In the startup world, it isn’t uncommon to see a cofounder fall out of love with their company and leave after only a few months. But when a cofounder is forced out of an apparently red-hot startup, it can lead to further employee departures and instability.
Mike Lee, co-founder of Tapulous and Chief Architect of client software, has been ejected from the company. In a statement to his team, Lee cites “irreconcilable differences” as the reason for his departure:
“So it came to pass that when my Engineering and Design team had irreconcilable differences with where the company seemed to be headed, I was asked to make good on those promises. Serving as the team’s reluctant spokesman was not in my best interests, but honor dictated my actions. I delivered the team’s message, and was invited to resign.”
Lee also makes it clear that the decision wasn’t his choice:
“I’m going to work on my autobiography and come to terms with being ejected from a the company I helped build.”
Given how well Tapulous has been doing over the last two months, what could have possibly led to the conflict?
Lee says that the the cofounders had differing opinions in the direction that Tapulous should take. Lee says he was brought on as an ex-Delicious Monster employee, and was planning to create the type of full featured and well designed app that Delicious is associated with. Conversely, he says that CEO Bart Decrem is trying to steer the company’s apps into the same vein as Slide or RockYou, with a large number of flashy and fun apps that aren’t particularly useful.
While Lee says that he harbors no ill will towards Tapulous, he doesn’t sound optimistic regarding the company’s future. Lee was responsible for hiring a significant portion of the company’s ten employees, and while he won’t be trying to convince them to leave or poach them, he says he wouldn’t be surprised if a number of them leave in his wake.
Lee and his team of engineers were charged with developing FriendBook, the Address Book replacement app that allowed users to swap contact information by physically putting their phones next to eachother and “shaking hands”.
FriendBook was originally supposed to launch alongside (or soon after) Tapulous’s other two apps, Tap Tap Revenge and Twinkle, but has never been posted to the App Store. Bart Decrem says that the app was added to the store, but was soon removed for having too many problems. Decrem says that because of Lee’s departure the future of the app is uncertain. Given how much time has already been invested into FriendBook, Tapulous must have some serious underlying concerns if it would consider shelving the project entirely.
Lee is a well known developer in the Mac community, and formerly worked on the Delicious Monster team. Tapulous has established itself as one of the leading developers on Apple’s still-fledgling App Store, with an estimated 1.5 million total installs across iPhones and iPods. The company’s most popular app is Tap Tap Revenge, which has remained among the top applications in the store since its launch. So far the apps are all ad supported, but the company will soon be releasing paid versions with premium content.
Thanks to Jeff Scott for the tip.
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well I am sure he will have no problem starting out again and goodluck to him.
It’s not true that FriendBook never made it. It was pulled down after having too many problems, but I had it on my not-jailbroken iphone for a day or so before finding its first version too slow for everyday use and deleted it hoping they would update it in the future.
wow he got owned
but with his talent he make an even better app
That’s why co-founders need to read the bylaws, and brilliant founders in the bay need to stop giving total control to the VC’s and their MBAs.
That’s why co-founders need to read the bylaws, and brilliant founders in the bay need to stop giving total control to the VC’s and their inserted MBA executives.
“I’m going to work on my autobiography”
He doesn’t seem to be worried about his finances
Best wishes to Mike on whatever he takes on next.
I wish Mike all the best and am sure he will be very successful in his next adventure. I have enjoyed working with Mike and continue to have high respect and warm feelings for Mike.
Empty words. You think anyone here believes you?!?!? LOL
Development team didn’t agree with management’s path to create “a large number of flashy and fun apps that aren’t particularly useful”. The management team is correct. In the B2C world… stupid, dumb flashy fun apps beat useful apps everytime.
Only in a bubble.
Exactly, install/uninstall the only way to monetize crapola is bundle mobile ad ware.. which is next I’m sure. followed my adaware IPhone edition
Guarantee that Mike wasn’t getting lazy on Friendbook. Smart people don’t like to stick around to work on boring tasks when they have people knocking at their door to do something else light years cooler. Im sure Tapulous was a really cool company to start and they are off and running. I would dig deeper and see if this story has more in it from his end. Polling on this topic at tinycrunch
Got inside news that he may have already been working on a social news app for iPhone.
Saw the Taplous team at the iPhoneDevCamp in SF recently. Not surprised the split happened, hearing both gentlemen speak it seemed very possible the wavelengths weren’t quite close enough.
