Something I didn't realise until a while after reading this was that the author of the tweets was previously a large Gumroad customer + now runs a competing business (ConvertKit Commerce). I believe the events he's talking about are also very public (I think the Gumroad founder wrote a blog post about it that was on HN not that long ago).
Worse than feeling overly cynical is then having your cynicism validated.
I recognized this guy's name, so skimming over the twitter thread my cynical thought was "I bet ConvertKit is working on a Gumroad competitor", and sure enough, they already have one.
Good job downvoting instead of doing some self research. It's not hard to find stuff.
The stuff Nathan talks about isn't even the worst. He never mentions Shl's attempt to monetize racial injustice and then telling a black woman she doesn't qualify for the promotion because her skin isn't dark enough, then blocking everyone who says what he did/said was not cool, and instead of acknowledging and fixing his fuckups, he just goes silent until the uproar dies down and then goes on with business.
I'm saying Shl is a shitty person and screwing the original creators of Gumroad out of their equity is just a drop in the bucket for the shitty things he's done, and Nathan creating ConvertKit Commerce in direct competition with Gumroad doesn't negate the things Nathan brings up, and other people have brought up in light of Shl taking peoples money for nothing in return.
People are too quick to just ignore things people point out because gasp he has a competing project!!!
So neither you or Nathan have posted what you would like to happen and why.
What is that? Rebrand Gumroad instead? A lower valuation? Different kind of security issued with more rights? Shi should be shut out from the capital markets and corporate sphere forever? PSA to investors who have already 100% subscribed the max raise?
I'm just grasping, what do you guys want to happen?
Why do we have to want something like that to happen? Why can't we just be like "Hey, just so you know, this stuff happened. Make sure you're not being duped into investing in Gumroad without knowing who you're investing in." Especially considering the terms on Republic not favorable at all for investors.
My only relationship to any of this is as a gumroad customer but this seems like a cheap shot? Nathan alleges mismanagement but doesn’t go into details as far as I can tell.
To me the story seems to be that investors were ready to leave gumroad for dead, Sahil made some hard decisions and managed a very unlikely comeback.
What's up with the references to 'tanking' and 'mismanagement'?
It's like the worst of twitter right there, just a bunch of tweet / word salad and accusations without anything to explain what any of that is / back up the meat of the accusations ...
I think Nathan has put a slightly negative spin on what happened to Gumroad- maybe implying that it was intended all along - but he does have a bit of a point.
Call me crazy but I think the deal between the two is dramatically different up front, even what everyone does.
End customer's don't have any equity... in the end neither did the employees. That's the same, unfortunately. But they're the same that way.
I think those are two dramatically different deals you're making with people, pretending they should be the same seems oblivious to the actual relationships.
