"To all the employees, customers, users, investors, advisors, partners, competitors, consultants, analysts, and vendors who helped us – there are thousands of you, and you know who you are – please accept our enduring, deeply felt gratitude."
So at least there's one line of "thanks"
Investors don't take on risk for the sake of the company they invest in. They take on risk because they think they will make money for themselves, and they would screw over the CEO and all of the employees, and other investors, in a heartbeat if they could get a good exit.
The investors got an ownership stake in an early-stage company with a high risk of failure and a corresponding high potential reward. The company got money to fund operations. Both parties got what they signed up for, and there is no imbalance in gratitude owed.
The relationship is wrong if you feel indebted to your investors and like they deserve thanks. They are partners in the business.
Presumably the CEO did all they could to succeed and behaved in an ethical and honorable manner. If they did so, then investors have been well served.
I will agree however that anyone who ever chooses to do business with you in any context deserves thanks. On that basis, thanks is deserved.
Plus, they knew the risks. There is no reason to feel sorry for early-stage investors who lose money unless some kind of fraud was perpetrated on them.
Do you feel sorry for wife of a stuntman who dies in an accident?
Do you feel sorry for those with a gambling addiction?
I can understand why you wouldn't at all feel sorry for an investor to the same extent as my examples above; presumably the investor hasn't ruined their life. However, my point is knowing the risks doesn't preclude someone from receiving empathy/sympathy.
I was not writing about a general case of risktaking: I was writing specifically about investors.
If I had been writing about athletes, stuntmen, gamblers, or any other kind of people, I would have written something that took into account the different contexts in which such people take risks.
I really don't see what you are trying to accomplish by changing the focus from a specific case to a general case.
Firstly, to say there's no debt, monetary or otherwise, to someone who believed in your company enough to hand over their own money (or money in their control) to back you is just pure arrogance.
Secondly, there absolutely is debt. When a company goes into administration the assets are sold to pay out those who hold equity in the company. They're literally owed debt.
EDIT: To clarify for those responding saying that equity does not constitute debt...
Creditors and investors are different, absolutely. It is also correct that investors are typically paid last during administration (although investors may form agreements to come before other investors). Nonetheless, during administration, the administrator determines how much money the investors are "owed", which is literally the definition of debt.
From a practical perspective the difference is that with equity you accept a lower floor (you might get nothing) in exchange for a higher ceiling (your invest might 100x if the company goes public). That's the deal these investors signed up for and unfortunately for them they got option number 1. They're not owed anything because that's the deal they agreed to.
Additionally, my first point was one of metaphorical (social) debt.
Given the context and the fact I'm typing in English it ought to have been clear I was referring to the definition of debt in English. If that wasn't clear, I apologise for the confusion.
Only definition that matters is the one in the jurisdiction this startup was in.
This is incorrect. Please see the differences between equity and debt. [1]
[1] http://smallbusiness.findlaw.com/business-finances/debt-vs-e...
To me this just sounds like a shot at irony by combining crudity with eloquence, fully agree with your sentiment though.
Mark Davis is pretty tone-deaf, it reads like "hahaha good times, didn't we have a good run, FoCkers?" while the message is "here's a bunch of problems and you probably need to work overtime".
I don't know what ClusterHQ did, but presumably they may have some users for whom the abrupt shutdown is inconvenient at best, especially if their company depended on whatever this is in production and now they have to try to fix it 3 days before Xmas with 40% of the company's staff on leave and the remaining 60% mentally checked out. I think that's the only group that this post disrespects. It would've been nice if he could have at least offered some alternatives, announced the shutdown ahead of time, or given some sort of migration path.
The word "sorry" does not appear in this post. Instead of apologizing to investors, users, and employees for letting all of them down the CEO writes a contentless self-aggrandizing post.
The CEO also doesn't bother to thank anyone despite being literally and metaphorically indebted to investors, users, and employees for getting as far as they did. [Update: there was "gratitude" - my mistake; sorry]
Besides the self-aggrandizing "we did it first" tone of the whole post, here are a few more parts I'd love to see future farewell posts skip:
> it’s often the pioneers who end up with arrows in their backs
Unless your point is that you were a company who tried to take what wasn't yours and was punished for it... this phrase is awkward-at-best.
> I called these “Friends of ClusterHQ” by the sobriquet “FoCkers”
The use of "sobriquet" doesn't make your adolescent play on words classy.
> The big successes are literally impossible without the many failures. Take a moment to think about that.
What a ridiculous thing to tell your audience that includes employees looking for jobs, investors out of money, and users without a service they may have depended on. Out of those 3 groups only investors care about such things. The other 2 groups are collateral damage to your hubris.