Best luck to both. Timing is something, not everything, as they say.
Mike Lee - come talk to us about helping build next version of our app framework!
“Dude, do you know that commenter on TechCrunch named ‘Mike’?”
“Oh, you’re from Australia. Do you know Bill?”
there is a link attached to the “Mike” name, you stupid retard.
Mike Lee is fantastic in both programming, and managment. You have people like Bart or Andrew, who disagree that it’s important to make quality apps, and truly believe in “quanity” of horrible apps.
So Bart runs Flock into the ground, leaves, and is now fucking Tapulous up by pushing out one of the best developers in the Mac world. Damn that guy is a genius.
Sorry to hear about Mike’s departure. Tapulous makes super cool software and he’s a great guy.
In the meantime, though, I did want to point out that our mobile-to-mobile contact exchange app is available, working, popular, and runs on the iPhone today: http://rmbrme.com/
rmbrME supports iPhone–>Blackberry and iPhone–>Palm/Android/WinMo social business card exchange - so there’s no limitation to who you can connect with (and no risk of dropping your precious phone, either).
VentureBeat gave us a little writeup last week too: http://tinyurl.com/rmbrme-vb if you want to read more
-Gabe
You should change your app’s name to “roombroom”
I’m totes on it!
Like Slide and RockYou?? It will be fun to watch them go down in flames. Too bad no one will be left to hear “I told you so”
Company favors quantity over quality…sounds about right.
Sometimes, that’s how the cards are dealt. Both sides have great intentions, but you can only be on one side of the business.
Talent will prevail, so I suspect we’ll see him back in action soon. Best of luck to Mike in his new ventures.
TapTapTap maybe looking for a new team member.
Sad to see Mike leave but hopefully this will afford him with more time to do his charity work.
Bart Decrem? The 20-something CEO of Flock?! That guy has another CEO job? This is worse than the subprime debacle! How does this happen?!?
Mike Lee,
Sorry to learn of your recent resignation from Tapulous. But in life, as one door closes so do many others open.
From what I’ve been reading so far, you may be the person whom I’m longing for to take our startup company to the next level. We have a really exciting and paradigm-busting product called Galaxy IT at http://search.galaxyt.com. Our mission at the moment is to make a huge and positive difference on the way people organize information as well as daily plan and execute tasks everywhere.
I’m very interested in talking with you and I’d appreciate your initial response by e-mail.
I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Dr. Rod King
http://search.galaxyit.com
the substantial trumped by the lowest common denominator. trash rules
I find it interesting in the comments that several people want Mike to come work for them, but no one seems to be jumping for the chance to fill the empty slot at Tapulous.
It looks like Mike isn’t going to have to search for a job very hard. I’m suspecting Tapulous is going to have many regrets.
I worked with Bart at Flock, and with both Bart and Mike at Tapulous (albeit for a very brief time). I left Tapulous early in anticipation of this conflict - which, for the record, I believe has nothing to do with the integrity or ability of any of the parties involved. Clearly, in any fast-moving new market, business models remain as fluid as anything else.
The irony, for me, lies in folks’ focus on FriendBook. I worked with Mike on that app (building the backend service), and I believe the reason it was pulled from the AppStore was due to accuracy problems in how we used accelerometer data to match up pairs of phones. This bug is as easily my fault as Mikes, and doesn’t really have much to do with the course of Tapulous’ history. There ARE, however, a half-dozen OTHER apps in development within Tapulous that more closely align with their stated business goals (Fun over Function), that have yet to see the light of day.
Building a company on top of iPhone development, especially in the “Fun and Games” sector, is a project management challenge; for most of those apps, it becomes counter-productive to assign more than one or two developers to an app. This makes them particularly vulnerable to personnel turnover - perhaps you should ask Bart about the app Phil Crosby was working on when he left.
Oh, you’ve never heard of Phil? You probably never heard of me, either.
People should heed your words on this one. I have tremendous respect for Mike Lee’s work and writing ability, but I thought airing his dirty laundry like this was not very classy at all.
One thing people should not be doing is jumping to conclusions about the history of Tapulous based on Mike’s post. I was around at the very beginning of this company and I can say that 90% of the comments here and at Mike’s blog are wrong-headed due to blatant assumptions made based on ignorant interpretations of what Mike wrote.
While Mike Lee brings tremendous talent wherever he goes, he was not the beginning or end of the talent or strategy at Tapulous, and his presence does not make or break this company.