"And he basically frolicked, for want of a better word"

February 10, 2017 1:21 PM

The thrown baguette, customised bus, and fateful Avicii concert that led to social start-up Fling losing $21 million in under three years.

Fling launched in mid-2014 as a social network which 'flung' pictures and videos to random users across the world and thus providing opportunities to chat with strangers. CEO Marco Nardone got the idea for his messaging app on a flight to Hong Kong, and millions of pounds of funding for it from his father and a syndicate of investors. His September 2015 blog post celebrates "4.3 million downloads" and boasts of metrics that outdid the early years of twitter, not making any mention of the lack of profit or company trips to Ibiza (the name of Nardone's blog? Always Hyper.)

A 2014 Tech Crunch review of Fling was skeptical of the appeal of yet another messaging app, but Fling's death knell tolled when it was pulled from the Apple app store, due to its Chatroulette-style format attracting Chatroulette-style content, aka the Too Many Dick Pics Problem. A Forbes reporter noted that the Fling's content went, well, south around the time money for moderation teams dried up: "It's one of the most interesting social media disintegrations I've witnessed."

posted by Gin and Broadband (36 comments total)

Yo founders, don't pull an Ello and try to get a Kachingle in your wallet by making a social network for the Diaspora of people who won't use FB because you'll get Tagged in a Badoo way.
posted by miyabo at 1:27 PM on February 10, 2017 [6 favorites]

"Within weeks of launching, people were using the app to send nude photos and sexual material to strangers."

Who? Who? Could have seen this coming?
posted by Braeburn at 1:51 PM on February 10, 2017 [26 favorites]

Staff said that Nardone lost a lot of weight during the lifetime of Fling but they couldn't understand why. Another said that his mood became increasingly erratic around the summer of 2015, around the time he went to Ibiza.

I think they're trying to say cocaine without saying cocaine.
posted by clawsoon at 1:54 PM on February 10, 2017 [59 favorites]

I'd guess steroids; he seems to be in pretty good shape in the later pictures compared to the 2014 photo.
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:07 PM on February 10, 2017 [4 favorites]

He looks like a dude who drives a custom van with airbrush paint job in this one.
posted by thelonius at 2:12 PM on February 10, 2017

"He had no concept of the value of money," said one ex-employee. "Literally none. He used to think he was lean. He used to tell us we were a lean startup yet we had top floor offices in Hammersmith with strip lighting down the ceiling which the developers hated because it reflected on their screens."

For some reason that is the funniest bit to me.
posted by quaking fajita at 2:21 PM on February 10, 2017 [13 favorites]

"He [Nardone] was pouring money in at the top of this thing and it was just pissing out of the bottom in terms of users," said one of the former employees. "He was pumping tens of thousands of pounds a day through Facebook advertising and Twitter and what-have-you without telling anyone that he was doing it."

The rest of Fling's funding came from a syndicate of investors that was largely assembled by ex-Goldman Sachs banker turned hedge fund manager Raffaele Costa, according to three former employees.

Costa, who did not reply to Business Insider's request for comment, owns a 54-metre mega-yacht, according to Boat magazine, worth $25 million (£20 million). The Italian multimillionaire, who is the CEO and founder of Savile Row hedge fund Tyndaris, refers to himself as "Captain Magic," according to a Financial Times article from February 2013.

I feel like I need a shower just reading about these guys.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 2:21 PM on February 10, 2017 [12 favorites]

So his start-up was just a brief fling?
posted by valkane at 2:22 PM on February 10, 2017 [4 favorites]

We need Pud now more than ever.
posted by rhizome at 2:39 PM on February 10, 2017 [5 favorites]

I think they're trying to say cocaine without saying cocaine.

I'd guess steroids

He seem like a "both" kind of guy.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 2:46 PM on February 10, 2017 [21 favorites]

I haven't read the whole thing. I swear I will but I couldn't let

In 2012, Nardone set out to build a social network for students called Unii from an office on Berkeley Street in London.

pass by without commenting on the complete lack of originality at the very beginning. In 2012 Facebook had been around for 8 years and claimed to have over a billion active users. Yet, they were able to find suckers to fund this.

Back to the article....
posted by rdr at 2:58 PM on February 10, 2017 [7 favorites]

Despite the internal problems, Fling raised millions of pounds, with Nardone's LinkedIn profile stating that the figure totalled $21 million (£17 million) over its lifetime.

Boy, that free market sure is good at allocating capital efficiently!
posted by Homeboy Trouble at 3:03 PM on February 10, 2017 [12 favorites]

Boy, that free market sure is good at allocating capital efficiently!

Well it does seem to move money away from fools at least twice over in this story.
posted by srboisvert at 3:21 PM on February 10, 2017 [4 favorites]

I think they're trying to say cocaine without saying cocaine.


Yeah, at exactly that same point in the story, I thought to myself "You know, they say Cocaine is a hell of a drug."
posted by jacquilynne at 3:50 PM on February 10, 2017

Where? Where are these people attracting this kind of money, with virtually nothing to show for it?

How do you find investors willing to put that much money into something so idiotic? There seems to be an endless parade of similar stories of ridiculous investments in fairly mediocre ideas.

I'd really, really like to know. On an unrelated point, I have some ideas to sell...
posted by GhostintheMachine at 4:20 PM on February 10, 2017 [4 favorites]

rdr: "In 2012 Facebook had been around for 8 years and claimed to have over a billion active users. Yet, they were able to find suckers to fund this."

Well, by now hopefully you've read the rest of the article and gotten to the part that demonstrates that Nardone isn't quite that unoriginal: on an international flight he had a flash of inspiration and invented ChatRoulette, which by then had only existed for four years.
posted by koeselitz at 4:44 PM on February 10, 2017 [16 favorites]

How do you find investors willing to put that much money into something so idiotic?

Be born into the right family, go to the right school, and/or get the right job. All of which seem to be skillfully achieved by Nardone fils.
posted by rhizome at 4:45 PM on February 10, 2017 [2 favorites]

Who? Who? Could have seen this coming?

You misspelled the word coming.
posted by Beholder at 5:35 PM on February 10, 2017

I'm dying at the pic of the two iMacs set up on his desk, looking like dual monitors but actually just two whole computers right next to each other. Yeah, I'd say cocaine.
posted by yellowbinder at 6:04 PM on February 10, 2017 [6 favorites]

"Within weeks of launching, people were using the app to send nude photos and sexual material to strangers."

I'm surprised it took that long. I would have guessed minutes.
posted by octothorpe at 6:32 PM on February 10, 2017 [5 favorites]

Boy, that free market sure is good at allocating capital efficiently!

Free market successfully kicked their ass and made them bankrupt. The initial allocation was very idiotic and it was pretty successfully punished by kicking the investors in the moneybags. What more do you want?
posted by hleehowon at 6:59 PM on February 10, 2017 [1 favorite]

High net-worth individual venture investment is very often a foolish endeavor, especially by high networth folks who didn't make their money doing the shit you're trying to do. Is an investment by R. Hoffman (founder, Linkedin) in some boring-ass work social network thing a good idea?

Probably not, still, but it'll be like a 80% chance of failure instead of 99.9%, and you can work with that.

But a bunch of randoes in your dad's country club and your dad? Definitely looks towards the 99.9% range. Overall, there are probably fewer than 500 VCs who really fucking know consumer web in America, and a lot of suckers.
posted by hleehowon at 7:08 PM on February 10, 2017 [3 favorites]

So angry.
posted by cacofonie at 8:36 PM on February 10, 2017

dont worry guys, in around 40 years he'll be president and this will just be a story about how he overcame adversity.
posted by wibari at 9:16 PM on February 10, 2017 [16 favorites]

yellowbinder: I'm dying at the pic of the two iMacs set up on his desk, looking like dual monitors but actually just two whole computers right next to each other

One of them might be an Apple thunderbolt display, which looks very much like an iMac from the rear (see these images).
posted by James Scott-Brown at 2:49 AM on February 11, 2017

Though the article does say "He equipped it with two iMacs".
posted by James Scott-Brown at 3:31 AM on February 11, 2017

He basically seems to be the original Nathan Barley, the one Brooker described in his TV Go Home columns. Except, if such a thing were possible, worse. The temptation is strong to wish something dreadful upon him, except the universe seems to be arranged that dreadful things seem to shy away from people like him and take out the people around him, who usually don't really deserve it.

The reason so many companies don't work is because of people like him, albeit in a more restrained or subtle way. The attitude that the employees should be forced to work nineteen 24-hour days while he jets off to Ibiza and takes all the credit is simply a day-glo highlighted version of the way many "wealth creators" think.

The problem with capitalism is capital. A team of - as far as one can tell - productive developers (who are capable of turning what is effectively a child's crayon drawing of a fleeting fantasy into an actual, functioning, even mildly desirable thing) are at the beck and call of this spoiled brat. Because he has access to the capital.

Goodness, that feels purgative. And I thought I was getting a bit too right-wing. Hopefully there's a gibbet somewhere with his name on it, but he'd probably wind up getting away with it, while some poor sucker dangles in his place.
posted by Grangousier at 3:44 AM on February 11, 2017 [10 favorites]

Or to put it another way: This is why we can't have nice things. Because these wankers have already claimed all the nice things, used them, smashed them and left the smouldering wreckage by the side of the road while they wander off for more nice things to grab.
posted by Grangousier at 5:11 AM on February 11, 2017 [4 favorites]

This was a pretty decent read, and reminded me of everything I hate about Silicon Valley and startup culture. I can't describe how visceral the reaction is to people building some new widget because they can, without regard for whether anyone actually wants to use the thing. Oh and people saying "we're going to disrupt X." Shitfiddles.

Probably better than anything else this story demonstrates that you don't have to have the slightest clue what you're doing to attract investor money. I've not seen a better example of performative entrepreneurship.
posted by iffthen at 5:36 AM on February 11, 2017

is this the next bubble?
posted by ostranenie at 6:28 AM on February 11, 2017

I really don't need to read the article, and honestly, just the comments here are giving me a slight tremors of anxiety with the idea of returning to work in tech. I did, however, want to quote this bit from the OP's framing:

A Forbes reporter noted that the Flings content went, well, south around the time money for moderation teams dried up

I hope one day people (in general, not specific) will learn the lesson about moderation. I kind of don't care if it needs to be couched in terms that (for whatever reason) resonate more with them, like "content curation" or even "return on investment". Just, like, do the right thing, whatever crap-ass reason you need to do it.
posted by cardioid at 7:04 AM on February 11, 2017 [3 favorites]

The problem with capitalism is capital. A team of - as far as one can tell - productive developers (who are capable of turning what is effectively a child's crayon drawing of a fleeting fantasy into an actual, functioning, even mildly desirable thing) are at the beck and call of this spoiled brat. Because he has access to the capital.

True. But I also see fuckups like him as serving a distributive mechanism. Instead of his Daddy's rich friends having $20 Million, now a bunch of software developers and bottle service waitresses have it. It would have been better for Fling if he'd given more to the developers and less to the pretty ladies with the sparklers on their champagne, but at least someone who is going to have to spend it on groceries is getting it.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:43 AM on February 11, 2017 [5 favorites]

"A fool and his money are soon partying."
posted by rhizome at 12:11 PM on February 11, 2017 [2 favorites]

I haven't got any ham in the house and now I want a baguette.

What a waste of a baguette.
posted by howfar at 1:17 PM on February 11, 2017 [4 favorites]

Be born into the right family, go to the right school, and/or get the right job.

Friend of friends started this big thing and it had a number in its name. He went to Whitehall to speak about it. He told me reporters always asked about the number in the name and he'd had to make up some story about the meaning as it was just from a license plate. Pretty much says it all.
posted by yoHighness at 11:23 AM on February 12, 2017

cardioid: I hope one day people (in general, not specific) will learn the lesson about moderation. I kind of don't care if it needs to be couched in terms that (for whatever reason) resonate more with them, like "content curation" or even "return on investment". Just, like, do the right thing, whatever crap-ass reason you need to do it.

Not surprised that they went with Filipino moderation. Filipinos seem to be the go-to employees for Westerners who want to farm out their emotional labour, whether it's content moderation, nannying, or nursing.
posted by clawsoon at 9:50 AM on February 13, 2017