I haven't clarified this yet, but what I'm really advocating is a combination of protocol and hosting, which when put together is, in my mind, something like a distributed virtual OS for startups to build social services upon. OS is probably not the right term, but I think it conveys the scope better to non-developer than "protocol" does. I'm not trying to confuse - I'm trying to think of something better.
Obviously I can't give an unbiased representation of all the facts... so, I did my best to convey what I felt was behind what went down. I appreciate that you see the nuance in this. What I can say is that we spent a lot of time talking about all our concerns, on many different occasions. So on the one hand, this is part of why I was a little surprised by what happened in the end, and on the other, it's why I feel there probably wasn't much to be done to save the company at that point.
But YC also requires you to be in the same location as the other startups and to attend two dinners each week, plus it encourages visiting the YC partners during "office hours".
Thanks to everyone for their feedback. I'm a bit overwhelmed by the response. I've done a follow-up post to more concretely respond to some of the main threads here.
No, the conflict points that are being discussed here a lot were not sufficiently important to stake the startup on at the time when we were faced with having to walk away. The real point was that by the time we went to Boston to meet with PG and get some advice, my partner had decided he could no longer trust me or my judgment and wanted to leave, and I felt the same way about him. While I wish that could have been avoided, I don't think anything that could have been done at that point would have changed the ultimate outcome for this team.
After spending a few months thinking "okay, so how did it get to that point, and I didn't even realize it" I wrote my reflections. I still think the startup has a good chance of success, but not with the dynamics that were at play then.
Well, if it's doing some good for the greater community then I must be doing some good for myself. There are going to be a lot of people that disagree with what I'm saying in my posts and probably would want to steer clear of me. Then again hopefully there will be a few interesting people that I get to connect with through this that I wouldn't have otherwise, and that is worth it to me.
I don't really think this is fair, but I can see why it can come across that way. I wouldn't step down as CEO to keep a team together that did not want to be together. This is not to be confused with being unable to step aside for someone who is more suited for the position. That wasn't what was going on here.
I placed a great deal of trust in my team for nearly a year and some of that came back to bite me. Yes I did list a lot of flaws, but they were not flaws that everyone had in common, they were the things that stood out to me as being problematic across the length of the venture and, well, I thought I mentioned a lot of things I thought I should do differently. But I am open to hearing more.
I am inexperienced, and I probably wasn't ready to be the CEO for this venture.
It seems that a lot of people here took my posts to be me just blaming my partners, but that must be a light reading because I definitely talk about my own shortcomings, and I take responsibility for what ultimately happened. I've been looking in the mirror constantly for the last three months, and posting here is part of that process of reflection too.