When I started working on Posterous in 2008, I intended to work on it forever. It didn't work out that way, and I left in January of 2011. It was a venture-funded company by then and we were committed to super-growth, not sustainability. We never started charging for the product.
Posthaven is the result of my experience with that. I know the world needs a simple, clean, well-lit, easy place to post. One that doesn't force us to make the same kind of product decisions that we had to before.
I promise you we are focused on making this a long term project. It's not a startup and Brett and I are committed to making it work over the long haul.
On the one hand, you have street cred for building an awesome product which inspires confidence that your next product will be awesome too. I don't doubt it will be awesome.
But on the other hand, you did accept VC funding for Posterous (I'm assuming nobody was holding a gun to your head and forced you to do it), and for whatever reason you then left and moved onto other projects.
Now you are saying you will never sell out, will never lose focus and will stick around forever. Isn't that like a politician promising they won't ever raise taxes? "Ever" is just a really strong word. Life happens. Priorities change. Heck, most marriages don't even last forever.
That said...
I believe you. I think you're telling the truth about how you actually feel right now and what your plans for the business are right now. It's just that right now only lasts an instant.
Thanks jbail -- I don't want to dig up the past, but the truth of the matter was I didn't agree with my cofounder on the direction of Posterous, but I also wanted to support him in his pursuit of the direction he believed in. It was one of the most painful experiences to have to walk away from my baby.
I think we're put on this earth to create things of great lasting value that are good for others around us. Many things in our lives will change, but I believe this one is a constant guiding light.
> I also wanted to support him in his pursuit of the direction he believed in
Support him? By bailing out? Was it easy for your cofounder to replace your skillset? Would love to hear the whole story if you don't mind, it could help help others who are in similar situations. It's sad that cofounders who once created something together are not able to find a common understanding in later stages. Sad that both parties reached that point where they have to utter the threat either my way or I leave. WTF. I know this is common and probably the reason why most startups fail but just leaving (or maybe the true story was different) sounds a bit strange. However, maybe it was the best decision for the organization.
VC funding is usually a decision to "go big or go home" on a timeframe, while bootstrapping allows you to continue indefinitely at any scale once revenues cover costs. Both have risks but the VC model is explicitly to spend at unsustainable levels in order to try to get big fast. That's kind of the whole point of VC. It isn't wrong or selling out, but you have to know what you're getting into (as founder, employee, or customer). If you spend way ahead of revenue to grow fast, and you don't go big, then you usually go home.
Nice work on the new site, the design looked great!
It's nice to see you acknowledge that things were rocky with Posterous but you are now moving forwards in a new direction based on your past learnings.
After all, isn't that one of the great things about being human? We can all learn from our past mistakes and strive to better than the person we were yesterday.
Apparently, that "independent" WordPress Foundation is still just Matt:
"From an ultimate decision-making point of view, the Foundation is mainly just me. [...] It’s worth noting that the Foundation was created purely to be a trademark and IP holding entity that Automattic could transfer its ownership of the WordPress trademark to. There are no “members.”" [0]
Without digging into the specifics of the matter,if the Foundation is indeed a 501(c)(3), the IRS should/will almost certainly have required it to have three independent board members.
In addition, having counseled clients on this structure, the benefit of creating a nonprofit and giving it IP is that it creates a public check on anything to do with that IP. For example, while a startup's founders can sell the company, they can't unilaterally agree to sell off the IP in the nonprofit, and the public can challenge any such sales by recourse to a state attorney general's office.
It's not perfect, but it helps protect the IP in the way founders want to. In many ways, it's a one-way decision, which is why it works.
since you're posting here, you have a grocer's apostrophe on the home page... it's "URLs", not "URL's".
second, can we auto-migrate somehow from a posterous backup - my wife runs a blog on posterous and is really worried that she needs to migrate. if i could tell her that she just now needs to pay $5/month and not rely on me to hack something together w/octopress and github she will be so excited.
This is one of the first features we will be launching in the next two weeks: Posterous import. This is a high priority as I have years of data on there as well. We're putting the finishing touches on it as we speak.
Depends on your style guide. Sometimes the apostrophe is preferred for abbreviations because it separates the s. ie, it's not something I'd correct somebody for unless we had specifically and previously agreed to a particular style guide.
I think you are being a bit hard on tedunangst since his statement "Sometimes the apostrophe is preferred..." applies in situations different from your examples.
For example: "The Times (and some other publications, including the Chicago Manual of Style) do call for using an apostrophe in the plural of abbreviations that include periods."
By both those references, it's "URLs", not "URL's".
rubyrescue: since you're posting here, you have a grocer's apostrophe on the home page... it's "URLs", not "URL's".
tedunangst: Depends on your style guide. Sometimes the apostrophe is preferred for abbreviations ... not something I'd correct somebody for unless we had specifically and previously agreed to a particular style guide
tedunangst claimed that was a style choice. It's not. By all these guides, "URL's" is wrong, and is something that would be corrected by editors using your examples of NYT or Chicago Manual of Style.
Also, for the periods, omitting the periods is often the cleanest answer. Instead of "C.P.A.'s" which is both ambiguous and ugly, consider "I went to my CPA's office. Naturally, it was full of CPAs."
You're safest following this line from your Wikipedia link: The MLA is explicit "do not use an apostrophe to form the plural of an abbreviation". The APA is specific in "without an apostrophe".
OT: "grocer's apostrophe" -- never heard someone use that phrase, and I really like it. I see that all the time, and it makes my skin itch. I will be borrowing it frequently.
Just wondering: how can somebody start again something he worked already years on? I understand that you might learned a lot with Posterous and now you'd like to just employ that knowledge in a new blog project. But is it not a bit dangerous to stick to the same thing over years? You could loose time and after ten years looking back and you pity that you just worked only on blog systems. I don't want to talk blogs down, they are a very interesting use case and I still think there's room for improvement but in terms of spreading the bets and just the need to start something totally new I am a bit confused that you do the same thing over and over again (and I didn't see any disruptive feature or new angle with Posthaven).
Posthaven is the result of my experience with that. I know the world needs a simple, clean, well-lit, easy place to post. One that doesn't force us to make the same kind of product decisions that we had to before.
I promise you we are focused on making this a long term project. It's not a startup and Brett and I are committed to making it work over the long haul.