zlacker

"But a little digging shows a much more predictable source: they took a $435,000 round of seed funding in January from FreshTracks Capital, a Vermont-based VC firm that announced the deal in March."

People forget (or mostly never knew) that Ello was a Vermont thing.

I once spitballed with a certain VC at FreshTracks Capital about an idea I had, which lead to him running off with it and burning millions of dollars making it into BRIDJ, which shut down a few years ago.

>>ErikAu+(OP)
> People forget (or mostly never knew) that Ello was a Vermont thing.

True, but a little misleading. The majority of the co-founders of Ello, plus nearly all of its staff, were based in Colorado.

Source: I worked for Ello.

>>myfrie+k4
Well now I have to ask - what was it like inside the cauldron? Any learnings you took into your next step?

>>dopebo+5g
It was my favorite job I've ever had. It was intense in the best way. I didn't have much contact with Budnitz, but the other 6 founders showed such a strong passion for the community, it was impossible for me to not to come to work excited.

I'd say most of the negative stress I felt was from knowing that the user base was growing faster than we could fill in feature gaps that would keep folks engaged. I felt like we couldn't quite catch up, and by the time the money started running out and interest started to wane, it was too late.

A few learnings:

- 7 founders is a lot. I don't want that to sound like a criticism, it just means the company is going to feel a bit different vs a more classic 2 or 3 founder setup.

- Positive feedback loops within a tight team of highly skilled people has a huge impact on getting more stuff done. That's how I would characterize the engineering team, and it was one of the highest-performing teams I've ever been a part of.

- Don't build a startup on a custom, in-house UI framework ;)

>>myfrie+Gx
That last bit - why not? What is wrong with an in house ui framework.

I have built many of them to good effect.

>>RobKoh+T53
Not OP but probably a waste of effort for an early stage startup.

>>dopebo+sz3
This. Time is precious, many good options already exist, and it's hard to do well, particularly in such a way that it doesn't cause unnecessary friction later. Unless your business _is_ building a UI framework, it's probably not integral to the business, thus acts as a pretty big distraction that isn't easy to pivot into a business itself.