I expect Matt will have more personal bad experiences, but the most well-publicized one goes approximately as follows:
- Aaron applies to YC, starts Infogami with a co-founder who drops out (presumably because of Aaron's special interpersonal sparkles).
- Aaron launches Infogami, with a promise of a new feature every day.
- Aaron complains for a long time about how he doesn't have a co-founder, and then merges with Reddit.
- Aaron abandons Infogami (pissing off all its users, including me), and then proceeds not to do anything at Reddit, to the chagrin of the Reddits, who just effectively gave him a bunch of their stock. Aaron nevertheless has time for nauseatingly many melodramatic blog entries.
- Reddit gets bought, and Aaron gets an equal share of the spoils.
- Aaron cries in the bathroom (literally), and then quits Wired, the acquiring company, by just not showing up to work. (And posts a suicidal blog entry, and proceeds to delete it.)
- Aaron does an interview in which he claims to have been part of Reddit from the beginning, pissing absolutely everyone off.
Mine wasn't that bad, but it did involve me being told I had an apartment in Cambridge locked up, only to find less than two weeks before Y C began that I didn't.
I think thats a great reason for the Reddit guys to be pissed off at him - I just didn't realize anyone on this forum has had personal interactions with him.
Agreed, so what if his startup fails and he doesn't release a feature per day as he promised? That's what startups (usually) do. They fail. Shouldn't hold that against him personally.
As far as the reddit guys go, there's a reason you're not supposed to do a startup with your closest friends. Aren't you supposed to hate your partner to some degree by the end? I know I did... But I understand that to be normal so I just relax and don't let that anger bother me outside of work.
What I find amusing is that, barring personal interactions, I put Matt and Aaron in the same category - they both have annoying and arrogant internet personas. The only difference is that I believe Aaron is a very talented programmer. The only thing I believe about Matt is that he is an above average poker player. On a personal level, both of them are irrelevant to me.
Good for them. If you're pissing people off, you're probably doing something right.
The funny part is, for most people here, Aaron and Matt aren't reading your blog -- but you're reading theirs! This is like a Denial-Of-Service attack against their competition by inducing them to waste time they could be spending on their own startup instead reading about someone else's.
Id software was a master at this. Everyone was so busy playing Quake, Quake II, etc. that they weren't working on their own games. Did you know actual celebrities are horrible at recognizing other celebrities? They are too busy making movies to read celebrity gossip magazines.
Most of what I said was inferred from the Reddit discussion resulting from the aforementioned interview, and most of the content in that discussion came from people who were actually involved. So, maybe I inferred wrongly; which things weren't true?
- Aaron applies to YC, starts Infogami with a co-founder who drops out (presumably because of Aaron's special interpersonal sparkles).
- Aaron launches Infogami, with a promise of a new feature every day.
- Aaron complains for a long time about how he doesn't have a co-founder, and then merges with Reddit.
- Aaron abandons Infogami (pissing off all its users, including me), and then proceeds not to do anything at Reddit, to the chagrin of the Reddits, who just effectively gave him a bunch of their stock. Aaron nevertheless has time for nauseatingly many melodramatic blog entries. - Reddit gets bought, and Aaron gets an equal share of the spoils.
- Aaron cries in the bathroom (literally), and then quits Wired, the acquiring company, by just not showing up to work. (And posts a suicidal blog entry, and proceeds to delete it.)
- Aaron does an interview in which he claims to have been part of Reddit from the beginning, pissing absolutely everyone off.