We built the app to get people off their phones and into real life. IRL — In Real Life. The irony of using a phone app to achieve that was always part of the joke.
We reported 20 million monthly active users. The SEC found that 95% of them were bots. Ninety-five percent. I don't know how to explain that in a way that sounds good.
SoftBank valued us at $1.2 billion. A billion dollars for what turned out to be an app with one million real users and nineteen million bots. That's $1,200 per real user.
We raised $200 million total. The board found out the metrics were fake and shut the company down in a week. From unicorn to dead in seven days.
I genuinely believed we were building something people wanted. The user numbers looked incredible. I should have asked harder questions about where they were coming from.