I'm not interested in mocking or bashing the company, I just wanted to know the possible mechanism that would result in such ... unexpected scenario. Is hustling really that effective and I have been underestimated that all along?
There was a functional product in beta (as in: being used by non-employees) in early 2012. The issue was that Lucas was unable to secure appropriate relationships with banking partners such that the product could actually launch to the mass public until the end of 2014. Both attempted banking partners had extreme restrictions on the number of users allowed on the system until their legal teams signed off on it (due to the timely influx of new regulations from the CFPB), and both times this took more than 9 months to go through their bureaucracy.
Even while these public-launch-restrictions were in place, obviously it was possible to demo investors on the real product that moved real money between real bank accounts using real ultrasound technology to buy from real merchants, etc. These features were all also in beta tester hands.
As far as why investors were willing to invest in the product.. that's its own discussion that I don't feel like typing up at 6:30 on a Friday. Short answer: mobile payments were hot, the product really was pretty and functional, the go-to-market strategy (assuming a banking license deal went through) was rather pragmatic (debit cards to be backwards compatible & get data from day one), the team (other than the CEO) top-tier, no investor invested particularly much, etc.
1.) Venmo launched, grew, and was acquired by Braintree (August 2012, then by Paypal, September 2013).
2.) Apple Pay launched to over 10M devices within the first 3 days - which also breathed a new life into NFC payments (October 2014)
3.) I'm guessing ultrasound became a lot less sexy technology in the face NFC and iBeacon/BTLE
Seems like it would have been great in 2012, but is "just another option" in 2014.
"Still, there was no app, and Shontell reported that contributed to internal turmoil."
I wouldn't wish that position on my worst enemy. I know nothing about what the CEO is like, and he apparently has plenty of flaws, but I think I would be an awful CEO in that situation, too.
There are different kinds of hustle. The good kind, which means working hard to reach a goal. The not so good kind, which means working hard and doing some not so nice things to reach a goal. Finally, the bad kind, which involves doing anything to anybody in order to get something. There is a difference between the not so good and the bad kind. In the not so good you are trying to reach a goal. In the way, you might get lost or not notice that you are doing some things wrong. After all, it is not simple to keep track of how your decisions impact the world over the long term. I'm not trying to excuse anyone here. Just stating that good people with good intentions sometimes do things that hurt others without even noticing. The bad kind of hustle is the one where you dont care who gets hurt or what gets broken. It does not take into account anybody but you. Always do your best to huslte the good way. Keep track of how your decisions affect others. Make a point about reaching goals in more than one way, i.e., not only financially, but morally and/or socially.
The good kind of hustle is the one you see baseball players do all year long. They train hard. They play hard. Above all, they go out to do their job as its supposed to be. All while giving fans something positive to look forward to. :)
The nature of disruption is that some people will get hurt.. Taxi medallion/Hotel owners folks think they are playing by the rules while others aren't...
The market seems to have rewarded the bad hustlers here then as per your definition or have I got it wrong.
(Predictable as in: doing exactly what the law was meant to put a stop to in the first place, so obviously not "innovative". And in many cases, like for instance UberPop, not even creative enough to find an actually loophole, but blatantly breaking the law.)
http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-story-of-clinkle-2014-...
It looks like his father is Neno Duplan, who founded Locus Technologies.
I'd guess it slightly increases your probability of success, but greatly increases the cost of failure.
Basically income inequality and a fading middle-class causes a downward spiral of the rich having too much money to care and taking ever greater risks for rewards.
The rich now are just "paper rich" (outside of bubbly-again real estate) and the physical portions of the economy remain stagnant.
Some kind person on HN actually clued me to this, and that was s serious penny drop. And of course I lost the post...
Could be wishful thinking on my part, but I read "Monetary History" years ago and it took root.
Imagine a Steve Jobs-like reality distortion field. People are drawn in by that.
By a massive coincidence, I'd like to mention that I'm taking a hiatus from strategizing about how to raise money for a feature film to launch a very hot startup that will be disrupting the messaging, retail and payment spaces - simultaneously. It will be like Uber for money, or maybe like AirBNB for shopping. Anyway I urge people with more money than sense to get in on the ground floor of this smoking hot opportunity right now. For every extra digit on your initial investment that separates you from your more timid peers, I will supply a luxurious, hour-long ego massage.
