Secret
Anonymous confessions from your own contacts, worth $100 million for about a year
Secret was an anonymous sharing app launched on 30 January 2014 by two ex-Google and ex-Square engineers: posts came from your phone contacts and their contacts, unsigned. It became Silicon Valley's gossip channel within days, raised $35 million at a reported $100 million valuation, was ordered off Brazilian phones by a court, and collapsed under bullying and fading interest. Its CEO shut it down on 29 April 2015 and returned the money.
Timeline [edit]
- 2014
-
30 January 2014
Launch
Secret launches on iPhone
Anonymous posts from your contacts and theirs.
-
February 2014
Peak
Silicon Valley's back channel
Startup gossip and executive complaints fill the feed; the press starts quoting it.
-
21 May 2014
Feature
Android and international launch
The app opens beyond the US iPhone.
-
14 July 2014
Funding
$25 million at a $100 million valuation
Total raised reaches $35 million six months after launch.
-
19 August 2014
Legal
A Brazilian court orders Secret removed
Anonymous defamation; Apple and Google are told to pull the app.
-
18 December 2014
Version
The relaunch
Faster, chattier, closer to Yik Yak, and less like Secret.
- 2015
-
29 January 2015
Decline
Co-founder Chrys Bader-Wechseler leaves
"It's not about design anymore."
-
29 April 2015
Shutdown announced
"Sunset"
David Byttow announces the shutdown and returns the remaining money.
-
May 2015
Shutdown
Secret goes dark
The app stops working within weeks of the announcement.
The site through time
Browse secret.ly as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:
Ownership [edit]
Key figures [edit]
| Metric | Value | As of | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valuation (USD) ▲ | 100 million | 14 July 2014 | Reported Valuation reported at the time of the July 2014 $25 million round |
Confirmed official figures · Reported media, cites a source · Estimated analyst or our estimate
Why it shut down [edit]
Official line: On 29 April 2015 co-founder and CEO David Byttow announced that Secret would shut down and return its remaining money to investors, writing that the product no longer represented the vision he had started with. Usage had fallen sharply after a 2014 peak, a December redesign had not reversed it, and the app had become known for bullying and unfounded rumours rather than the honesty it promised.
Our analysis: Secret was the purest test of a simple idea: people will be honest if they are anonymous but still among friends. What they were, at scale, was cruel, and an app whose feed was defined by who was being torn down had nowhere to go once the novelty passed. The company raised $35 million in its first year at a $100 million valuation and returned what was left sixteen months after launch, which is at least an unusually clean ending.
History [edit]
Confessions among friends
Secret launched on the iPhone on 30 January 2014, built by David Byttow, formerly of Google and Square, and Chrys Bader-Wechseler, formerly of Google+. It showed a feed of short posts on colourful backgrounds with no names attached; what made it different from Whisper or PostSecret was that the posts came from people in your address book and theirs. You knew a friend, or a friend of a friend, had written it, and never which one.
Silicon Valley adopted it instantly as its anonymous back channel: acquisition rumours, funding gossip and complaints about named executives, some of it true, filled the feed within a week, and journalists began citing "a Secret post". By February the company had raised $8.6 million from Google Ventures and Kleiner Perkins, and in July 2014 it added $25 million more at a valuation reported at $100 million, bringing the total raised to $35 million in under six months. Android and international versions arrived in May 2014.
The other kind of secret
Anonymity among acquaintances produced exactly what schools had learned it produces: bullying, outing and rumours about people who could guess they were the target. In August 2014 a Brazilian court ordered Apple and Google to remove Secret from Brazilian phones over anonymous defamation, and the company added moderation and posting limits. Its "Secret Dens" for schools and workplaces made the dynamic worse.
Usage peaked in the spring of 2014 and then fell fast. A December 2014 relaunch turned Secret into a faster, chattier app closer to Yik Yak, and lost what remained of its identity; Bader-Wechseler left in January 2015 saying it was no longer about design.
Sunset
On 29 April 2015 Byttow published a post titled "Sunset" announcing that Secret would close and give its remaining funding back to investors, "the right thing to do for our investors, our team and, most importantly, our users". The app went dark over the following weeks. Byttow later joined Snap; the anonymous-app moment passed to Yik Yak, which followed Secret to the graveyard two years later.
The domain today
secret.ly has no DNS records; nothing answers there. The "Sunset" post survives on Medium.
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Sources [edit]
- Anonymity's moment: Secret is like Facebook for what you're really thinking TechCrunch 3 February 2014 [archived]
- Secret has raised another $25M TechCrunch 14 July 2014 [archived]
- Brazil court to Apple, Google: wipe anonymous sharing app off users' phones Ars Technica 20 August 2014 [archived]
- Secret shuts down Wired 29 April 2015 [archived]
Last verified: 15 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).