#Tilt to live 1 full
#Tilt to live 1 plus
#Tilt to live 1 series

from Egypt to study at Virginia Tech, was a Rackspace engineer. Beshara, a Wake Forest graduate, had recently moved back to his home state after working on microlending projects in South Africa. They met in 2011 through an angel investor in Texas. The company’s 70 bright-eyed young employees, frequently outfitted in company schwag (interns received Patagonia backpacks and pullovers), were treated to daily catered meals, generous perks and parties, and Instagram-worthy staff retreats.Ĭofounders Beshara and Khaled Hussein, who lived in Tilt-branded T-shirts and fleeces, set the tone. Enter its plush offices in San Francisco, and you’d find exposed brick walls, ping-pong tables, and fridges stocked with coconut water.

#Tilt to live 1 full

On the surface, up until the very end, Tilt looked like a model Silicon Valley startup full of promise. Sadly for Tilt, despite its big talk, things didn’t turn out quite that way.

“Our mission is to empower the collective creation of the world,” an employee says in the opening voiceover of a Tilt promotional video.

#Tilt to live 1 plus

(In fact, the price dropped after Airbnb conducted its diligence.) So far, about two dozen additional people, plus Beshara and his cofounder, have been offered jobs at Airbnb. The final price landed at around $12 million, according to TechCrunch, not including retention packages for a half-dozen engineers. The process culminated in the company’s fire sale to fellow Y Combinator alum Airbnb, an acqui-hire deal that became public in February of this year. Revenue was not a top priority-a remarkable oversight for any company, and a particularly galling one for a payments company.Įventually, with cash running low, Tilt went looking for a buyer. While investors were throwing millions of dollars at the promise of a glittering business involving “social” and “money,” their Mark Zuckerberg-in-the-making was basking in the sunny glow of Bay Area praise and enjoying the ride with his bros. Beshara hadn’t built a business instead, he had manufactured a classic Silicon Valley mirage. Investors were lured by the same strong social metrics (viral coefficient, for example, a measure of user growth) that had marked Facebook as a winner.īut the hopes embedded in Tilt’s $375 million valuation came crashing down to earth last year. “The first one was Mark Zuckerberg.”īy early 2013, millions in venture dollars were pouring into Tilt’s coffers.

#Tilt to live 1 series

“It was the second time that Sean introduced an entrepreneur to me,” Jordan, who ultimately led Tilt’s Series A and B rounds, told Fortune. He introduced Beshara, fresh out of Y Combinator, to Andreessen Horowitz partner Jeff Jordan, one of the Bay Area’s top VCs. During Tilt’s early years, the pitch was simple, and carefully calibrated for Silicon Valley boardrooms: “Let’s prove that we can dominate the globe.”įacebook investor Sean Parker heard Tilt’s pitch and wanted in. The company aspired to be a social network for money-instead of sharing photos and videos, users exchanged digital cash for birthday ragers and beer runs. Tilt was based on the premise that “something like PayPal and Facebook would collide,” Beshara says.