The decision to shut down was influenced by the realization that our initial hypothesis about the business model wasn't panning out as expected.

Despite having a great set of investors, we struggled to retain users on Sidewire, even with high-quality content, indicating a challenge in engaging audiences with serious discussions.

We decided to stop working on our initial business model and pivot to something else, which involved a lot of difficult decisions, including letting go of our team.

The final decision to shut down came after realizing that the business model was not sustainable and that it was time to start fresh. I was tremendously lucky to have supportive investors who believed in the mission of Poppy, which made it easier to communicate the difficult decision to shut down.

Even though we had a solid growth rate, it wasn't enough to sustain the business, leading me to consider shutting it down.

I left Stanford in 2014 to co-found Sidewire, a platform for political experts to discuss news, aiming to create a focused conversation without the noise of social media.

Our only significant failure was in China, where a partnership with Baidu did not work out, leading us to withdraw from the market after mutual agreement to shut down the business.

During the disillusionment phase, we struggled to attract investment due to recent failures of other hardware companies, which made investors hesitant.

After turning down Yahoo's offer, we decided to focus on connecting more people, which ultimately led to significant growth.