Postmates acquihires Secret CEO David Byttow's startup Bold; Bold will shut down its enterprise blogging tool, plus the anonymous publishing space IO
The founder of one of Silicon Valley's most famous flameouts, anonymous social app Secret, is the new product lead for Postmates' app. Tweets: @krogsgard and @joshconstine Tweets: Brian Krogsgard / @krogsgard : Another blogging platform bites the dust http://twitter.com/... Josh Constine / @joshconstine : The guy who took $3M off the table a year before Secret imploded will now lead product for Postmates' consumer app http://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
David Byttow's second act closes quickly: a year after he unveiled Bold as an enterprise publishing platform with bot assistants on roughly $1M raised, Postmates is absorbing the team and Bold is shutting both its blogging tool and the anonymous space IO. The throughline is Byttow's first company — Secret's 16-month run ended with founders taking $6M off the table before the app collapsed, and the tweets framing this deal lean on that history.
For Postmates, this is the second acquihire in under two years, following the Sosh local-discovery team in late 2015, and it lands at a moment when leaked financials showed revenue doubling with margins above 20% — a company investing in consumer-app polish rather than survival.
First-order effects
- Bold's customers on the enterprise blogging tool and IO's anonymous-publishing users lose their products outright as both shut down in the acquihire.
- Byttow joins Postmates as product lead for its consumer app, putting a twice-founded CEO directly over the buyer-facing experience.
Second-order effects
- Bold's roughly $1M in backing resolves into a talent exit rather than a product outcome, reinforcing the acquihire path for small social/publishing startups whose standalone businesses stall.
- Postmates' repeat pattern — Sosh's discovery team, now Bold's product leadership — signals it is buying consumer-app design capability ahead of competitive pressure in on-demand delivery.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, delivery platforms competing on experience rather than logistics will keep absorbing failed-consumer-app teams, making acquihire the default soft landing for hyped social products after their collapse.
- Serial founders of famous flameouts remaining hireable at senior product level entrenches a Silicon Valley norm where reputation transfers even when companies do not survive.
The trend: On-demand delivery platforms are scaling toward consolidation-era exits by acqui-hiring consumer-product talent from failed social startups, one small team at a time.