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Story Of a Founder Who Burned Through $21M While His Social App Fling Crashed (businessinsider.com)
London-based social media app Fling, which never brought in any revenue, burned through $21 million in less than three years. According to a Business Insider report, the founder splashed out on 1st class flights, Ibiza hotels, and Michelin-star restaurants (Editor's note: The link could ask users to disable their adblockers; alternate source. From the report: In early July 2015, temperatures were rising in the boardroom on the top floor of a 12-story office block in Hammersmith, West London. Marco Nardone, the 28-year-old CEO and founder of social media app Fling, had called an emergency meeting the day after his app was removed from the App Store by Apple for being too similar to the notorious Chatroulette platform. The atmosphere was tense and Nardone was furious, three former employees said, because his COO, Emerson Osmond, had gone behind his back. Specifically, he was angry because Osmond had told Nardone's assistant not to order tents for the office that would allow staff to sleep by their desks and work around the clock to get Fling back onto the App Store, a former employee told Business Insider. Nardone shouted and swore at Osmond before squaring up to him as if he was about to do something more, said two former employees. [...] On the day, Nardone asked staff to work late so they could address the issue. The CEO turned up in the middle of the night with two women that staff had never seen before and took them into a room, according to three former employees.
Spending other peoples money LIKE A BOSS!
1st class flights, Ibiza hotels,and Michelin-star restaurants.
The rest was squandered I suspect
I guess he wanted to "work late"
They don't like my add blocker and I am not turning it off for them.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
The COO was right: you don't need TENTS to sleep indoors. Instead he should have just bought some sleeping bags and a couple of pillows.
It's better to be a famous screwup than a nameless nobody. These folks will be in another venture with more VC money very very shortly.
oh, don't be so cynical. i'm sure a good chunk of it went to hookers and coke.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
niceee
This article stirred up a bunch of memories. We're going to need some kind of F*ckedCompany 2.0 soon because we're about to go on a wild ride.
You're supposed to at least go to IPO before you squander other people's money.
This guy has what it takes to be a future banking exec, pharma exec, or a US senator. He'd better immigrate now, before the US builds a wall on its border with the UK.
This is what startup culture is all about. Having fun on someone else's dime and not building a real business.
Get back to work making me a billionaire from my dumb idea!
Apps that app other apps get apped!
Apps!
I remember hearing stories like this before the dotcom crash.
I suppose it means that money is too free, and I suppose the market will correct that.
he gets what he gets. investors get what they get..
NOTHING FOR NOTHING..
and Nardo is walking away with the experience and $
A narcissistic douche in love with himself, a fondness for hookers, burns through money and leaves a trail of debt and bad business in his wake. He should run for office.
One useful thing I remember reading about Lord Sugar (that champion of business, who made most of his fortune from buying rental properties, yay) is when he talked about the days after the Amstrad IPO. Most of his management became instant millionaires (which meant something back then), and he commented that some turned up at work the next day and continued with no perceptible change in their behavior, while others rocked on up late in a brand new car and proceed to turn into giant egos. The most interesting thing is that he didn't seem to think there was any predictor as to how someone would turn out.
In my own short business career I would tend to agree with this. It is extremely hard to know how someone will behave when they come into money, because most people do not have much money or any hope of getting it. You can have people who appear frugal and responsible, and they will always tell you how responsible they will be if they ever got money, but in my experience none of this prevents them undergoing a quite remarkable gollum like transformation when a large enough quantity of cash is placed in front of them.
It would appear this guy falls into the 'drunk on money' category. Personally I'm surprised the VC's or whoever put the money up let him get away with this sort of behavior. Someone like that is not going to ever make you money, because for them money is the end, not the means by which you can build a profitable organisation.
Would Microsoft have ever permitted WordPerfect or Lotus 1-2-3 in the "DOS Program Store"? Anyone developing programs for these treacherous (allegedly "smart") devices gets what they deserve. It seems the entire world is suffering some kind of brain cancer or Stockholm Syndrome with these insidious devices.
"Apps" are the exact opposite of what Personal Computers are supposed to be. Stop giving them your time and money.
... yellow hair and orange skin?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
If only there were someone with business leadership skills like that. We could get him elected President and make American bankrupt, erm.... great again.
Stopped reading summary at that point. Young dumb and full of cum - but not a CEO.
Programming jobs have been plentiful for the past 20 years or so, and they will continue to be into the foreseeable future, until AI becomes so good that it has not only taken over every job but it has taken over programming itself.
You don't have to tolerate working conditions like this. Exercise your right to quit, and go work somewhere else.
If you are a programmer, you are making enough money to save some of it. Use that savings as your insurance policy in case you have to quit. If you're living in most countries in the West and you're at least a halfway decent programmer, you should be able to find a new job within a few weeks.
Don't be greedy. You won't become a millionaire working as a programmer, but you will make plenty of money throughout your life. If you're hanging on to a bad job because of some promise of future wealth, then you're cheating yourself and you wasted your money on that engineering degree.
The point of being a programmer isn't to become rich. You would have majored in business if you cared about that. The point of being a programmer is to solve interesting problems in novel ways. If you lose sight of that then your career is going to have real problems.
If you get lucky and somehow wind up with shares that you can cash out for big bucks, then that should be a bonus, but let me give you a word of advice. You will be much happier if you are compensated mostly in cash. Your equity compensation is at the mercy of people who aren't smart enough to solve techncial problems, so they got business degrees. Do you understand now why putting up with a shitty job at a start up is a fool's game?
My first thought after reading the summary was Bender yelling, "Like Facebook, but with blackjack and hookers!"
