Facebook Co-Founder Eduardo Saverin Backs Mobile Wallet Startup CrowdMob
techcrunch.comHey! Happy to answer any questions anyone may have here :) I'm a co-founder of CrowdMob, huge Hacker News consumer, and ex-YC-reject :P
Your site doesn't really say what you do. What do you do exactly? Also, could allow a way for people to control the auto scrolling on your site.
[edit] Also can you tone it down when you describe yourself as "we are elite". It can be mistaken for arrogance by your users:
Even though our business is growing at an amazing pace, we are hiring slowly. We are an elite, close-knit group of peopleYo! Agreed -- we've been so busy on building/iterating on product that we haven't finished the site. Ironically, our UI/UX gal Jenn is working on arrows as I write this!
While we upgrade our site, here's a little overview about what we do: https://speakerdeck.com/u/m3moore/p/overview-of-crowdmob-may...
The new site looks much better.
Thanks for the feedback. I'd read that writeup on the website before, but in my head, I think I pronounced "elite" as "l33t." ;-)
Maybe "motivated" would've been a better word. We all love technology, and I think we wanted to get that across in one way or another.
1337 ftw
Yeah -- again, totally our fault for having an out-of-date site. We don't even use Python as our main language anymore (doh!). We're doing some really cool stuff with RoR (and other frameworks) and building a majorly Service Oriented Architecture internally ;)
With all the hubbub around Saverin renouncing his US citizenship, do you worry about the bad PR associated with taking his money?
That's a great question. I am definitely biased here, but in my mind The Truth™ is that he's been in Singapore a long time, and it's a great place for him to be. If you haven't been to Singapore yet, you should go. A16Z and we here at CrowdMob have gotten a lot of benefit out of working with him, so the results speak for themselves. We haven't noticed any bad side-effects, so we're really happy all around!
Congratulations. Great PR strategy there, using a timely news story to get covered.
The product itself looks great, and the TC article did a much better job than average in explaining why the big companies won't be successful building this.
Thanks Ryan! :) We think we're really onto something here. Only time will tell.
Let's see, Eduardo invested $30,000 in Facebook? And he's perceived (so he can borrow) to be worth over three billion now. So he can afford to invest $30,000 again about 100,000 times. Maybe he'll hit again. I'm not sure his investment is something to brag about though. He doesn't look good right now. Many folks might avoid his investments because they think he is disrespectful and immoral.
Beyond liking certain person or not (it doesn't matter to me if Ed is really spending all days in bed with asian models sniffing coke from their breasts and drinking champagne - guess that's good for him!), I don't get your point. Its not like he invested $30k last night in FB.
When he was putting money into Facebook, it was unknown and had zero or minimal traction! Its like putting $50k today in JoeShmoeMobile App. Yes, he is worth whatever he's getting out, because this money _made_ Facebook what it is today, whether you like it or not, whether $0.03MM != $3,000MM or not.
edit: I am sure there are people that will avoid doing business with him. But I also think having $3B buys you plenty time of other important or successful or brilliant people that would die to work for you.
You sound angry. Not sure why. Some feel that his tax evasion efforts are unseemly. Not sure why you're focused on his lucky strike.
Hear, hear.
Not sure we were bragging, but feel free to prove me wrong :P But that's a lot of entrepreneurs whose dreams he can help make a reality now!
Fuck that guy. edit:(Good for you though)