

How A 21-Year-Old Stanford Kid Got $30 Million, Then Everything Blew Up - goronbjorn
http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-story-of-clinkle-2014-4

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curiousAl
I just watched the video on their site and I have no idea what's going on:
[https://www.clinkle.com/](https://www.clinkle.com/)

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coffeejay
I've never seen a more irrelevant promotional video.

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DharmaSoldat
I just don't know what the thing does. The video says nussing. NUSSING!

Don't companies have to get to at least Enron-level before they start making
vapid promo pieces like this?

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650REDHAIR
I've been out of the SF "scene" for a little bit so this is the first time
I've ever heard of Clinkle.

I'm still not quite sure they do. Have they made any waves before the layoffs
started?

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ulfw
Well that happens when the valley only values young age and throws money
behind people with no life experience. I wouldn't have given my 21-yr old self
30 Thousand Dollars, let alone 30 Million!

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astrodust
Nobody could've seen this coming? Really?

The name alone is so inscrutably opaque and simultaneously unabashedly
awkward.

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pbreit
Like Yahoo or Google?

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astrodust
Both of those companies were laser focused on one thing and communicated what
they were in a single word before they grew into billion dollar companies.

Yahoo: "Directory"

Google: "Search".

Compare with Clinkle that's...what?

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pbreit
Payments?

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throwaway7808
> ... _Like his idol Steve Jobs_ .... , Lucas Duplan is an expert salesman.
> You need to be, to persuade Silicon Valley investors and engineers to take a
> chance on a startup.

Not surprising. He probably was consciously trying to emulate worst aspects of
Jobs. Sad thing is that such people often end up being successful.

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scarmig
And just to make it explicitly clear: Lucas Duplan is very successful, even if
his "company" is essentially a giant fraud and failure. Already a
multimillionaire, and once this particular charade is over, he'll be able to
jump to an equally high-level position.

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gagaga
Isn't he a multimillionaire just on paper?

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doug1001
well bad news for any film-maker who wanted to make a spinal-tap-style parody
of Silicon Valley...because there's no way you can do better than this story.

like the HN Post (about six or so months ago) linking to a story about a
company that built tools for automated securities trading and whose IPO was
interrupted because of a glitch the software running on the exchange they
listed on--my first thought on reading HN posts like this one Clinkle, is that
someone read an article on TheOnion and thought it was reporting actual
events. As much as i love TheOnion, even they could not do it better than
this.

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AndrewKemendo
Looks like every key metric that HN stands for (traction, market fit,
experienced founders etc...) falls away if you have a patent. This was also
true with Snapchat

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ucdahacker
I've met countless of founders before and after they get funded. Some of that
money goes to their heads and they become total assholes. The way I see
it...you become a entrepreneur to solve a problem, which in turn makes the
world a better place. So for all you founders out there, don't be a dooche!!

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Buonaparte
I didn't dig too deep on their website, but it appears that the only place
they actually allude to what it is they're making is at the very bottom of the
Team page.

Why is there not even a brief description on the landing page or an About
page!?

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totallysafe
if the product is half as good as this gushing article says it is, then none
of this is going to matter once they hit market... this is nothing compared to
the stories you hear about the beginnings of Facebook, Snapchat, etc.

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georgemcbay
The article doesn't really say the product is good, just that a lot of people
said it was good... which isn't quite the same thing. Also from the article:

"The demo and the app, some employees came to realize, were not the same
thing. When it came to the actual app’s progress, multiple sources say Duplan
wasn’t always straight with his employees."

Sounds like it could be a real-life case of "Important Corollary Two" from
here:

[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000356.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000356.html)

