Rokali speaks out

Oh, don't sell it short, we learned tons. Like that you're a psycho knife weidling narcissist megalomaniac braggart idiot who rides on the abilities of truly talented people to carry you through life with no regard for anyone but yourself.

Oh wait, I think we already knew that. Never mind. You are right. Point to you sir!

Hey Etsy

Remember when all sellers pretty damn unanimously cried out NOOOOO to you guys when bandied the idea of an In-House Payment System?

Yeah, we didn't think you did since you're now looking to hire a programmer to do that very thing.

To quote many from that long ago thread "DO NOT WANT!"

Rokali: Cover Model? :::gag:::

Imagine my utter dismay (okay, rage) upon seeing the latest issue of INC on the newsstand. Featured on the cover were four young hipsters. One of them former Etsy CEO, Rokali. I scared the girl checking me out with my ranting.

The story is about the most enterprising 30 entrepreneurs under 30 on the scene today, you can read it here.

Each of the 30 has a little blurb next to their name. Of course Rob's little blurb contains old yarn he loves to tell about how he obtained his education with stolen/faked Student Ids:

Rob Kalin

Current Venture: Etsy, a vast website that helps artisans sell handmade clothing and crafts. The Brooklyn, New York, business processes 20,000 orders a day, at an average sale of $15. The site charges a listing fee and takes a small commission on each transaction.

Why He's One to Watch: In just three years, Etsy has attracted 200,000 sellers, a million registered users, and more than $27 million in funding.

The Backstory: The son of a Boston furniture maker, Kalin flunked out of high school, briefly enrolled in an art school, and then faked an MIT student ID so he could take classes on the sly. He so impressed the professors there that they helped him get into NYU, where he learned how to build a website. In 2005, he launched Etsy with two classmates.

Employees: 65

After Hours: Kalin is learning to sew.

What's Next: Kalin, 28, stepped down as CEO in July, though he remains actively involved as Etsy's chairman and chief creative officer. "A lot of companies are started and prepped for an acquisition," he says. "But I hope this will be an independent company for hundreds of years."

Hundreds of Years Rob? Really? REALLY? Google won't be around in 100 years, ad you think Etsy will be? Are you that naive? I don't give you till 2010.

And stop flaunting your faulty figures, you're the only one who thinks they are accurate. And a teacher helped you get into NYU... Right. Plenty of great universities in Boston, and he helps you get into a school in NYC? Let's talk more about his educational goals, this is from earlier in the article:

Co-founder Rob Kalin, an aspiring classics professor, came up with the idea in 2005 and partnered with two techies whom he met in college to launch it.

So being in Boston, and wanting to teach Classic Literature... of course MIT is the natural college for that... in BOSTON. A town with some of the best universities of classical and liberal arts educations in the world... Harvard, BU, U Mass, Northeastern, Tufts, Suffolk, Emerson just to name a few - and he went to MIT... to study literature at the top tech school?

I also imagine MIT has a top of the line kick ass security system in place - and he sneaks in on a faked id? Riiiiight. I am willing to bet you need significantly more than a faked ID to even get into buildings as almost all colleges are locking down these days requiring codes and swipe cards to even get the door open. That's why I call bullshit on the whole story and always have. I know he thinks it looks daring and bootstrappy, but it just looks like he's lying - about everything.

I do love the start of the article though... The first paragraph is Etsy defined.

"Look Honey - A Back-to-School Promotion!!"

Quicker than you can say "Oh shit, we forgot!" those fab Etsy Admins have slapped together a "promotion" for the Back-to-School and Off-to-College Etsy buyers.

Did they make an announcement in the Forums? Yeah on page six of this thread. Send out an email announcement? Um, that would be like spam. Buy ad space in Bust magazine? Hellz NO! That would cost money!

So the fine folks at Etsy put up a Storque article announcing a Back-to-School showcase that goes on sale, tomorrow. But don't bother buying, unless you're selling clothing. Apparently, that's the only category worth promoting.

Oopsie! Are you missing some emails?

Well you might want to check your Spam folder.

As an Etsy customer discovered yesterday, Esty has changed their mail setup "a little". The net result of this is that various Etsy users are reporting that Etsy Convo notifications are showing up in their bulk mail folders.

Great job Etsy!!!! This is an excellent way for Etsy shops to lose potential business!

In spite of a few logical suggestions posted in the above thread, there are no reports of Etsy Admin bothering to notify their customers of this signifigant change.

From the Bitches Auxiliary: Why

Reasons why forum posters ask inane questions 14 times in a row are:


1. The Rules and Regs are in 10 different sections and they don't have 3 weeks to read them all.

2. Their mother, sister, girlfriend, boyfriend, dog, cat, goldfish, little 2 year old brother and 1 year old neice already have 50 Etsy Shops between them and they never read the Rules either, and they've been selling god knows what for the last 2 years.

3. Everyone knows Etsy really doesn't have any rules; they just make them up as they go along.

4. Out of 150,000 stores, there are so many that don't belong, who's going to notice I put up a store selling repackaged Q-Tips and labelled them "handmade"?

5. What???? You mean I have to pack up those Q-Tips I sold and actually put postage on them and send them?

From the Bitches Auxiliary: What DO they do?

This is why Etsy never answers supp...@etsy.com or only answers after several days.

The 60+ employees of Etsy are:

1. Working furiously on Storque FP Treasuries (plus Treasuries under several employees' names) butting in all the time on 660 other Treasuries in the queue.

2. Working furiously to write articles about sponsored events to recruit more stores and sellers while ignoring the fact that 150,000 stores are trying to make sales on the site now.

3. Writing articles for the "blog", no "Storque",. no "whatever" on "Carnival and Circus Couture" which must be a fashion trend we thankfully missed out on.

4. Regurgitating Etsy Finds so that the same 3 odd picks for Finds also shows up on the FPT and "Stoque", no "blog", no "irrelvant clutter" with a Feature Article about the same item/store/seller.

5. Etsy has thus answered the last 350 sellers' fora questions "how to you get to be a best seller on Etsy?" because Etsy just proved the point. Get on their favored list, and sit back to watch a promotional blitz you keep pinching yourself "And this is all FREE?".

6. 7 or 8 Etsy employees are glued to the fora asking a lot of questions about work THEY should be doing themselves, and sitting at their keyboards, READY to jump in and add 10 "supporting comments" to the comment that one of their office-mates just posted.

7. 3 or 4 Etsy employees are working FT to stock and sell items in the Etsy Gold Street Store.

8. 1/2 of an Etsy employee is thinking creatively about the next co- op advertisement in a publication they think is cool and targets more sellers to open more stores.

9. The Etsy Dartboard "Seller's We Love to Hate" broke into 150 pieces and 3 employees had to go out and buy a new one.

10. 2 employees are writing help wanted ads and trying to come up with decent Job Descriptions.

From the Bitches Auxiliary: Beautiful.

Remember all the trouble when Etsy told us we needed to remember fix.etsy.com when the site goes down so we have a place to look for info? (Why they can't have a redirect to point it when needed I have no idea)

Seems the Comments on the stories on fix.etsy.com are filled with porn.

I'll close with what our auxiliary member said reporting this hilarity: "when etsy goes down so should you, lol!"

Now we know something else they don't do at work...