Thanks for giving us a shot! We definitely are not going to sell out our users and have other plans to monetize and move the company forward. We plan on providing value-added services for families such as helping families plan vacations, buy gifts for each other, order cards/pictures, etc. We've already been doing a few experiments with some of our families and things are going well!
In addition to that, we'll never charge any of our current users for what we are already offering them though in the future we may have additional features or plans that could be subscription based.
No problem, it was our pleasure! Let me address your questions one-on-one.
1. We didn't have any problems disclosing that. In fact, (as you can tell by this little stunt) we are very open about it. We thought it was acceptable. But we also are fallible.
2. Turnover figures? We talked about it at the interview, definitely.
3. We were extremely passionate about it. And less so about AthleteNet. That was the number 1 thing. The other smaller but still very valuable factors included the market size, social impact, and potential for faster scaling.
Feel free to email me if you have any more questions! [email protected]
Hi Wisp. This is Wesley - you might be right. It's something I did a long time ago and in the past. I have changed and people that know me know that. It may be something that will turn some heads, but I like to live very honestly and transparently. I hope people won't read too much in to it and only see how much I've grown.
Great question! As we get stats we'll let you know :) Feel free to email me and I can let you know how we're faring within our private alpha pre-launch. Also I wouldn't say Family is a "niche" network. People generally reflect and understand that the three most important things in life are work, friends, and family. We want to help bring that third (and most important) graph online.
I do something very similar. But I just have dummy files in folder depending on the environment (so I do something like 'touch PRODUCTION' or 'touch STAGING') and based off which file is present I know which settings to serve.
In addition to that, we'll never charge any of our current users for what we are already offering them though in the future we may have additional features or plans that could be subscription based.