solution appears reasonable to management,then some of daily responsibilities need to be shifted to remaining workforce temporarily till that pilot work gets completed.
If you visit a doctor with a problem, will you go along with possible solutions or you will point out problem and expect solution from doctor?
If you are QA engineer, you will point out issues with the tool but making reasonable and appropriate solution is developer's job. Is n't it?
You can point out the problems with your car but you cannot fix them and may be mechanic/engineer can offer solutions.
So I disagree that people should not point out issues if they do not know solutions.
CEO's need not have to solve all on their own and they can route them to appropriate experts for solutions. If that is not possible to solve immediately, offer a time line. If CEO still think, that is not problem/issue at all, let him offer convincing reason. So we have multiple options here rather than suppressing discussion.
Many managers use this type of logic to suppress debate,dissent,discussion ...etc and gradually people shut their mouths even if problem is right in front of their eyes. I think this is avoidable.
I mean, you gotta do Python == Harry Potter for the Parselmouth joke.
Ruby is a language which eschews strict rules in order to be more chummy and get more done, but has a dark side (with monkey-patching and less discipline than Python). Ruby is clearly Sirius Black.
As far as I know, most of the Indian food is not "fast food" category i.e. you need to have patience and heart to prepare and it takes real effort and you need to have patience to sit and eat comfortably rather than eating on the way or eating while walking ...etc. It naturally helps health.
This may or may not be the case with other cuisines.
Does it needs to be asked? Isn't it transparency in operations and responsibility to people who believed and invested before in terms of effort or money? It is unbelievable, if they are hidden/undisclosed to remaining stakeholders.