[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.