I'm not an A/B expert by any means, but it seems like there were far too many changes made to this form to give credit to just the 'mad lib' aspect. I've seen Patrick (patio11) mention that he's often surprised by how the tiniest change can result in a huge conversion difference. The second form is VERY different than the first.

I think a more accurate headline is "Redesigned form increases conversion 25-40% (who knows why?)"

The situations he describes are entirely typical, and he's right to call the founder-takes-all scenario the elephant in the room. Early employees often work incredibly hard and receive a payout that is a thousand times smaller than the founder's. I know because I've been one of those employees.

After being on the wrong end of that deal once, I've decided to never make that mistake again. I'd rather work at a larger company (where I enjoy normal hours, lots of benefits, and 3-4x more $$ of stock every year than I got in 4 years from a startup) or be one of the founders actually winning in the startup game. Right now I'm actually doing both. ;-)

Hey. Jason Goldberg here. Do I think Citibank or Citigroup is a homophobic malicious company? No. Do I think some compliance officer is a moron who made a really stupid decision? Yes. Three hours of trying to sort this out provided even more comedic insanity than I even revealed on the blog post. Including a bank manager who didn't want to talk about this because she was uncomfortable talking about the content of our blog over a recorded phone conversation. Oh, and we've learned that the account was marked to be a cancelled by said compliance officer for this "objectionable content." wtf.

All we know so far is that we finally got someone to lift the block on the account, but that the best she could promise is another review of the situation today.

insanity.