layout: post title: Keep Calm and Carry On created: 1271319742 categories:

• Personal tags:
• Bootup Labs

The seed accelerator I helped found, Bootup Labs, is getting lambasted in a number of public forums this evening / early morning.

It all started with Jamie of Status.ly's post. I'm disappointed in lots of the original wording, and that it could have been written in a more factual tone.

I worked with Danny to put up some combined news / background. It's not a direct response to Jamie's post, but has some added commentary since we weren't planning on posting the other news until tomorrow.

I appreciate the balanced response from a number of people who actually know us and the situation.

I read a number of comments / response to me directly that suggested that we should have been more apologetic. We leaned towards the factual. I can say that I know I broke a personal commitment and that I feel like shit about it and have already said my 'sorrys' in person.

I read another round of comments that said that we shouldn't be commenting in public at all. I kind of know how to use these tools, and engaging where the discussion is taking place seems to be the right thing to do. Our instinctive response is not to call in the lawyers … because, you know, we're actually entrepreneurs / startup guys ourselves.

On the other hand, there are many commenters that should probably stop throwing around the word "legally" about the situation without knowing the details or, you know, being lawyers.

Here are some of the threads you can read (other than the posts above) with discussion / commentary to form your own opinion.

• Hacker News - lots of angry startup devs wielding pitchforks, but I'm apparently a biz guy, and have only ever gotten downvoted there
• Read Write Web - main opinion here is that Jamie burned a lot of bridges today - I actually don't think that's true, but this has been relatively public and messy, which never reflects well on anyone involved from an outsider's perspective
• Techvibes - for completeness, and because Jamie left a very nice complimentary post - "There's no doubt in our minds that we're sitting with the future web in this room right now, it's beyond exciting. This is groundbreaking." - a post on his first day at Bootup

I think that's enough for tonight.