I have something stupid I did in my past. I don't talk about it for the same fear as having to take heat like this dude is taking. I've actually written about it a couple times only to delete the post minutes later.

Seeing this play out, I feel I made the right decision. Otherwise, you never know when a competitor of yours will find that lil post and try and spin a huge negative story out of something that happened years ago in my teens and is hardly relavant. This might be a good lesson for startup CEOs on controlling their mouths even at the risk of coming across as a suit.

Btw, another great example is to read up the MySpace story in the book Hacking MySpace. Their parent company was deep into spyware business and pretty much that is what helped pay the bills. It also almost killed the myspace acquisition.

The disapproval directed toward this guy is not because he gambled and lost. It's because he scammed people. It was wrong. If he had flown below the radar and become rich and successful, and later moved to a more respectable business strategy, it would have still been wrong. How did you read the discussion of this issue and misunderstand? Do you think all the moral disapproval expressed here is a sham? That we are just dumping on a loser and would have applauded him if he got away with it?