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by striking 914 days ago
I am a very happy customer of Beeper. It's a hard task and they're basically doing it for free. And all of my chats are more or less in one app. I even have my iMessage access back today.

So I'll say that I get where you're coming from, but also, I believe him and Brad!
1 comments
Grustaf 913 days ago
That’s great for you, but none of that contradicts the fact that he is deluded. And also, they are not doing it for free, they have taken in and burnt millions of dollars of investor money.
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striking 913 days ago
What are you on about? You can go on Crunchbase right now and see they've only raised a seed round for $125k. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/beeper/company_finan...

Everything else came out of their pockets or from the super early customers who paid before launch, before they started offering their service for free.

In case you're unaware, these folks made Pebble. Their finances are probably fine.

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Grustaf 913 days ago
They have raised $16m, and I am very aware of who they are. I have talked extensively with both Eric and Brad. They are nice guys, but Beeper is definitely based on a delusion, Beeper Mini even more so.

Some people said it was 4D chess, a brilliant marketing ploy, but after 3-4 iterations I think we can all agree that was not the case. They genuinely believed that Beeper Mini would fly.

There is nothing sinister about being deluded, as a startup founder you might say it's a prerequisite. But nonetheless, they are.

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striking 913 days ago
When I'm wrong I'll admit I'm wrong, Pitchbook's data does differ.

I agree that they believed in Beeper Mini being a reasonable strategy, I'm not contesting that. It definitely wasn't just marketing, they really wanted to bring iMessage to everyone.

But I don't see how Beeper (or the other parts of Beeper Mini) are a delusion. Having a close-enough interface to all of the relevant chat networks is great. It works well and is relatively sustainable, especially if you're targeting the least common denominator of features plus a couple additional things.

iMessage isn't the reason I use Beeper. It's a very cool feature, but I paid for Beeper before I figured out how to register my phone number with iMessage, and I'd still have done so even if I never used iMessage at all.

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