Soon, Coca-Cola, Cirque De Soleil, and Nike all started throwing money at Backplane. As part of a funding round that would balloon to $12 million from more A-Listers like Sequoia, Founders Funds’ FF Angel, and Greylock, the brands’ strategic investments muddied Backplane’s vision.
“I think this where it got a little lost,” Harrison said. “You start thinking ‘I’ll go build these for brands.’ Then you realize brands don’t move very fast.” It began working on hosting and managing social networks for Coca-Cola bottle collectors, Guns N’ Roses, and Condé Nast… sites only the craziest fans would care about.
Backplane’s “Fingerprints” network for Conde Nast
Things went south quick.
“The burn rate is huge. Really, really high” said one source. They claimed “it was hundreds of thousands of dollar a month.” One big problem was Backplane was simultaneously operating offices in San Diego and in expensive Palo Alto.
“They ran it hotter than they should” said another source. “They had so much money and they weren’t building anything,” a third told me. “Our burn rate was hot,” Harrison said.
Internally, the company was a mess. One source said original founding CTO Joey Primiani built the product on clunky PHP, and the engineering department wasted six months porting Backplane to Rails. “Stupid decisions cost the company a lot of money” that source said. Another co-founder Alex Moore would supposedly spend his time restocking the kitchen rather than directing strategy. “Product didn’t get along with design. Design didn’t get along with engineering,” that source said.
One of Backplane’s original founders, Troy Carter
Lady Gaga’s manager Troy Carter’s role as a co-founder gave Backplane cred early on. He had turned Gaga into one of the most followed and beloved social media accounts. But by this time, Carter wasn’t very involved with the company day to day. And when Carter and Gaga split in late 2013, he grew even more distant as he focused on his fund Atom Factory. Moore and Primiani were pushed away from the company too.
People I spoke with agree that the only thing keeping the hemorrhaging Backplane alive was fundraising by Michelsen, an ace salesman who had invested at the earliest stages of Palantir and Uber. “The company was going down the drain. If Matt wasn’t on the team, the company would be dead by now,” one source said.
