Hey, Josh (MinoMonsters CEO) here. Whilst I can't talk on the terms of this financing, we actually raised this round prior to our more successful launch. The money's now being used to accelerate our growth.
Great to hear, Josh! If you encounter any issues whilst using the app feel free to drop me an email at simon@wakecodesleep.com or just use our Get Satisfaction :)
We're in the W11 batch, and on record as the youngest YC has accepted. I'm 18, and my cofounder is 17 (he hasn't graduated high school yet, which Ron Conway loved!)
Okay, thats pretty encouraging :)
You're the guys running minomonsters aren't you? Hows it going? I had a wander around the site a couple of days ago and its looking incredible!
I'd totally agree with that point. Nothing above the fold tells me exactly what the app does. Other than that, i'm loving the actual extension.
edit: i think the rapportive website does this great."Get rich contact profiles inside Gmail", rather than something like "Discover the social side to your email inbox". I can instantly tell what I get straight away through this sentence and the large screenshot.
One key difference may be the sheer amount of metrics that Zynga tracks. I've heard they keep stats of every (however mundane) action each user performs. It racks up to a huge amount of data.
In addition, how much further can this story really develop? If there was illegal activity going on, why would any of the parties involved admit to it? Whatever happened, this would have been a huge warning.
I doubt we'll see anything exciting develop, like some people may be expecting.
I'm guessing the top 10 super angels would include Marc Andreessen, Chris Dixon, Ron Conway and the PayPal guys Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, Max Levchin, Keith Rabois
The Quora list is very different from yours. And I think we should all be really careful about guessing, considering how much damage you could do to someone's reputation by guessing wrongly. There's at least one person on your list above who I'd be surprised to see part of this.
Vide the cognitive psychology experiments which show that once you mention a person's name, it gets connected in memory regardless of how doubtful the source ought to be, etcetera.
Thiel seems like a clear thinker, but almost anybody can gradually drift in the wrong direction--especially if, as grellas says above, it probably wasn't quite illegal.
My list was complete guessing, just me thinking of famous angels. The Quora list seems to be based on more actual evidence.
In any case, it was Arrington that fingered all these people when he called them the "10 or so highest profile angels" who do "nearly 100% of early stage startup deals in Silicon Valley". Though after seeing Quora's list I think Arrington mischaracterized the group.
he also leaves just enough to the imagination. sure, everyone is assuming the top 3-4 usual suspects, but it was a room full of people -- wondering who were 8,9,10
Mike tends to push posts out as he develops the story (eg. the Scamville saga) so expect this to be the first of many posts.
When he picks up a story like this, watch out - Scamville didn't end until Offerpal lost their CEO, Zynga apologized and Facebook changed their policies.
2) We're a free-to-play iOS game, our revenue is through in-app purchases.