The founder of a notorious flop thinks he can sell his next app to businesses
MeetUp
Secret, an app that let you anonymously share your thoughts with the world, started off strong when it launched in 2014.
But Secret quickly became better known for its founders' lavish spending habits and its reputation as a gathering place for cyberbullies than as an open communications tool.
After gaining 15 million users, raising $35 million in venture funding, and drastically changing the product a few times, Byttow made the decision to shut down the year-old Secret. Most of the money was returned to investors, but Byttow and Chrys Bader-Wechseler had taken $3 million of the venture investment off the table for their personal coffers, and it's not clear if they ever gave this money back.
Since Secret's shutdown, Byttow has apparently been working on a project for Medium, the blogging platform cofounded by Twitter founder Ev Williams. Medium is expected to show off the results of that project at an event later this week.
Now, he's free to go after his next big idea, which apparently involves something in the enterprise space, per that report.
Details are scarce, but Byttow told TechCrunch that more information will be forthcoming later this month.
Secret/Business Insider
Even the best, brightest, most-well-funded startups have a lot of trouble making the transition to a business software focus.
Reports indicate that Silicon Valley poster children like Dropbox and Evernote have both been struggling mightily to get enough business customers for their formerly consumer-focused products to justify their huge private valuations. Secret tried adding an enterprise feature called "Dens" for internal anonymous sharing before it went kaput.
Slack
Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield's past experience had been in consumer web services (he sold Flickr to Yahoo for $35 million in 2005) and in video games (Slack started as an internal support tool for Glitch, an online multiplayer game). Yet Slack reportedly does annual revenue of $30 million, and it's growing fast.
So, it's possible for a founder with a consumer technology focus to shift gears and sell to the enterprise. But Secret's very public rise and fall doesn't instill a lot of confidence.
Byttow did not initially respond to a request for comment on this story.
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