Exclusive Interview: failin.gs founders Danny Peck & Stephen Celis

failin.gs is a brand new startup jointly created by Danny Peck and Stephen Celis, Their idea is dead simple, create an honest web. failin.gs allows a user to see what their friends and colleagues really think about them, whether the feedback is positive  or negative is another story. failin.gs could be called an online self help tool, letting users benefit from the anonymous feedback they receive from friends and family, but could also turn into a lot more. Failin.gs should be going live very soon, and I can’t wait to see the public’s reaction to Danny and Stephen’s project. I had the great opportunity to interview Danny and Stephen about their project and without further adieu read on below. I think this is just the beginning of their success in the startup scene.

What is failin.gs and how do you think it will effect the social networking market?

failin.gs is a website that lets you create a profile, blast it to your network, and have people you know come in and give you completely anonymous feedback about you.  Maybe there’s some personality flaw that you have but don’t know about?  Well maybe now you can.  It’s an exercise in self-realization, and we hope it won’t be hurtful but fun for people.

As for how it will affect the market, it’s hard to say.  We hope it will have a positive impact on encouraging people to embrace a more honest web.  We’ll see. It’s something of a leap of faith to see if people can “play nice.” I think they can, but people have disagreed with me.

How did the idea of failin.gs come together and who was involved in its creation?

Stephen Celis and I are always bouncing ideas off of one another, and this is an idea I’ve been kicking around for a while.  There aren’t any sites that do specifically THIS, and I’ve always heard you should build a webapp of something that you yourself want.  Chances are, there are a bunch of other people that want the same thing, even if they don’t know it yet.  So we started talking about it.

How did you decide on the name failin.gs?

Initially we wanted to call it fla.ws, but it seemed more negative somehow.  We just started brainstorming on how to leverage geographical domains.  How could we work it in to a word that described what the site was about?  I’ve always been a fan of sites like del.icio.us that did a play on site URLs, so we just kept playing around until Stephen landed on failin.gs.  We knew it was right.

When do you expect failin.gs to come out of beta?

We’re expecting to launch the private beta on Valentine’s Day.  As far as an official open launch, we’re not sure yet. Hopefully by March.

Who funds failin.gs? (you,VC firm etc…)

Fortunately it’s not very expensive right now, so I’m paying for the hosting and other things out of pocket.

When & where did the failin.gs project start?

We started on failin.gs… Let me see.  The first check-in to the repository was October 19, 2009.  Though we really didn’t get started full-steam until around mid-January. Stephen works up in Chicago and I’m down here in Asheville, NC, so we’ve been working remotely on it with great success.

I wish Stephen and Danny the best of luck and hope to see a lot more from them in the future. Go check them out at failin.gs