{"id":343297,"date":"2017-06-10T22:47:34","date_gmt":"2017-06-10T14:47:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/?p=1501983"},"modified":"2017-06-10T22:47:34","modified_gmt":"2017-06-10T14:47:34","slug":"postmates-acqhires-secret-ceo-david-byttows-startup-bold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/postmates-acqhires-secret-ceo-david-byttows-startup-bold\/","title":{"rendered":"Postmates acqhires Secret CEO David Byttow\u2019s startup Bold"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

The founder of one of Silicon Valley\u2019s most famous flameouts, anonymous social app Secret, is the new product lead for Postmates\u2019 app. After Secret shut down<\/a> and gave investors back their money, David Byttow went on to raise a $1 million seed round from Index to launch a blog publishing tool for enterprises called Bold<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Today Bold was acqhired by Postmates, Byttow confirmed to TechCrunch, with he and co-founder Ben South Lee (also formerly of Secret) joining the delivery startup.\u00a0Bold will shut down, killing off its enterprise blogging tool and writing assistant, plus the anonymous publishing space IO<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Byttow will lead product for Postmates\u2019\u00a0customer-facing app, while Lee leads design for it. \u201cPostmates is gonna slay\u201d Byttow DMed me, elaborating that \u201cI think Postmates is in a very unique position to leapfrog itself and continue be the leader in the on-demand delivery space. That\u2019s why Ben and I joined!\u201d We\u2019ve requested a comment from Postmates but haven\u2019t heard back.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Bold will shut down these enterprise publishing tools it built<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

In Secret\u2019s hyped-up heyday, it raised a $25 million Series B. Byttow notoriously took $3 million off the table during the round and convinced co-founder Chrys Bader-Wechsler to do the same. The idea was that the cash would make Secret\u2019s founders less likely to sell the company early. Instead, less than a year later, Secret had imploded, raising questions about the practice of founders cashing out early.<\/p>\n

But clearly Silicon Valley is willing to forgive such behavior if someone has the necessary skills in today\u2019s competitive recruiting market. Postmates is trusting Byttow and Lee at a critical time for the company. Having raised a $160 million Series D last year, Postmates must prove it can build a sustainable business despite the on-demand delivery space\u2019s tough unit economics.<\/p>\n

Once upon a time, Byttow convinced 15 million to use a controversial app in another risky market. Postmates will have to hope Byttow can similarly drive traction of its app while letting someone else handle the business.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"\" The founder of one of Silicon Valley’s most famous flameouts, anonymous social app Secret, is the new product lead for Postmates’ app. After Secret shut down and gave investors back their money, David Byttow went on to raise a $1 million seed round from Index to launch a blog publishing tool for enterprises called Bold.
\nToday Bold was acqhired by Postmates, Byttow confirmed to… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n

\"\"\/ <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5817,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[59,66,26],"class_list":["post-343297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-media","tag-techcrunch","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5817"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=343297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343297\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=343297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=343297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=343297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}