| Once TypePad got going, my impression of Ben and Mena Trott changed for the worse. There was the incident where Mena called out someone for being an "asshole" at SXSW Lol, I'm kinda surprised people still remember that, it was me she called out. It was at Le Blogs (which was her own conference, surprisingly). For me SixApart failed because the founders lacked vision as they were not entrepreneurial types (your outline is spot on) and their success was all very accidental (and somewhat opportunistic by the folks that put money in to the company). The best thing Ben and Mena had going for them was was that they were normal folks who represented the community, just like Matt Mullenweg over at WordPress. But the money people sidelined them rather than letting them find their own voice. Switching Movable Type from open source to proprietary and then ultimately back to open source killed the project and in many ways is what made me move over to WordPress. Finally, the company was awkward at business. You are right, I was a customer at the time of the incident (I was responsible for a large UK broadcaster's purchase of Movable Type) but the product (when MT was proprietary) had a crazy price point of $3000 (roughly, I think) - too cheap for enterprise and too expensive for small bloggers. It's a shame and I feel sorry for those concerned despite what happened 5 years ago. |