Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
I was just thinking to myself, this looks like when Quora backed the wrong conceptual horse and Cheever got eased out by Adam D'Angelo, and then I realize D'Angelo is involved here too. I'm calling it. This is a pattern. Exceptionally technically talented people mount coups with a particular signature.
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Cameron Armstrong
@cameron
Any further context/reading on this?
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
~2012-13 or so, I was active on Quora and left because it went down a weird bad design path that was driven by D'Angelo, who eased out the other co-founder, Charlie Cheever, who I think had much better product instincts, though D'Angelo was the hacker genius type building it. This feels similar.
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maurelian
@maurelian.eth
IIRC, Cheever was also the likeable one that actually used the product.
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Yep, D'Angelo was the star hacker genius but Cheever had the product instincts, so after he was eased out, Quora became the sort of brilliantly dumb product only an untethered hacker would create. Major lost opportunity.
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Zinger ↑
@zinger
On the bright side Cheever gave us Expo which has the potential to be (already is?) way more impactful than Quora!
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