Author here. Would love the community's security skills to investigate and diagnose the vulnerability in more depth. Can provide additional information via PM.
"If a company took this to the logical extreme - making the employees the consumers of the product/service - then it would cease to be "work", and would instead be a "hobby/internship/volunteer/education/experience"."
Tangentially related, but an early strategy of the Ford motor co was to double the standard factory wage of it's employees, so that the purchase of one of its automobiles was within reach and seen as the bonus of employment. It did wonders for their introduction of the automobile to America.
Running a 10 minute stopwatch over the message count (at 8:30pm pt, a popular messaging time I'd imagine), I recorded 43k messages sent; extrapolating, that's 6.2 million messages per day; given that there have been 1,593 million messages sent in total, this is a 0.388% daily growth rate, or compounded a 12.6% monthly growth rate.
I enjoyed the experience of being able to have context and additional information as I read the piece. People read in different ways (I stop and marinate on each paragraph), and being able to explore a bit made the story all the better.
I will never accept venture funding from anyone who has invested in JustFab. Investors are the gatekeepers, and in this case have failed their moral obligation.
Markdown is like Vim -- sure, it might speed up your output, if that's your sole focus. And its not meant to be adopted en masse.
I'm a designer and relatively intelligent person by trade, and I have a difficult time with markdown. It requires me to have a guide open, to be able to write. No "normal folks" I know can decipher markdown.
The trick is to make styling easy -- not to make styling an afterthought. The writer, writing on Medium, should recognize this.
I salute companies which are quick to turn a negative, random event into positive publicity / users. We should all be on the lookout for ways to do this in our own businesses.
There are a two major faults with the author's analysis which lead me to believe this post should not be relied on.
1. Advertising rates are far below the author's $10-20 CPM estimate for dashboard advertising; $10-20 is for legitimately premium advertising such as high-end audiences, wrapping a website, etc. Dashboard / banner ads will fetch $0.5-3 CPM the way Tumblr is running them.
2. The "valuation" formula of 10x trailing ("or"?) forward revenue is misplaced. Revenue multiples in acquisitions are often reserved for companies which are mature and predictable, not in early stages of their revenue plan. Corporate acquirers will often times use the expectations of the revenue created for the acquirer, which has little to do with the target in the status quo. Yahoo's expectations of revenue creation could be anything, and they have their own internal formula which we can't glimpse.
As somebody who balances startup life and dating in San Francisco, I'm surprised by the comments on this thread so far.
Like most things at a startup, there are cycles. Sometimes work is 9-6, sometimes its 9-9. Consistency is uncommon, especially at the earlier stages. While you might not have time to date at the moment, you probably will later.
A few points:
1. 9pm is the perfect time to grab a quick bite with friends and head out. There are a ton of great bars / spots which offer a casual environment to be with female / startup / life friends, eat drink and meet guys if you so choose. Ping me for recommendations.
2. The internet (and especially OK Cupid) are great for arranging lots of dates with little effort. 9/10 of the people you meet will be boring or not click, but 1/10 will surprise you. Everyone uses it now, especially as a filler for in between relationships.
3. SF has a great friends-of-friends atmosphere. Go to parties.
4. Learn to love a busy schedule. You can easily cram more into life by going out after work, still getting a good nights sleep, and going back to work the next day. If you're only working M-F, it'll be the most active time of your life.
Its absolutely flabbergasting when a company, which has the sole purpose of protecting customer information, allows this to occur. They've raised 4 major institutional rounds (their last $42 million), its discomforting that neither their team nor investors thought to secure their systems better than this.