I agree there is a tension for customers. However, what I'm objecting to is the HN community's reaction. We're the people who are pro startups, who think failure is OK, who encourage pivoting from unsuccessful products to markets we discover along the way.
The grandparent is the opposite of what this community is about.
And attaching their name to it is worse. Saying "I'm starting to not trust this startup" would have been much more acceptable in my opinion.
She hasn't said why it failed. As a paying customer (via ScraperWiki), I find that frustrating.
It gives me little new knowledge, and makes the move seem sudden and strange. From the outside, Grove looks quite successful.
A simple "we only had 20 paying customers and we think SaaS IRC doesn't work for reason X" would be fine. That she hasn't said that, to me implies there is something else going on.
The grandparent is the opposite of what this community is about.
And attaching their name to it is worse. Saying "I'm starting to not trust this startup" would have been much more acceptable in my opinion.