As to what the article said, I think you may be taking this too personally (although it sounds like you're referencing the media in general, and I don't know how much vitriol you may have had to absorb).
"Picplz has languished. After shopping the product around for possible cash deals last year, its founders finally ditched Picplz in July, choosing instead to spin it off to Sporcle, a maker of online trivia quizzes."
To me it sounds like basically saying "they did a pivot", but in language that an average reader can digest. Probably using a word other than 'ditched' would be more tactful though. I guess when one aims high taking punches now and then is part of the game, but in the end it doesn't mean a whole lot; other than well, you aimed high :) Haters gonna hate and all that jazz.
The "vitriol" is mainly things that I read on Twitter inspired by articles like these. I am not going to link to them, but folks can choose to believe me or not.
It's a weird, twisted reality we live where 6 months is considered too long to reach 100,000 users.
When I read articles such as these written by the media, I always keep in mind that we entrepreneurs are the men in the arena. It's easy to second guess, and criticize when you're sitting comfortably with zero financial, and emotional risk.
I think it's not so much considered too long as considered too long when a direct competitor does it in a week.
If one platform is growing at an explosive rate and the other one is struggling to get users, there's not much you can say beyond "second platform is struggling (comparatively)"
History is written by the winners...I hope you can focus on being the winner in your market, and then tell your story the way you would want ;-)
Interesting side note about the article is VC funds tracking 'developers' early, for me at least.
Journalists, especially those writing for the NY Times, choose their words very carefully and are 100% deliberate in their conclusions, even if only implied through artful diction and innuendo.
This is techcrunch-style gossip writ large and it names names. You think NYT isn't doing this on purpose? We all read it didn't we?
It's an important lesson. So important that a prestigious fee-paying girls school in England is having lessons in failing, and avoiding the fear of failure.
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-16879336)
EDIT: This post is in no way an insult to the parent comment. This post is meant to show that fear of failure is a problem, and it is being tackled at a very good school. Normally I ignore the downvotes, but this post is toggling up and down a fair bit. Reading my original post I guess I understand that it could be seen as being an insult. I apologise for that.
there's a rapper in the bay who's blowing up and he hasn't gotten a deal yet. are there any investment vehicles i can use, some kind of option contract i can offer him? the artist is HBK btw, heartbreak gang, iamsu! and loverance, etc., from the hits "swaggin" and "up!" (i beat the pussy up, up, up, up...)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quYupMeXEJM
I saw the market first, I created picplz, and I went for it. I was a huge believe in the mobile photo sharing opportunity, and I went for it with all of my heart. Clearly, picplz didn't win, but I have ZERO shame or regret for doing my best.
When I read articles like these, which are about myself, my company and people that I know well, I can't help but feel vitriol aimed at me for DARING to create, launch and raise funding for picplz. I am not clear on what exactly people want, an apology for trying?
The fact is, I saw the writing on the wall that we wouldn't win early and pivoted out of photo sharing which I had ~90% of my series A cash still in the bank. It certainly seems like that was the right move, but all of this press makes it look like pivoting was the wrong call(?) The press I read is written in such a way that it assumed that the A16Z investment is dead and my entire company should just be written off to zero today. That is bullshit. If I started to take press like this too seriously I might as well just dissolve my company and stop coming into work.
I say this to the hn comminity: never be afraid of failure. No one knows what will happen. All of this arm-chair quarterbacking is a waste of time. Stop reading this kind of crap and instead put your energy into doing your best work. Sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose, but if you give yourself the opportunity to win enough times, you WILL be successful.