Anonymous messaging app Secret is closing down, despite having raised $35 million and a period of being praised as the next big thing.

The app, originally founded in October 2013 as a way to secretly share items before pivoting later into a messaging app, boasted at its peak 15 million users, and was perhaps best known as a platform that allowed the spreading of rumors and inside stories within corporations and organizations such as Universities.

At its peak, it was mostly in the news for being banned in the workforce of a range of companies; great in theory, but not so great if you’re trying to run an organization and your staff are using it to spread gossip.

In a post to Medium, Secret Chief Executive Officer David Byttow said that he had decided to close the app as it “does not represent the vision I had when starting the company.”

“I believe it’s the right decision for myself, our investors, and our team” he added.

Interestingly Byttow says that it will return money to investors that had not been spent by the company, an amount he describes as “a significant amount of invested capital,”  because he claims “I believe the right thing to do is to return the money rather than attempt to pivot.”

“Innovation requires failure, and I believe in failing fast in order to go on and make only new and different mistakes.”

The spin starts in a Ferrari

Credit where due to Byttow: the way he’s spun the closure of Secret has got to be one of the most interesting, creative closure notices this author has seen over 10 years of covering the tech scene.

Interesting and creative of course being a polite way of saying its nothing more than rubbish and spin.

Saying Secret no longer represents the vision you had with the company is nothing more than Orwellian newspeak saying “I completely and utterly f***ed things up, and people are no longer using the app.”

Usually when startups fail the founders walk away empty handed as well, and yet this isn’t the case with Byttow who instead walks away with a Ferrari and millions in the bank when he sold a significant portion of his stake last summer.

Failure looks so much better when you’re driving off into the sunset in a flash car and millions of dollars.

Investors who were burned by Secret over three rounds include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, S-Cubed Capital, Index Ventures, Google Ventures, Matrix Partners, Fuel Capital, Ceyuan Ventures, SV Angel, Alexis Ohanian and about a dozen more.