Comment by jasonmcalacanis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jasonmcalacanis | Hacker News Reader

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jasonmcalacanis

1. Mahalo is a top 200 site, over 10M uniques and operationally profitable.

2. Open Angel Forum has been hosting in five cities in the first four months of 2010.

3. I've done seven angel investments including gdgt.com, gowalla.com and blippy.com.

4. TechCrunch50 has made millions of dollars, but more importantly launched amazing startups like Mint.com, Powerset and yammer.

5. This Week in Startups about to have it's one-year anniversary and advertising has been sold out for two years. Also, ThisWeekIn.com is closing a small angel round and have almost 10 shows.

6. ON the board of Savings.com, GDGT and another company not yet announced.

I'd list ten more things... but it would start to get a little silly.

I'm getting a lot done these days, but you are correct I'm far from graceful. I'm blunt and to the point... sometimes I say things in private, or public, that I shouldn't.

A private thing that should have stayed private is now public. Yawn. There is more to the story, but I'm not going to comment HR issues publicly--that would not be professional. Part of me would love to unload however.

best j

1. you could be #3, I couldn't care less, mahalo does not exactly contribute, it just rehashes.

2. good for you

3. The only one I've heard of is 'blippy', and that's only because of some fairly sloppy coding there.

4. great. I'm fairly sure they would have made it without your personal contribution though, you can't possibly take personal credit for that, just like Paul Graham doesn't take personal credit for dropbox or any one of the other YC investments.

And so on. The list would indeed be silly if you continued.

You're one hell of an entrepreneur, I'll give you that but you're way out of line in how you treat people and the basic business model of mahalo simply sucks.

Do you really believe that even if such email should stay private that that absolves you of what you wrote there?

I used to look up to you, that has changed dramatically in the last 18 months or so.

And to bring the point further: no one cares what you accomplish if you act like a total asshat while doing it. Mussolini and some trains come to mind.

Isn't that being a little harsh? I don't really know anything about this Calcianis guy (until now I thought Mahalo was a brand of shoes), but has he done anything to inspire your ire apart from writing one jerkish email?

> has he done anything to inspire your ire apart from writing one jerkish email?

It's been an ongoing thing, mostly related to his company being pretty spammy, but there are other episodes mixed in as well: http://www.google.com/search?q=site:news.ycombinator.com+cal...

Mussolini and some trains come to mind.

... and we've reached the Godwin point!

(considering Fascism as a proxy for Nazism)

http://www.snopes.com/history/govern/trains.asp

Thank you, at least now I've learnt something from this silly drama thread :)

The use of "asshat" made my day.

Agreed.

I don't really get where you're coming from. I have no opinion on this one way or the other but I don't see a point in messing with someone here. I think that his company makes a profit is a sign of something good for society at least by some measure. Mahalo isn't Goldman Sachs so to say he's not contributing anything is a bit hard to say from afar. I doubt his employees feel like they're wasting their lives. Maybe they are but I'm not sure anyone from this far could suggest that to them. They know better than we do.

Being a part of something bigger than yourself is something to be proud of. I'm a part of a lot of teams and organizations and while I don't credit for their success (or failures) I might point to them as evidence that I'm at least keeping busy. Promoting startups is a noble endeavor as far as I'm concerned. I'm very inspired by how many people want to encourage people who want to start something of their own. It's something anyone who does it should be proud of.

"A private thing that should have stayed private is now public."

Funny... Sam Odio thought the same thing.

http://sam.bluwiki.com/blog/2010/03/confession-i-was-one-who...

Touché, I'd completely forgotten about that little gem.

You already have been commenting on HR issues publicly. Why stop now?

No, to be professional would mean not sending that private email in the first place. It actually makes me wonder how you treat your customers if they piss you off.

Way to toot your own horn. 37prime is clearly quite right about the attention seeking part too.

I think he's allowed to toot his own horn in response to a comment suggesting that he hasn't done anything worthwhile in a decade.

When the work speaks for itself, no tooting is required.

Whether you support the guy or not you can't put him in a Catch-22.

'You have done nothing' 'I did XYZ' 'Stop promoting yourself. The work should speak for itself'

...

I'm sure there's more to the story, but you gain nothing by being an arsehole to someone who's put their time and effort into one of your businesses. Even if someone's a grade A walking disaster area, there's more to lose than gain by being shitty with them.

Still, your business, your rules.

Regardless of what you may have accomplished, your handling if this guys resignation was incredibly immature. You sounded like a petulant 3 year old.

Blippy? Isn't that the incompetents that just lost of customer credit card numbers and then blew it off like it was no big deal?

There's something to be proud of.....

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