zlacker

>>waxpan+(OP)
I'm not sure why this post focuses so much on the angel investment. There are probably 10 reasons why Ello failed, starting with the fact that bootstrapping social network userbases is hard, and ending with users won't pay for social networks. None of these are directly related to the fact they built the site with investor money and not volunteer hours.

>>reso+fh1
They are imo directly related. Seven people working on ello means it's hard to understand, even on ramen salaries, how that costs less than $1m a year once you fully burden those salaries, buy office space, buy hosting, etc.

So they've set themselves up from the beginning to spend more money than they make, and everything downstream flowed from that choice.

If they had to be cash-flow breakeven from the get, they would have to have charged users. ie built a completely different product, with a different audience.