[approxim8ion]

Ten years later this company, its product, the money that went into it, and most evidence of its existence barring this post and another article covering it, seems to have vanished into the aether.

The author of course seems to be doing fine at some VC firm. Just so you know what kind of behaviors Silicon Valley rewards.

[georgespencer]

> What kind of behaviours Silicon Valley rewards

Introspection? Honesty? Reflecting on one’s mistakes? Personal growth?

[hitekker]

The author is not answering questions anymore so here's a link to the 2014 expose https://newrepublic.com/article/119350/amicus-app-how-tech-i....

> In plain English, this roughly amounted to saying: I, [Seth Bannon], have lost most of your money and my employees due to a combination of incompetence and evasiveness. I have no prospect of raising more capital, and my only chance of generating new revenue is a product that’s still unproven. Nonetheless, I’d like your blessing to keep going. It was preposterous pitch. But something strange happened after he made it: The investors more or less acceded. They weren’t going to kick in more money, but neither would they force Bannon out.

> ... No surprise, then, that at least one investor, Dave McClure of a Y Combinator-like accelerator called 500 Startups, was practically blasé in response to Bannon’s email. “[I]f you need an office in NYC to work out of, we probably have some extra space,” McClure wrote, cc’ing the group. McClure said he hoped Bannon had “enough trust / bandwidth / support to keep rolling.”

My take is that the apology in the OP is performative. The lessons are weak, both in an ethical sense and a business sense. But the words are a good shroud for their failures; it's a "learning experience" that they used to pursue a career in venture capital.

[georgespencer]

This is useful additional context, thanks.

> My take is that the apology in the OP is performative. The lessons are weak, both in an ethical sense and a business sense.

I am naturally inclined to agree, which is why I have to remind myself to keep trying to be optimistic about such things.

[approxim8ion]

Move fast, break things, pretend to be sorry about breaking things, move fast away from the broken things, keep at it as long as there's someone else left holding the bag.