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Comment by pbiggar | Hacker News Reader

I'm Paul Biggar, one of the founders.

There's a lot of speculation and reading between the lines going on here. There is really no information to go off, and jumping to conclusions based on that email is a little unfair. (By contrast, the journalists to whom that email was addressed had tons of context.)

I'm in the middle of writing a "what went wrong" piece, which I'll link to here, but I'll ask you guys to hold off judgement until then.

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I apologize if my comments sounded like I was jumping to conclusions. With respect to the passion dying, I was just giving an example of something that happened in my past experience. By no means was I hinting that is what happened to you. I just wanted to make that point that people can't blame the founders, especially when they don't know the full story.

I upvoted you and I agree people should not make comments with just half of the story. But come on this is the internet. It's near real time now, and people will not wait for someone to tell their side before they can come to a conclusion. You guys should have taken a day to handle the outcome before sending the email. That being said, I think you guys had something going. Good luck on your next projects.

I don't think you have any clue what really went wrong. This was doomed the moment you decided to switch to Ruby on Rails. Yeah, I remember that thing you (or maybe your co-founder) wrote about that on here. When I read that idiocy, I instantly knew that this company would fold. Any startup with a founder so completely clueless as to make that type of decision is doomed to failure. And this has nothing to do with Rails or Django or whatever. It has everything to do with your line of reasoning for making that switch. That type of thinking is indicative of a far greater a problem. It shows you lack the basic ability to look at situations and interpret them correctly.

dude, seriously? honeymoon right after launch = guaranteed fail OR I want a "lifestyle business." How did you guys pass the PG sniff test??? #YCadmissionFAIL

I don't mean to be a total dick, but when you're doing a startup and OTHER PEOPLE ARE DEPENDING ON YOU, going on a vacation of any sort right after you launch is just plain irresponsible.

People like you give the rest of us who are busting our ass and putting everything on the line to make our companies work a bad name.

Some things are more important than money, companies, startups etc.

Don't be so quick to pass judgement if you don't know the full story.

It's not the fact that he left the money/business for the honeymoon. It's the fact that he, presumably, screwed investors, his cofounder, and their customers by doing so, all people who were relying on him in some manner or other.

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