Layoffs at stealth payment startup Clinkle | Hacker News Reader

Layoffs at stealth payment startup Clinkle

finance.fortune.cnn.com

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I think this is their big problem:

https://twitter.com/mrgan/status/384780273721696256

—"I'd like to, uh… "pay with clinkle."

—"Excuse me?"

—"Uh, pay with… clinkle?"

—"Do you need the key to the restroom?"

—"Pay… with… clinkle"

Apparently the culture there is pretty poor...

http://www.quora.com/Clinkle/What-is-it-like-to-work-at-Clin...

This may have no basis in reality, but I get a sense that there's an inverse relationship between the amount of hype a "stealth" startup gets and how successful it is. Or at the very least, if not directly inverse, the hype factor does little to actually promote success.

Color, Snocap, Asana, Cuil, etc. I feel like the more hype, the more stealthy, the worse they end up doing.

But I know this can't be right (or rather I hope not). Anyone have some good counter-examples (Hype => Win)?

Is Asana doing poorly?

I agree with the overall sentiment.

But there are some counter examples. At least from your list, I believe Asana is doing well. I don't remember there being as much hype with them, however.

From what I figure there are two benefits of widely publicized start ups:

1. Interest/brand recognition interesting tech naturally generates.

2. Attracting high profile employees that are interested in your product.

So going stealth assumes you got a handle on both of those problems. If not, I think, chances of success are slim.

I don't really have another example (maybe Diaspora, what are they up to?).

I hadn't seen Cuil in a long time and had to look it up. Looks like 2008 was the dawn of the Cuil theory, internet nostalgia feels odd.

IIRC, one of the Diaspora guys committed suicide a few years ago. :(

Diaspora isn't up to much lately. The project was pretty mismanaged from the start.

When do we drop the word "stealth"? I think raising a noteworthy funding round and having articles on CNN are both good indicators the startup is anything but.

Stealth is not a synonym for visibility, it's a synonym for zero revenue.

Really? I'd think "Broke" would be a much better word than Stealth. What, are they trying to sneak up on a dollar?

Oh wow, another startup has to lay people off. Why should we care every time a volatile organization realizes that they're not making money and can't afford to pay people? Isn't that the nature of working at startups?

These guys wasted a lot of money that could have been used to fund 100s of other companies. This should make the headlines as a case study, what went wrong and how to avoid it in the future. When a high profile well-funded startup goes south, there is a lesson to be learned for many people.

It would probably take over $100m to fund "100s of other companies".

The company is not going south. It brought in top-tier talent (Barry McCarthy ex-Netflix, namely) who reasonably concluded the company wasn't structured properly from a personnel standpoint. This doesn't appear to be another Color considering the company has plenty of cash, some quality executives and a functional product in a huge, well-known category (payments).

Perhaps he was talking about examples like YC funding "100s of companies" (500? 600?) with less than half of what Clinkle has raised.

Then that's a total mis-understanding of what YC is and how it compares to venture capital. And no one has really come very close to replicating YC despite quite a few attempts.

I actually interviewed with them...if you can call it that. I saw some negative post on here about them and decided to submit my resume for the heck of it.

They called me that day and I talked with HR and then we set up a ``technical'' interview with one of the head-honchos who has left. That interview lasted all of 5 minutes. He basically said we will have to hire someone who can interview you and the call ended in 5 minutes.

I don't have some special set of skills or anything...it was weird. Anyways...I had fun talking to people I read about in articles...

i don't know who you could possibly call a "head honcho" who has left...

Well his title started with the letter C. That's head honcho to me.

0 C-level employees have left. The only C-level employees are the CEO Lucas Duplan and the new COO, Barry McCarthy.

This Clinkle thing is going to end up being one of the big laughingstocks of the current bubble after it goes down and the bubble bursts. Similar to Pets.com and Webvan and such.

This actually gave me a flashback to a website I had completely forgotten about. Does anyone remember FuckedCompany.com?

Pud posts here occasionally. He spent quite a while running an ad exchange that spun out of Fucked Company. Lately he's been working on distribution for musicians.

I interviewed with them a few times last month, and then HR told me they were re - evaluating their employment needs.

And here I thought it was something I had said. ..

Wonder if having a difficult-to-enunciate name has anything to do with their lack of success?

I don't love the name but names are rarely make-or-break and the product is barely even live so "lack of success" is wholly inappropriate at this point. The company has had success in raising money and hiring top tier talent which is most important at this stage.

Hmm... I thought it was relatively decent to sound out, just like "wrinkle" but with a "cl" sound in front. I thought it was a play on "clink" like clinking glasses or making a brief connection in celebration.

why is this news? They are stealth

I'm going to be really annoyed if Clinkle winds up being a performance art project.

What part of life isn't performance art?

It's all subjective.

VCs are stupid.

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