AP has run an extrondiany story which exposes the truth behind Six Apart and the origins of arguably one of the Blogospheres leading companies.
As many expected, it confirmed that Ben Trott is a humble bloke that is happy to program and plod along. Mena, on the other hand, is portrayed as the Star that wanted to shine: the first line of the post: “Like so many other 20-somethings hoping to mine the Internet gold rush of the late 1990s, Mena Trott was thrown for a humbling loop by the dot-com bust. Yet, she still craved stardom.”
Andrew Anker, Six Apart’s executive vice president of corporate development sums it up well in the AP piece: “Ben is shy and gets uncomfortable when people talk about him [however] Mena gets upset when everyone is not talking about her every day.”
Two words: Prima Dona.
Not content to just dominate her husband (poor Ben) she continues: “We realized pretty quickly that we wanted to influence the future of blogging,” she said. “We would have felt terrible if blogging became something big and we ended up only being a footnote.”
Realising that world domination can only be achieved in partnership with others, as history notes, the Trotts ended up selling a stake in the company to Joi Ito and other venture capitalists for $11.5 million.
Remarkably, current CEO Berkowitz refers to Mena Trott as “Queen”
Before the stream from the long number of Six Apart groupies and supporters, I’d note this: none of the above is made up: it comes from a legitimate journalist interviewing the players. Think twice about what you say.
