[Meai]

I have no idea why someone would post something like this, and I can only attribute it to complete lack of responsibility and quite frankly: lack of common sense. Do you want your company to fail? Do you want it to perform 2% less than before? Because that's what you are doing right now.

[aberman]

I haven't met the guy, but now I like him. And I am pulling for him. So he has accomplished at least that.

And don't worry, his investors knew that he had no idea what he was doing when they wired him the money. If they didn't, it's their own fault. At least he knows what he doesn't know, which is more than I can say for most people.

[hamner]

F--- that. He approaches his position with humility, an understanding of what he doesn't know, and a desire to learn it. Instead of reveling in whatever success his startup has had, he's candidly looking forward to learn what he needs to grow his business.

[Meai]

Which he should do in private.

[18pfsmt]

I simply disagree. I believe that good companies will head in this direction of transparency. We all know that all humans have faults, and acknowledging them upfront goes a long way with some like myself.

TBH, you sound like my 75 yr old father that ran a $2B business for the last 23 years, and I guess I hope that attitude goes away with our elders.

[billforsternz]

Puzzling, you make it sound like running a $2B business for 23 years is a bad thing.

[devspade]

I think it takes some guts to admit publicly the self doubt that every founder probably struggles with at one point or another. So many people out there are documenting their successes and triumphs or maybe doing post postmortems on their mistakes. It's a refreshingly different and honest perspective.

[daleharvey]

Do you honestly believe a single person is going to stop using svpply because they read that the founder / ceo is realistic about the challenges coming his way?

[Meai]

I have no idea, and that's my point. I think it will have unforseeable effects. Interaction with future business partners, friends, talks with possible employees who read it and decide not to apply. Everything is coloured from now on.

[daleharvey]

I agree its impossible to know for certain what effects this will have, but I definitely dont think they will all be negative.

Its a slow transition but its becoming acceptable for business to not operate as if they were big brother, and not all communication needs to be double speak, sure the CEO of goldman & sachs isnt going to get away with a blog post like this, but a young bookmarking startup, the only negative reactions are from people saying "this isnt the done way", with actual reason for it being negative.

[yuhong]

Yea, the illusion that celebrities are perfect needs to die. It dates back to the days of "legacy" PR which was based on controlling the meesage. Welcome to the PR 2.0 age (one name for it).

[Unseelie]

you cannot make the argument that unforseeable effects are patently bad. You're contradicting your terms, and arguing that you have an inkling that it would be bad, rather than, possibly, good.

[Meai]

Risk is bad in business, anything unforseeable should be avoided. Do you really want to stake the success of your business on luck?

[Unseelie]

You say "Risk is bad in business", here, on a forum dedicated to startups? Where our conversation hinges around venture capital investments and quit your day job gambles?

Yeah, some, perhaps even many, risks get you sunk. On the other side of the coin, nothing we discuss here would exist if people didn't take risks with their businesses.

The world would be so different if no-one took risks. I daresay we wouldn't be making tools, have a knowledge of agriculture, or even have spread out of Africa.

[rhizome]

So are you saying that leaving risks unspoken means they don't exist? The risks in this case are there regardless of whether the guy talks about them or not.

[c0riander]

Despite the downvotes, I actually think this comment is quite a useful viewpoint. Posting something like this is a risky thing to do, and I'd be curious to know either in this situation down the road or other similar ones whether this gambit pays off. Does the goodwill-via-brutal-honesty outweigh potential loss of consumer/employee confidence?