Back then, payments was an instant-fund space. Of course, it didn't work.
Welcome to the tech industry! We're not in a bubble, it's different this time...
I have seen people with that personality type be able to just basically tell people what they want and get it. It's really a sight to behold.
"I need 50 million." "Okay boss.
I think there's two mechanisms at work. One is what you might call the "reptile brain," which reads such signals and simply interprets them as "this is my pack leader." The other mechanism is I think a cargo cultish belief in the power of those personality types to just always succeed no matter what. "Man, he seems like a winner." (This personality type seems to almost always be male, at least in my experience. Definitely not trying to be sexist. Might be being a bit reverse sexist though, since I do not find this trait redeeming.)
You would think that VCs would be inoculated against this kind of thing. You would think. But I personally know of two examples of people with off the charts alpha personalities who were sort of serial killers of wealth. Raise, burn, raise again. Their alpha personality trumped any notion of merit or track record.
Come on. The bar for your approval has to be higher than "derisive towards VCs and VC-funded founders".
How've you been? I've been well.
I also did not mean to imply that all "hot young founders" fit into this mold, or that VCa are all dumb, etc. But this stuff most definitely exists.
The real dynamic is a touch of so-called "reptile brain" plus a heaping portion of self-reinforcing cult of male ego.
But when he walked into a room, you sat up a little taller. You felt better about yourself. When he spoke, it took an act of will not to start to believe.
I was not the only person who experienced this. Many people did. We had a postmortem about it and just couldn't figure it out.
That's why I suspect this stuff is pushing some ancient primate dominance buttons. It is so irrational.
edit: thinking on it more, one thing he did to great effect was to project this aura of invincible confidence and then extend it around others through subtle flattery. They call them "confidence men" for a reason. It is devastatingly effective, even when your rational mind knows better. It seems to speak to something deeper and more ancient.
Well, I can tell you based on my experience in startups going back to the early 1990s that it happens and it happens a lot. Particularly with VCs.
In fact, one of the reasons I'm pretty down on VCs (vs, say angels or syndicates) is their desire for "alpha male" types, their hiring of them, their funding of them, etc. They all think they are alpha males of course, and they act like it (which is often perceived, correctly, as being complete jerks) but they also respect it as well.
It is totally plausible to me, and I believe I've seen it happen, that the difference between being funded and not being funded was the perception that the lead of the company was an alpha male.
I none early experience, the CEO was brilliant technical guy but he was quiet and contemplative. You asked him a question and sometimes he'd think for 30 seconds before answering.
Once we were funded, after taking forever and putting us over the barrel, the VCs brought in an alpha male asshole who had not real people skills or business knowledge. They forced us to accept him as our new CEO. He's gone on to have quite a career doing nothing but being a personality type. You know the CEO who delegates everything because he knows nothing, for whom its hard to please because he can't tell the difference between good and bad and just demands more, etc. But at the same time somehow takes credit for everything.
The one who gaslights people, initiates charm offensives when he needs something, and when you accidentally show he was wrong, you become persona non grata.
You've never met this type?
I'm sorry you wrote all of that, but no.
I have a hard time believing in the existence of some "alpha male" type who can bend "lizard brains" to their will, even against all reason and logic.
Unscrupulous people exist, but not in this pickup artist übermensch form.
What he is describing reminds me a lot of grad school (although that is a totally different context).
There are certainly alpha leadership types, and some of them are obnoxious, but I don't buy the whole pop psychology rationalization of their supposed ability to halt critical thinking in otherwise rational people. That just reads as a dudebro power fantasy to me.
I'm curious to know, which reptiles live in packs?
However, this hypothesis is no longer espoused by the majority of comparative neuroscientists in the post-2000 era.
It's not just an alpha male thing. I've seen this on the female side as well. As a photographer I've worked with porn stars and I've seen them get tons of cash and even cars just by asking a sugar daddy or through "financial domination" (usually over the phone and not even in person). It's really a sight to behold. Overhearing it, you're like, "did that just happen?".
I am about as cynical as they come on this topic but I myself have been sucked into that cult of personality, with disastrous effects. It's easy, even when cynical, to fall into a Keynesian beauty contest mentality where you assume everyone else will fall for it even if you can see through it.