Nearly burned down the headquarters "working late" one Saturday evening when he and his "lady friends" where free basing and accidently set fire to his office. Claimed it was an electrical short and the burns on his face and hands where caused when he tried to use the fire extinguisher. Pretty much did the same thing to the company he did for his office, burned it down... Good thing the board canned him, although he was set for life with that golden parachute he got (assuming he didn't blow it all on blow).
Ah, those where the days.... Not that his replacement was a better manager, he and the CFO got in trouble with the SEC for some shady stuff that happened when the company almost got delisted from NASDEQ, but at least he didn't try to burn the building down for the insurance money or something...
For a stupid dating app? You know, the thing that needs 3 devs, 1 qa, 1 dba, 1 graphic/UX designer, 1 marketing drone and 1 cleaning lady tops. Stuff all that in 3 rooms with 3 desks in each, and 1 other room for the founder, host on AWS or collocate in a data center. You should be able to milk those 21M of venture money for 15+ years
"In fact, forget the Facebook"
Well, he stuck to his plan, you can't say he didn't...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Big-talking kid takes tens of millions in investor's money and spends a lot of it on high living, as the company fails.
That never happens!
Programmers make decent salaries, so there is no need to go gambling by working at a startup which pays you mostly in stock options. News flash: most startups fail, and of the ones that don't, the value of the stock options that engineers can exercise is usually not that impressive. Given those odds, it's like going to casinos deciding you'll gamble your way to a bigger fortune. Stupid.
You know which odds are favorable to the engineer? Investing in a diversified stock market index fund. You can expect your money to double in real terms in 10 years. All it takes is saving and patience. Don't go for desperate schemes like startups when you can make enough money to invest instead. You will thank yourself 10, 20 yrs down the road. Play the long game. Remember also that "time IN the market" beats "TIMING the market."
With two chicks? Awesome!
This is usually the moment when the VC says "Oh, I just notice, you'll see France."
"You want to send me to France?"
"No, not you, just your eyeballs. Your liver goes to Texas"
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
They got paid while they were working. Look at the app, they were all guilty of trying to milk the system for cash for something that isn't worth the money. Some people are born rich and will always have money, some aren't. That's life.
yeah, this guy's a hero. chew on that, Michael Seibel.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
I'm very disappointed that no one has made a joke about his girlfriend's name, Toni Allcock. You all rushed to post jokes about wasting money and women but missed the biggest opportunity.
Do not focus on others' deficiencies.
Yawn. Rich guy seduced by his own money & power. So what - lots of companies burn out this way.
I learned nothing. Well - okay, maybe something: go to work for these people and collect their money.
"The link could ask users to disable their adblockers"
The link could ask me to give it a blowjob but that ain't gonna happen either.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
"Story Of a Founder Who Burned Through $21M While His Social App Fling Crashed"
This guy is my spirit animal.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
The LifeInvader attacked by the FruitBowl's own policies! Hilarious!
You don't want me in your Appstore? Fine, I'll go build my own social media app, with blackjack and hookers!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
This is more "news for gossipers who love salacious stories that don't actually matter."
Come on Slashdot. Curating the content so that it's relevant reading for tech enthusiasts is WHAT YOU DO. So DO IT.
Yup. On a shitty phone app, no less.
Indeed:
Clearly "mysterious women" is a spelling of "prostitute" that I haven't seen before.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
The first one is with women, and it is the most enjoyable.
The second one is with gambling, and it is the fastest.
The third one is with engineers, and it is the safest.
It seems that mr. Nardone, to be 100% sure of the outcome, used all of them.
Marco sounds like a real piece of Fling
The name was a premonition.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
My first thought after reading the summary was Bender yelling, "Like Facebook, but with blackjack and hookers!"
You do know Mark Zuckerberg once famously expensed a large travel-related expense as "hookers and blow", right? (The story goes he was pissed at being accused of wasting investors' money on nonsense, and he returned fire in a passive-aggressive way.)
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
All the research says you are completely wrong.
Even professional stock pickers, the ones who manage funds for a living, fail to outperform a broad stock index like the S&P 500 over time. Hot one year, a skunk the next. Seriously, look it up. The problem is that the information you are using to make your picks is known to everyone else too. This drives the stock price. Unless you have insider information (which is a crime to use to make trades), there is no way you "know" better than anyone else which way a stock will go.
Do yourself a favor and set aside a chunk of money in an S&P 500 (or moral equivalent) index fund and use the rest for active trading. Compare your total returns for both after 1, 3, 5 years. See for yourself. Hell, you don't even have to do that: if you can be honest with yourself, compare your total returns against publicly published S&P 500 total return data.
I challenge you to demonstrate to yourself that you have outperformed the S&P 500 index fund. Include ALL trading costs when you do so, and include re-investment of dividends into the 500 fund when you do this, don't just look at stock price.
Use a FF plugin to remove the annoying overlays with a few clicks and you can read the article just fine. The "RIP" plugin worked well for this one.
Oh, you mean a fling for YOU.
and tents. Do not forget tents in which the employees were to sleep. Arguably this was a waste as they were not allowed to sleep in them so it was all for nothing.
with a name like NardOne.
oh, don't be so cynical. i'm sure a good chunk of it went to hookers and coke.
I, unfortunately, RT whole FA.
"He started getting thin after visiting Ibiza." That means that he discovered cocaine.
So, yes, sir, he discovered blow. And paying to be blown.
The CEO turned up in the middle of the night with two women that staff had never seen before and took them into a room, according to three former employees.
Pure awesome.
This isn't news.
he couldn't be anything else than italian
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Where have you gone, Fucked Company? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you!
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He was just pissed that his three year free ride was about to be over.
AirBnB for bodies instead of apartments.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
If you're working at your desk and the founder of your company is walking around in the office with his shirt off taking selfies every 3 seconds, it's time to pack your shit and leave.
Wow, he even looks like a DoucheBro.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman