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<p><table class="image-container float_right" width="200"><tr><td><div class="image"></div><p class="source">GreenCupboards.com</p><p class="caption">Josh Neblett, CEO of ETailz, a company that now owns Ecomom's assets.</p></td></tr></table>In February, a startup called <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/jody-sherman-ecomom-2013-4">Ecomom failed suddenly and tragically</a>. Its founder, Jody Sherman, committed suicide and two weeks later, the company <span>entered into Assignment for Benefit of Creditors. </span></p>
<p>The eco-friendly e-commerce company ran out of cash. It had raised $12 million but a <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/jody-sherman-ecomom-and-a-grave-financial-error-2013-4">dangerous, discount-heavy marketing strategy</a> and poor financial decisions dwindled <keyword id="1745811" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Ecomom">Ecomom</keyword>'s bank account down to nothing. </p>
<p>Despite its abrupt ending, Ecomom's brand may live on. Today ETailz Inc, an Ecomom competitor that launched in 2008, announced its acquisition of Ecomom's assets. It will be relaunching <a href="http://www.ecomom.com">Ecomom.com</a> under entirely new management this summer. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.etailz.com/">ETailz</a> (formerly called GreenCupboards) worked with Sherwood Partners, the company hired to wind down Ecomom, to acquire Ecomom's domain, social media accounts, and remaining $1 million worth of inventory. It was an all-cash deal that takes care of the $1 million securitized bank loan, as well as some unsecured creditors.</p>
<p>Josh Neblett, ETailz' CEO, spoke with us about the deal and his future plans for Ecomom.</p>
<p>Neblett is moving Ecomom's headquarters to Spokane, Washington where ETailz is based. He says none of Ecomom's former employees or management team have joined ETailz, although he's not opposed to hiring them. Three of Ecomom's previous employees knew about the ETailz acquisition before today, and Neblett says they're "excited [ETailz is] going to keep the brand and vision alive."  Neblett is speaking with Sherman's co-founder Emily Blakeney, tomorrow about the relaunch.</p>
<p>Unlike Ecomom, which never made money, Neblett says Etailz is profitable. Last year, it generated $13 million and Neblett expects 2013 revenue to double. Also unlike Ecomom, ETailz isn't a big fan of raising outside funding. His company raised $280,000 one time in 2008 and it hasn't raised money since. ETailz has 60 employees.</p>
<p>We asked Neblett why he wanted to purchase Ecomom's assets. It's a little eerie, like buying a house someone died in. </p>
<p>"I strongly believe in the next three to five years you're going to see someone emerge as a leader in the eco-friendly space," Neblett said. "At the end of the day, you have to look at the business. As we looked at the customer following and brand loyalty, we said 'There's something here. It's a strong brand, a strong domain.' We can make this flourish, and grow Ecomom into we think what [the former management team] wanted."</p>
<p>We asked Neblett how he feels about discounts, a tactic Sherman's team leaned on too often to produce sales. </p>
<p>"We believe if price is the only reason you're buying from us then we're not doing our job right," he said. "We do run sales and discounts, but we do it selectively in a way that is sustainable."</p>

Despite Its Tragic Failure, Ecomom's Brand Will Be Kept Alive By A Profitable Competitor

The Story Of A Failed Startup And A Founder Driven To Suicide

<p><div class="image-container float_right" style="width:400px"><div class="image"></div><p class="source"><a href="http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com">Mark Suster's Both Sides of the Table</a></p><p class="caption">Jody Sherman, the founder of <keyword id="1745811" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Ecomom">Ecomom</keyword>, committed suicide on January 28. His company closed two weeks later.</p></div> Last month, we published a <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/jody-sherman-ecomom-2013-4">behind-the-scenes report on a failed e-commerce startup, Ecomom</a>, and its founder who committed suicide, Jody Sherman.</p>
<p>Sherman shot and killed himself at the end of January. Two weeks later, the company, which sold affordable goods to parents and was loved by its customers, abruptly entered into Assignment for Benefit of Creditors, an alternative to filing for bankruptcy. Today, the company updated its Facebook page and website and announced that it had been <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/etailz-inc-acquires-ecomom-assets-and-will-relaunch-site-this-summer-2013-4">acquired by etailz, Inc</a> in late March and would be relaunching this summer.</p>
<p class="p1">The fact that Ecomom ran out of money, shut down, and was then acquired is startling. <span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">The company had raised </span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">$5 million just six months earlier and more than $12 million total. Sherman left no note explaining his actions.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">One of the questions the article tried to answer was, </span><em style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">what happened to the startup's cash late last year?</em></p>
<p>There were three people with intimate knowledge of the company's financials. One was an outside accountant named Darin Marinov, who declined to comment for the article through lawyers. Another was Jody Sherman. The third was an internal controller who was hired in October, just three months before the company collapsed.</p>
<p>His name is Philip Prentiss, and he's written a detailed account of the company's financial state those final months.  According to Prentiss, the company's aggressive discount culture and Sherman's lack of financial knowledge dwindled away the company's account to nothing.</p>
<p>We've left his account unedited and posted it on <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/137629166/Ecomom-Post-Mortem">Scribd</a>. You can read it in its entirety below, but here are the highlights.</p>
<p>Please note, the following merely summarizes Prentiss' document; it is not the opinion of Business Insider. </p>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Prentiss joined Ecomom in October 2012 as the company's first controller. It never had a CFO. He was the first person, other than Sherman and the outside accountant, to handle invoices, income statements, and finances.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Ecomom never had a profitable month.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">For the first month, things at Ecomom seemed fine despite the company losing half a million dollars. The October 2012 Income statement looked like this:</span></li>
<ul>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">($000's)</span></strong></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Revenue: 322</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Cost of Goods: 173</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Gross Margin: 46%</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Selling: 288</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">G&amp;A: 102</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Operations: 169</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">IT: 87</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Customer Service: 24</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Net Profit (Loss): (548)</span></li>
</ul>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">"A half million dollar loss wasn't great, but the company just received $4.8 million in </span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">financing the previous month and a number of selling and operational expenses were due </span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">to one time website development fees," Prentiss writes. "More importantly, black Friday was just around the corner. We anticipated sales of over $1 million for November and without the one </span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">time costs there seemed an outside chance we might actually reach the break even point."</span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"> </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">While sales were an all-time high on Black Friday, that day marked the beginning of the end for Ecomom, according to Prentiss. <strong>The company generated $1.1 million in November, but it also lost $860,000</strong>. Prentiss shows why in a breakdown of the November 2012 income statement.</span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">($000's)</span></strong></span></li>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Revenue: 1089</span></li>
</ul>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Variable Costs*:</span></li>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Cost of Goods: 548</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Discounts: 751</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Warehousing: 152</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Freight Out: 134</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Contribution Margin: -48%</span></li>
</ul>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Fixed Costs:</span></li>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Employees: 141</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Consultants: 111</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Advertising: 44</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Overhead: 41</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Net Profit (Loss): (864)</span></li>
</ul>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">"Our discounts are meant to be one time only, but we can't limit them by customer so every order ends up sold 50% off," Prentiss explains. "Said another </span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">way, for every additional $60 average order shipped our variable cost is $89 and we lose </span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">$29. Said another way, the more we sell, the more we lose. Said another way, if we </span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">cut all our sales to zero and sat around and played ping pong all day we could continue to </span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">pay ourselves handsomely for two more years while at the current sales rate we'll be out </span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">of cash in three months. Said another way, now would be a very good time to pull the </span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">fire alarm."</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">After that $864,000 loss, Prentiss says Sherman finally realized there was a problem, but it was too late to right the sinking ship. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Sherman held a management meeting and made some big changes, but somehow, the grave financial situation was never discussed. "I can tell you for sure the </span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">word 'margin' and the word 'profit' were never mentioned," Prentiss writes of that meeting. "Jody was a master marketer and led a management meeting that focused on an awesome feel good marketing plan."</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Sherman told the executives at that meeting he'd bring in additional financing of $2 million, possibly from one of the current investors, People Fund </span><em style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">(Note: PeopleFund disputes this claim, saying that they were not considering investing more in the company at that time.)<strong> </strong></em></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">November closed with $2.2 million in the bank.</span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"> </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">After November, Ecomom did away with the discount strategy. The GM and VP of Sales departed. But without the discounts, Prentiss says sales dropped off and Ecomom got stuck with inventory it couldn't sell. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Sherman never got that $2 million from People Fund or anyone else, but he did try hard to raise more money. "I never had a close relationship with Jody but I did sit right across from him in the office and overheard a large number of unsuccessful fund raising calls," Prentiss recalls. "I remember him quite clearly ending one with 'well, I'm not really in love with this conversation either.'"</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"><span>A large problem was Sherman did not understand some basic business principles. "</span><span class="a"><span class="l6"><span class="l8"><span class="l6"><span class="l6">I would <span class="l6">bring </span></span></span></span></span></span><span class="a">the financial statements to Jody who would glance at them so cursorily and wave me </span><span class="a">away with 'no one can understand this <span class="l6">without extensive analysis,' Prentiss writes.<strong> "<span class="w"></span>Critically, he did not </strong></span></span><span class="a"><strong>understand margin.</strong> <span class="w"></span>At the end of December when <span class="l6">things were getting trul<span class="l6">y desperate, he </span></span></span><span class="a">said to me, 'Phil, just bring me a forecast that shows how much we need to sell to break </span><span class="a">even.' <span class="w"></span>He did not understand, after t<span class="l6">hree years of negative margin, t<span class="l6">hat increased sales </span></span></span><span class="a">resulted in increased losses<span class="l6">. <span class="w"></span>He had built his house <span class="l6">by raising money and when tim<span class="l6">es got </span></span></span></span><span class="a">tough he went with what he knew."</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">One week before Sherman's death, Sherman asked Prentiss to draw up a forecast of what the company's financial situation would look like with half the staff laid off and inventory filling the empty space instead of sitting in a warehouse. </span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"> </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Prentiss remembers the last few meetings with Sherman. It included Sherman making "morose comments" such as "if you want to fire me that's ok" and "I'm too old to start over." Prentiss also says Sherman drew up a will one week before he died and gave it to his secretary. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">"On my very last weekend, January 26-</span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">27, 2013, I drew up multiple different forecasts at Jody's request. Some were 2013 P&amp;L </span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">forecasts at different levels of revenue, and some were detailed expense forecasts with </span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">spending cut to an absolute minimum. I speculate Jody was either trying one final time </span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">to raise capital or preparing for severe downsizing otherwise," writes Prentiss.</span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"> </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">On January 28, Sherman ended his life. On February 15, Ecomom entered into Assignment for benefit of Creditors.</span></li>
</ul>
<p> </p>
<p style="margin: 12px auto 6px auto; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -x-system-font: none; display: block;"><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/137629166/Ecomom-Post-Mortem?secret_password=2fyott1h5jzqhha8u3j2" title="View Ecomom Post Mortem on Scribd">Ecomom Post Mortem</a></p>
<p></p>
<p>*Prentiss clarified how the variable expenses in the income statement were defined via email: </p>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"><strong>Discounts:</strong> We contracted with 3rd party discount companies such as Plum District to advertise our products.  For example the customer would pay Plum District $20 and receive a $40 coupon to be used on our site.  We would ship $40 of retail value and receive nothing from the customer, but eventually receive $20 (less some service charge) from Plum District.  This worked phenomenally well to drive traffic to our site, but of course was also extremely expensive.  In this particular example revenue would be $40 and discounts would be $20.  On a technical accounting note, this should have been booked as "discounts."  However, because it rolled up under the VP of Marketing, it had always been booked as "advertising expense" and thus remained hidden.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"><strong>Freight Out:</strong> FedEx charges for shipping out.  We offered free shipping to the customer.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"><strong>Warehouse:</strong> invoices from our third party warehouse service in La Brea, California.  I can't remember the name.  </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"><strong>Consulting:</strong> large parts of our IT were outsourced.  Most expensive was our tech support for our computer systems OMX and Magneto.  Second most expensive was website design for various specials and promotions and general technical trouble.  All these people charged around $100 per hour and we used them intermittently - but usually averaging 100 hours a month or more every month.  I used to work at Mattel and Medtronic, in comparison the IT system at Ecomom was versatile, robust, and generally first class.</span></li>
</ul>

A Grave Financial Error Sank A Startup And Contributed To Its Founder's Suicide

<p><div class="image-container float_right" style="width:400px"><div class="image"></div><p class="source"><a href="http://downtownproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/MG_0006-1024x683.jpg">Downtown Project</a></p></div>Sad news in the <keyword id="6358815" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="tech">tech</keyword> world today.</p>
<p>Tech entrepreneur and <span><keyword id="1745811" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Ecomom">Ecomom</keyword> CEO, chairman and co-founder, </span><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/jody-sherman-the-founder-and-ceo-of-ecomom-has-died-2013-1">Jody Sherman has died</a>. He was 47. </p>
<p>Sherman's cause of death hasn't been revealed but last night <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/28/jody-sherman-ecomom-founder-and-longtime-web-entrepreneur-has-died/">TechCrunch</a> shared a Facebook post written by his wife Kerri:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 60px;">This is Jody’s final post, and it isn’t coming from Jody. He’s gone. This is not a bit of his wonderful twisted humor. This is sad and real and forever. He didn’t say goodbye to anyone because he knew he couldn’t. So I’m saying it for him. If you are reading this it’s because you are connected to Jody in some way. He loved you, respected you, admired you, valued your presence in his life, or felt some combination of any or all of these things. And he would want each and every one of you to know and understand exactly that. Please post anything you have to say to or about Jody here.</p>
<p>Sherman's passion for technology dates back to his time as a data systems tech with the U.S. Navy. After his stint with the Navy, Sherman was involved in over a dozen tech companies and start-ups.</p>
<p>His last venture, <a href="http://www.ecomom.com/">Ecomom</a> is an online community that was started to help mothers with the many decisions they face daily. <span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Sherman felt that helping mother sort through the confusing and often misleading information available online would be the best way to help children and do good for the planet.</span></p>
<p><span></span>In an interview with <a href="http://ideamensch.com/jody-sherman/">IdeaMensche</a>, we get a feel for what Sherman was like. He describes things that inspire him:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 60px;"><span>So many things: travel, surfing, building companies, helping other entrepreneurs, finding the humor in almost any situation, helping my friends, proving that “can’t” isn’t something you want to say to me.</span>  </p>
<p><a href="http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2013/01/29/goodbye-jody/?utm_content=awesm-publisher&amp;utm_campaign=&amp;utm_source=t.co&amp;awesm=bothsid.es_po&amp;utm_medium=bothsid.es-twitter">Mark Suster</a>, an entrepreneur and friend of Sherman's wrote a tribute on his blog citing Sherman's generous nature and desire to give back.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Twitter is flooding with tributes from colleagues, fans, and friends of Sherman. He had more than a dozen investors who are all mourning his loss:</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> </span></p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p>'Lonely at the Top' my new blog post in memory of our fellow Renegade, @<a href="https://twitter.com/jodysherman">jodysherman</a>. <a href="http://t.co/Q138ha4e" title="http://goo.gl/LhYWg">goo.gl/LhYWg</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/search/%23VegasTech">#VegasTech</a></p>
— Amy: Digital Royalty (@AmyJoMartin) <a href="https://twitter.com/AmyJoMartin/status/296300527791251456">January 29, 2013</a></blockquote>

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p>Jody Sherman, The Founder And CEO Of Ecomom, Has Died: Jody. You’re gone too early. We still had so many more ti... <a href="http://t.co/y1jnZEYC" title="http://bit.ly/VmYJjO">bit.ly/VmYJjO</a></p>
— SantaCrush (@iandeKids) <a href="https://twitter.com/iandeKids/status/296300811628208128">January 29, 2013</a></blockquote>

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p>The passing of @<a href="https://twitter.com/jodysherman">jodysherman</a> really hurts. He was everything a founder should be: smart, brash, committed, tattoo’d, giving, afroed and loved</p>
— Micah Baldwin (@micah) <a href="https://twitter.com/micah/status/296162223812902912">January 29, 2013</a></blockquote>

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p>Dammit. Now confirmed. @<a href="https://twitter.com/jodysherman">jodysherman</a> did pass. I'll miss you, you JewFro crazy mofo. You had a great heart. Always wanted to help others <a href="https://twitter.com/search/%23RIP">#RIP</a></p>
— Mark Suster (@msuster) <a href="https://twitter.com/msuster/status/296148451794755584">January 29, 2013</a></blockquote>

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p>oh man, we all just got robbed. Love you <a href="https://twitter.com/search/%23jodysherman">#jodysherman</a>. my thoughts are with your family.</p>
— Anthony Krumeich (@eak4) <a href="https://twitter.com/eak4/status/296144306845134848">January 29, 2013</a></blockquote>

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p>Very, sad news indeed. Our thoughts go to Kerri. RIP @<a href="https://twitter.com/jodysherman">jodysherman</a> :(RT @<a href="https://twitter.com/msuster">msuster</a>: I'm in shock. Say it ain't so ... <a href="http://t.co/YZB2LpLP" title="http://twitter.com/msuster/status/296140141523775488/photo/1">twitter.com/msuster/status…</a></p>
— Jeff Clavier (@jeff) <a href="https://twitter.com/jeff/status/296141245686882304">January 29, 2013</a></blockquote>

Silicon Valley Is Mourning The Death Of Ecomom Founder, Jody Sherman

<p><div class="image-container float_right" style="width:480px"><div class="image"><p class="source"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/moonsoleil/873582444/sizes/l/in/photostream/">MoonSoleil/Flickr</a></p></div></div>Running a startup isn't as glamorous as <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/tumblr-ceo-david-karp-partying-with-diddy-2013-6">some make it out to be</a>.</p>
<p>It's filled with hardships, the stress of raising money, and a ton of risk.</p>
<p>Earlier this year, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/jody-sherman-ecomom-2013-4">Ecomom founder Jody Sherman killed himself</a>. <span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">But what happened to Sherman is a risk a lot of founders face. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">In fact, it's a risk a lot of people face. <keyword id="6356238" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Suicide">Suicide</keyword> is the 10th leading cause of death among people 10 years of age or older in America, <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/suicide/statistics/leading_causes.html">according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention</a>.</span></p>
<p>Andy Dunn, clothing startup Bonobos CEO and angel investor in Ecomom, <a href="https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/d2fe285a2810">recently wrote about his own battle with depression</a>.</p>
<p>During the formative years of Bonobos, things got really tough. In 2009, his co-founder and good friend left the company. That happened around the same time Dunn was recovering from a break-up with his girlfriend. The following year, Bonobos started running out of cash.</p>
<p>Dunn found himself not wanting to get out of bed. He felt depressed. </p>
<p>"You don’t want to be a burden, nor do you want to assume your situation is any harder than anyone else’s," Dunn writes. </p>
<p>Dunn put off telling his family what he was going through for a little while because of just that. He eventually told his sister, whom wondered why he hadn't told her sooner.</p>
<p>"I’m convinced Monica saved me several times over between 2008 and 2010," Dunn writes. "When I once insinuated in as light-hearted of a way as one can that I didn’t feel like me and therefore wasn’t sure if I wanted to be me, she came at me firmly."</p>
<p>The key, Dunn learned, was not to let go and never give up. </p>
<p>Suicide is commonly talked about as a shameful act, Dunn writes. <span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">But Dunn doesn't see it that way. Instead, he looks at it as an act of mistaken heroism, or misguided honor. </span></p>
<p>The solution, Dunn says, is discussing suicide more openly and acknowledging it as "a killer of brave people, not of cowards."</p>

Startup CEO: Running A Company Can Make You Suicidal

<h4> </h4>
<h4>Are startups just for workaholic white male lumpen-preneurs?</h4>
<p>A YEAR AGO Jody Sherman shot himself. His online shop, Ecomom, which sold eco-friendly and health products for children, was running out of cash. A few weeks later the business closed its virtual doors. A new owner relaunched it in June.</p>
<p>There is no evidence that entrepreneurs kill themselves more often than people in other high-pressure jobs, but the news of Sherman's death (which coincided with the suicide of Aaron Swartz, an internet activist) led to a rare moment of self-examination in the startup sphere. In a blog post Jason Calacanis, an outspoken serial entrepreneur, mused whether there was a need to examine if "the pressures of being a founder, the pressure of our community's relentless pursuit of greatness, in some way contributed to their deaths".</p>
<p>These pressures form part of the darker side of startups, along with concerns that startup communities, though very international, are made up largely of youngish white males who are not so much entrepreneurs as new kinds of workers. A further worry is that software--and hence startups--are eating not just the world but jobs, too.</p>
<p>Ask founders why they put up with the hardships, and they reply with predictable enthusiasm. "I want to change the world," says Daan Weddepohl, chief executive of Peerby, a service based in Amsterdam that could indeed make a difference if it takes off. It lets people borrow things they need (a drill, a lawnmower, an icemaker) from their neighbours within half an hour.</p>
<p>But beneath this fervour there is often a world of uncertainty. In essence, a founder's job is to create something out of nothing, which often means convincing people that there may be something in their idea. "Building a startup is all about building credibility--with investors, partners, customers, the media," explains Mr Weddepohl, a recent TechStars alumnus.</p>
<p>A big part of that is hype. "Everything is always awesome, but even startups considered successful tend to have huge issues," says Andreas Klinger, an Austrian who co-founded a (now defunct) London-based online shop for designer clothing.</p>
<p>What makes being a founder stressful is being on an emotional roller-coaster all the time. "In the morning you feel everything is on the right track and in the evening everything seems in the gutter," says Shawn Zvinis, the co-founder of Tab, a London startup which closed in December. "There are days you don't want to get out of bed. And you ask yourself: does changing the world feel like this?"</p>
<p>For most founders money is a constant worry. Investors often give them only relatively small sums at a time. To keep costs down and make sure that employees get paid, they draw little money for themselves and live as cheaply as they can. "If you haven't missed payroll at least once, you are not a real entrepreneur," goes a startup mantra.</p>
<p>Since many founders have no life outside their company, they consider it their family. That makes it traumatic when a long-standing employee or, worse, a co-founder leaves. "It's like getting divorced," says Mr Weddepohl, who has twice parted company with a co-founder.</p>
<p>Attitudes to failure vary by culture, though it is always a personal disaster when, after years of hard slog, a founder realises that the dream is over. But many still want to give it another try. "It's part of the game. You have to ask yourself what you have learned and move on," says Gaith Kawar, a Jordanian serial entrepreneur who is on his seventh startup.</p>
<p>Some experiment not only with new services but new work patterns too. At Jimdo, a firm based in Hamburg that makes it easy to build websites, employees came up with an internal set of rules to keep their to-do list manageable and ensure they are "well-rested". This does not seem to have hurt the firm: it has helped customers to set up 10m websites from offices in San Francisco, Tokyo and Shanghai and employs 170 people.</p>
<h3>One-track minds</h3>
<p>But on the whole the startup world, even more than other forms of business, leaves little room for life beyond work. That may be one reason why only about 10% of founders are women, according to Compass, a startup research outfit. It does not help that there are hardly any female role models, and that many schools do not encourage girls to take an interest in computing.</p>
<p>The financial side is similarly male-dominated. In 2013 less than 5% of IT investments were made in firms founded by women, according to PitchBook, a research firm (see chart 4). And it is not just women who are underrepresented. Founders may come from all over the world, but most of them are white or pale.</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>The Economist</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">The lack of ethnic diversity is particularly noticeable in accelerators, but their managers say there is little they can do about it: the people who present themselves are "a bunch of white and Asian dudes", notes Mr Graham, the founder of Y Combinator. This seems likely to limit innovation. Still, a growing number of investors now at least recognise that there is a problem. Having found that only a handful of its applicants were female, Entrepreneur First, a London accelerator for individual founders, decided to launch CodeFirst:Girls, a series of free courses to teach female students how to code. Among the latest batch, four out of 31 founders are women, which is still not great.</span></p>
<p>A more diverse group of founders might develop a more mature self-image. For the moment many see themselves as the next Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg, but last year Venkatesh Rao of Ribbonfarm, a consultancy, offered a different narrative. "Entrepreneurs are the new labour," he claimed in a series of well-argued blog posts with the same title. And it is true that many founders do indeed live on "rent and ramen [noodles]". But Mr Rao's analysis goes deeper. He sees a connection between today's entrepreneurs and the artisan steelmakers of the late 19th century. As the market matured, he explains, the Victorian steelworkers' knowledge became commoditised, making them the nucleus of the new working class. Something similar is now happening to founders, Mr Rao claims.</p>
<p>The lean startup methodology, the accelerators and the standardised term sheets for investments are all signs that the knowledge required to run a startup is becoming codified and commoditised. This has tilted the balance of power between investors and entrepreneurs, he writes. "Investors have won, and their dealings with the entrepreneur class now look far more like the dealings between management and labour."</p>
<p>Many founders will end up being "acqui-hired", with a large tech company buying a startup not for the technology but for the team, reckons Mr Rao. That may be no bad thing: a good engineer will quickly get a job that he would have taken twice as long to reach on a conventional career ladder, as well as a significant chunk of cash. But it puts a different light on startups and accelerators, suggesting that they are less about identifying the next Mr Zuckerberg or Mr Jobs than about providing a new system to train workers for the knowledge economy.</p>
<h3>A trickle of jobs</h3>
<p>Can founders not at least feel good about themselves as job creators? Between 1990 and 2011 information and communication technology (ICT) businesses in America aged between one and five years increased their workforce by 10% a year, according to a recent study by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. But since most of these businesses are small, so are the absolute numbers of jobs they generate. Although startups often "scale" quickly, they rarely become "massive", says Erik Brynjolfsson of MIT Sloan School of Management.</p>
<p>In a new book, "The Second Machine Age", co-written with a colleague, Andrew McAfee, Mr Brynjolfsson contrasts Eastman Kodak, founded in 1880, with Instagram, a photo-sharing app only 18 months old that was bought by Facebook for about $1 billion in 2012. In its heyday Kodak employed over 145,000 people and indirectly provided work for thousands more. It filed for bankruptcy a few months before Instagram was sold. At the time of the sale the photo-sharing firm had 130m customers but just 16 employees. Even Facebook, which now boasts more than 1.2 billion users, employs only about 5,800 people.</p>
<p>Yet it would be wrong to conclude that the entrepreneurial explosion will lead to more unemployment, argues Mr Brynjolfsson. Startups may disrupt existing industries, but they often create the foundation for many new jobs outside their own business. On Etsy, an online marketplace for homemade items, more than 1m people have opened stores to sell their wares. On eLance and oDesk, two freelancing sites, 2.3m and 4.5m members respectively are offering their services.</p>
<p>Most important, digital technology has created endless possibilities for new products. "The answer is not less entrepreneurship but more," says Mr Brynjolfsson. "We are in no danger of running out of combinations to try." That cornucopia is now extending from software to hardware.</p>
<p>Click <a href="https://subscriptions.economist.com/nwcd">here</a> to subscribe to The Economist</p>
<p></p>

The Sad Truth About Working At A Tech Startup

<p>Are startups just for workaholic white male lumpen-preneurs?</p>
<p>A YEAR AGO Jody Sherman shot himself. His online shop, Ecomom, which sold eco-friendly and health products for children, was running out of cash. A few weeks later the business closed its virtual doors. A new owner relaunched it in June.</p>
<p>There is no evidence that entrepreneurs kill themselves more often than people in other high-pressure jobs, but the news of Sherman's death (which coincided with the suicide of Aaron Swartz, an internet activist) led to a rare moment of self-examination in the startup sphere. In a blog post Jason Calacanis, an outspoken serial entrepreneur, mused whether there was a need to examine if "the pressures of being a founder, the pressure of our community's relentless pursuit of greatness, in some way contributed to their deaths".</p>
<p>These pressures form part of the darker side of startups, along with concerns that startup communities, though very international, are made up largely of youngish white males who are not so much entrepreneurs as new kinds of workers. A further worry is that software--and hence startups--are eating not just the world but jobs, too.</p>
<p>Ask founders why they put up with the hardships, and they reply with predictable enthusiasm. "I want to change the world," says Daan Weddepohl, chief executive of Peerby, a service based in Amsterdam that could indeed make a difference if it takes off. It lets people borrow things they need (a drill, a lawnmower, an icemaker) from their neighbours within half an hour.</p>
<p>But beneath this fervour there is often a world of uncertainty. In essence, a founder's job is to create something out of nothing, which often means convincing people that there may be something in their idea. "Building a startup is all about building credibility--with investors, partners, customers, the media," explains Mr Weddepohl, a recent TechStars alumnus.</p>
<p>A big part of that is hype. "Everything is always awesome, but even startups considered successful tend to have huge issues," says Andreas Klinger, an Austrian who co-founded a (now defunct) London-based online shop for designer clothing.</p>
<p>What makes being a founder stressful is being on an emotional roller-coaster all the time. "In the morning you feel everything is on the right track and in the evening everything seems in the gutter," says Shawn Zvinis, the co-founder of Tab, a London startup which closed in December. "There are days you don't want to get out of bed. And you ask yourself: does changing the world feel like this?"</p>
<p>For most founders money is a constant worry. Investors often give them only relatively small sums at a time. To keep costs down and make sure that employees get paid, they draw little money for themselves and live as cheaply as they can. "If you haven't missed payroll at least once, you are not a real entrepreneur," goes a startup mantra.</p>
<p>Since many founders have no life outside their company, they consider it their family. That makes it traumatic when a long-standing employee or, worse, a co-founder leaves. "It's like getting divorced," says Mr Weddepohl, who has twice parted company with a co-founder.</p>
<p>Attitudes to failure vary by culture, though it is always a personal disaster when, after years of hard slog, a founder realises that the dream is over. But many still want to give it another try. "It's part of the game. You have to ask yourself what you have learned and move on," says Gaith Kawar, a Jordanian serial entrepreneur who is on his seventh startup.</p>
<p>Some experiment not only with new services but new work patterns too. At Jimdo, a firm based in Hamburg that makes it easy to build websites, employees came up with an internal set of rules to keep their to-do list manageable and ensure they are "well-rested". This does not seem to have hurt the firm: it has helped customers to set up 10m websites from offices in San Francisco, Tokyo and Shanghai and employs 170 people.</p>
<h3>One-track minds</h3>
<p>But on the whole the startup world, even more than other forms of business, leaves little room for life beyond work. That may be one reason why only about 10% of founders are women, according to Compass, a startup research outfit. It does not help that there are hardly any female role models, and that many schools do not encourage girls to take an interest in computing.</p>
<p>The financial side is similarly male-dominated. In 2013 less than 5% of IT investments were made in firms founded by women, according to PitchBook, a research firm (see chart 4). And it is not just women who are underrepresented. Founders may come from all over the world, but most of them are white or pale.</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>The Economist</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">The lack of ethnic diversity is particularly noticeable in accelerators, but their managers say there is little they can do about it: the people who present themselves are "a bunch of white and Asian dudes", notes Mr Graham, the founder of Y Combinator. This seems likely to limit innovation. Still, a growing number of investors now at least recognise that there is a problem. Having found that only a handful of its applicants were female, Entrepreneur First, a London accelerator for individual founders, decided to launch CodeFirst:Girls, a series of free courses to teach female students how to code. Among the latest batch, four out of 31 founders are women, which is still not great.</span></p>
<p>A more diverse group of founders might develop a more mature self-image. For the moment many see themselves as the next Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg, but last year Venkatesh Rao of Ribbonfarm, a consultancy, offered a different narrative. "Entrepreneurs are the new labour," he claimed in a series of well-argued blog posts with the same title. And it is true that many founders do indeed live on "rent and ramen [noodles]". But Mr Rao's analysis goes deeper. He sees a connection between today's entrepreneurs and the artisan steelmakers of the late 19th century. As the market matured, he explains, the Victorian steelworkers' knowledge became commoditised, making them the nucleus of the new working class. Something similar is now happening to founders, Mr Rao claims.</p>
<p>The lean startup methodology, the accelerators and the standardised term sheets for investments are all signs that the knowledge required to run a startup is becoming codified and commoditised. This has tilted the balance of power between investors and entrepreneurs, he writes. "Investors have won, and their dealings with the entrepreneur class now look far more like the dealings between management and labour."</p>
<p>Many founders will end up being "acqui-hired", with a large tech company buying a startup not for the technology but for the team, reckons Mr Rao. That may be no bad thing: a good engineer will quickly get a job that he would have taken twice as long to reach on a conventional career ladder, as well as a significant chunk of cash. But it puts a different light on startups and accelerators, suggesting that they are less about identifying the next Mr Zuckerberg or Mr Jobs than about providing a new system to train workers for the knowledge economy.</p>
<h3>A trickle of jobs</h3>
<p>Can founders not at least feel good about themselves as job creators? Between 1990 and 2011 information and communication technology (ICT) businesses in America aged between one and five years increased their workforce by 10% a year, according to a recent study by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. But since most of these businesses are small, so are the absolute numbers of jobs they generate. Although startups often "scale" quickly, they rarely become "massive", says Erik Brynjolfsson of MIT Sloan School of Management.</p>
<p>In a new book, "The Second Machine Age", co-written with a colleague, Andrew McAfee, Mr Brynjolfsson contrasts Eastman Kodak, founded in 1880, with Instagram, a photo-sharing app only 18 months old that was bought by Facebook for about $1 billion in 2012. In its heyday Kodak employed over 145,000 people and indirectly provided work for thousands more. It filed for bankruptcy a few months before Instagram was sold. At the time of the sale the photo-sharing firm had 130m customers but just 16 employees. Even Facebook, which now boasts more than 1.2 billion users, employs only about 5,800 people.</p>
<p>Yet it would be wrong to conclude that the entrepreneurial explosion will lead to more unemployment, argues Mr Brynjolfsson. Startups may disrupt existing industries, but they often create the foundation for many new jobs outside their own business. On Etsy, an online marketplace for homemade items, more than 1m people have opened stores to sell their wares. On eLance and oDesk, two freelancing sites, 2.3m and 4.5m members respectively are offering their services.</p>
<p>Most important, digital technology has created endless possibilities for new products. "The answer is not less entrepreneurship but more," says Mr Brynjolfsson. "We are in no danger of running out of combinations to try." That cornucopia is now extending from software to hardware.</p>
<p>Click <a href="https://subscriptions.economist.com/nwcd">here</a> to subscribe to The Economist</p>
<p></p>

The Dark Side Of Tech Startups

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/author/daniel-goodman">Daniel Goodman / Business Insider</a></p><p class="caption">Come join us! Awesome people, good snacks, and a ping pong table. Also, a lot more freedom and responsibility.</p></div><p></p></div></div>The excellent media-industry journalist Joe Pompeo, who writes for Capital New York, <a href="http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/media/2013/09/8534118/clicky-business-insider-double-down-long-form-hundreds-thousands-inves">published a scoop about us yesterday</a>.</p>
<p>Pompeo caught wind of a new investment we're making in "long form" journalism, the kind that most people associate with magazines. (Newspapers, wire services, and many digital news organizations produce a lot of this kind of journalism, too. And we've done a fair bit of it in the past.)</p>
<p>We are indeed making this investment, and we're looking for an excellent editor to run it for us.</p>
<p>This is a perfect opportunity for an ambitious, talented editor who cares about producing great stories that readers love. We'll pay this editor well - probably better than the magazine world, from what I understand - and we'll give him or her a healthy budget to work with excellent freelance writers in addition to the talented folks on our team. The editor will have free reign to develop stories across a wide variety of topics: The only common requirement will be that the stories be stories that our readers love.</p>
<p>Joe Pompeo described some of what we're doing and looking for in <a href="http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/media/2013/09/8534118/clicky-business-insider-double-down-long-form-hundreds-thousands-inves">his article at Capital</a>. In case you would like more information, I've included my responses to the questions Joe sent me below.</p>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />-So I'm told you're looking for magazine-type editor. Does this mean BI plans to start formalizing and regularly doing more of the types of longform features it's really only done sporadically up until now?</strong></div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;"> </div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;">You bet. Our readers love them, so we want to do a lot more.</div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;">
<div style="padding-left: 30px;"><br /><strong>-How many such features would you say BI has run to date?</strong></div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;"> </div>
</div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;">Over the past six years? Hundreds. They're not all tens of thousands of words, obviously, and some of them are built around photography, charts, and other visuals, but they're major original features. We've also done dozens of long-form word-based stories, too.</div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;">
<div style="padding-left: 30px;"> </div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong>-Not to get too ahead of ourselves, but tell me a bit more about your plans/vision/strategy for having a full-time editor commissioning longform stuff. How many such pieces would you like to see per month, per week, etc? Will all of BI's writers be expected to pitch? Do you envision building a large roster of freelancers? What sort of freelance budget will this editor have? etc. etc.</strong></div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;"> </div>
</div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;">One of our new editor's responsibilities will be to decide the best frequency, length, and approach of these stories, as well as the time and resources invested in each one. Some topics don't warrant many thousands of words, and we never want to write long for the sake of writing long. The one common denominator is that they will all be stories that we think our readers will love.</div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;"> </div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;">We're going to make a significant investment here (hundreds of thousands of dollars), and we expect the stories to be written by both our staff and contributors. We definitely won't expect everyone in the newsroom to contribute. Researching and writing long-form word-based articles is an esoteric skill, and it's not for everyone. We have folks on our team with a very wide range of digital skills and interests, and long-form text-based stories will always be only one part of what we do.</div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;">
<div style="padding-left: 30px;"> </div>
<strong>-You've always been interested in longer pieces. In terms of deciding to make them a regular part of the mix, why now? Is it partly because of all the attention Carlson's Marisa Mayer piece received?</strong></div>
</div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;"> </div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;">We were thrilled with the readership of the Mayer profile, and it increased our conviction that there's a hunger for these kinds of stories. But mostly we've just now reached the scale where we can dedicate significant resources to this.<br /><br /></div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong>-Speaking of that piece, can you talk about it in the context of how these types of features are good for business? i.e. How many views did that piece get, and based on that, could you provide some color on how much money it made as an example of the potential to monetize these types of stories?</strong><br /><br /></div>
</div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;">The Mayer profile was extremely well-read - hundreds of thousands of readers worldwide - but it took six months to produce, so on a narrow financial basis, it probably wasn't a home run. But there are many other business benefits to stories like these, with the most important being that readers love them. More broadly, one of the big benefits of having a large newsroom - we have about 65 full-time journalists now - is that we can invest in a wide variety of different kinds of stories. So they don't all have to pay for themselves.</div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;">
<div style="padding-left: 30px;"> </div>
<strong>-Would you say this step is indicative of the ongoing professionalization of the BI newsroom? Since I was there, it's much larger and seems to include more people from newspapers/wires/magazines and other types of traditional backgrounds.</strong> </div>
</div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;"> </div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;">Yes, this is another step in our ongoing mission, which is to get better every day.  And, yes, we do now have alums of many traditional newsrooms - Bloomberg, AP, Forbes, CNET, CNN, CNBC, Entrepreneur, Discovery, and others. (We were sorry to lose you, but congratulations on the success you have all had at Capital!)
<div style="padding-left: 30px;"><br /><br /><strong>-It also seems like a more formalized editing structure has started to fall into place, is that right? Does content pass before an editor's eyes now before it gets published?</strong><br /><br /></div>
</div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;">Yes! And the site is also no longer crippled when one of our folks sleeps in or takes the day off.</div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;"><br /><strong>-By the way, how many newsroom employees are you up to?</strong></div>
</div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;"> </div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;">68! Along with a big group of awesome interns.<br /><br /></div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;">
<div style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong>-There will obviously be skeptics given that most of BI's energy up until now has been focused on speed/aggregation/pithyness/slideshows etc., all of which does create a sort of unpolished quality in terms of the site's overall content. What's your response to that, and what's your response to people who might say that BI's not equipped to consistently pull of longer, magazine-quality work, that it's too sloppy?</strong><br /><br /></div>
</div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;">Yes, there will always be skeptics. If we got a dollar every time someone said we were screwed, we'd never need another revenue stream. In terms of overall quality and polish, we've made great progress over the last several years. We obviously can still get better, and we will.</div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;"> </div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;">Consistently producing more great magazine-style stories will be one of our new editor's responsibilities. Anyone who just wants to produce mediocre, boring ones need not apply.</div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;"> </div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;">(I should add that magazine-style stories are only one kind of major feature story that our readers love. They also love visual stories and videos that have more in common with documentaries and TV packages than magazine articles. We have produced wonderful reported stories about the Canada tar sands, the crisis in Egypt, the Maine lobster industry, the Silicon Valley homeless problem, the depression in Greece, the economy and markets, the ins and outs of dozens of tech gadgets, and many other topics. If readers didn't love these stories, we wouldn't do them. But great pictures truly can be worth a thousand words, and every day our readers remind us of that.)  </div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;"> </div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong>-Anything else to add?</strong></div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;"> </div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;">I think that <keyword id="824043" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Business-Insider">Business Insider</keyword>, Buzzfeed, Gawker Media, Huffington Post, and others are just now beginning to show what successful digital journalism organizations can ultimately become. Unlike traditional print publications and broadcast networks, we aren't limited to one form of storytelling. Our readers love many different kinds of stories, including quick hits, long articles, syndicated stories, real-time news briefs, helpful links, insightful commentary, humor, photography, charts, video, photo-essays, live-blogs, and interactivity. We will continue to invest in all of these kinds of stories, with the aim of making BI as helpful, valuable, and fun for our readers as we can.</div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;"> </div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;">From a high level, I think the digital-journalism industry is where, say, cable news was in the late 1980s. By then, CNN was proving that a dedicated news channel made sense, but they still had big hair, cheap sets, and limited editorial resources. Ten years later, they were a powerful global news organization. And ten years after that, they were the Establishment. </div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;"> </div>
<div>Joe Pompeo also asked me to send some examples of some of the long-form work we've done in the past, in addition to<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-biography-2013-8"> the Marissa Mayer biography</a>. Here's what I sent him:</div>
<div> </div>
<div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;">"At Last -- The Full Story Of How Facebook Was Founded" http://www.businessinsider.com/how-facebook-was-founded-2010-3 (Nicholas Carlson)</div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;"> </div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;">"The Startup Con Man" <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-startup-con-man-2010-6" target="_blank">http://www.businessinsider.com/the-startup-con-man-2010-6</a>  (Nick Saint)</div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;"> </div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;">"The Story Of A Failed Startup And A Founder Driven To Suicide"  <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/jody-sherman-ecomom-2013-4" target="_blank">http://www.businessinsider.com/jody-sherman-ecomom-2013-4</a> (Alyson Shontell)</div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;"> </div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;">"The Great Marijuana Crash Of 2011" <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-great-marijuana-crash-of-2011-2013-9" target="_blank">http://www.businessinsider.com/the-great-marijuana-crash-of-2011-2013-9</a> (Walter Hickey)</div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;"> </div>
<div style="padding-left: 30px;">"How Goldman Sachs Blew The Facebook IPO"   <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/morgan-stanley-goldman-sachs-facebook-ipo-2012-5" target="_blank">http://www.businessinsider.com/morgan-stanley-goldman-sachs-facebook-ipo-2012-5</a>  (HB)</div>
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<div style="padding-left: 30px;">"The Addict Who Got Clean, Got A Job, And Then Got 25 Years In Prison" <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/mandy-martinsons-mandatory-minimum-sentence-2013-9" target="_blank">http://www.businessinsider.com/mandy-martinsons-mandatory-minimum-sentence-2013-9</a> (Erin Fuchs)</div>
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