Iminlikewithyou's messy breakup
Some of you thought we gave Iminlikewithyou founder Charles Forman too much credit when wrote that the creator of the online dating site might not deserve his reputation. "False," one commenter wrote, "he's pure asshole." Later, a tipster clued us in . "The only way you're gonna get the real story of why Charles Forman is a big ass jerk is to talk with his now ex-cofounder, Dan Albritton." So OK, we did.
Turns out Forman fired Albritton, though Albritton characterized his departure as voluntary. But despite the disagreement, when I reached out to Albritton, I didn't get much out of him. The only real shot he took at Forman was a softie:
I'm not going to slag on [Charles] because there is no reason to do it. I'll let him do the damage to his own reputation.
Forman was only too happy to oblige. He told us how Iminlikewithyou was founded led to Albritton's departure.
iminlikewithyou started from a simple, playful idea I had 3 years prior to starting the company, while I was living in Korea. The beginning of the company itself was, in some sense, an accident. I went alongside Dan Albritton to help him pitch his mobile business idea to Y Combinator as a favor to Dan. Within minutes of presenting, Paul Graham at Y Combinator told us that Dan's idea wouldn't work and that they weren't interested. They were, however, interested in us, as people. Paul asked if we had any other ideas.
I said, "How about a dating website?"
He said, "Whats the spin?"
I said, "Auction dating."
He said, "Great. Do you guys want to work on that?"
Dan looked unhappy and said, "I guess so."Could there be a better way to start a company? Probably.
I pressed Forman a bit and he said he specifically asked Albritton to go because he needed a "doer," not a "thinker."
For his part, Albritton described the Forman version of Iminlikewithyou's creation as "completely accurate." He maintains, however, that his departure had more to do with the fact that his "interest in a dating site was finite.... There was a piece I was really interested in. We built that piece and it was cool. Now, I've actually found something I'm more interested in."
And what's that? He didn't elaborate, but there's a set of photos on Flickr called "Dan Albritton's Secret Project." Check them out — and let me know if you no more.