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Shutdownify is shutting down
- elwell 11y agoOr, it's real and this is a publicity stunt to get some exposure, or a noncommittal way to see how people react to find out if anyone would actually be interested.
- huhtenberg 11y agoI really hope this is a brilliant piece of satire.
- kyrra 11y agoBased on the creation date from it's whois info I'd say it's satire: Domain Name: SHUTDOWNIFY.COM Registrar: 1 & 1 INTERNET AG Sponsoring Registrar IANA ID: 83 Whois Server: whois.1and1.com Referral URL: http://1and1.com Name Server: NS1.DREAMHOST.COM Name Server: NS2.DREAMHOST.COM Name Server: NS3.DREAMHOST.COM Status: ok http://www.icann.org/epp#OK Updated Date: 19-aug-2015 Creation Date: 19-aug-2015 Expiration Date: 19-aug-2016
- JosephRedfern 11y agoStart-ups these days, eh? Serious lack of commitment!
- bbcbasic 11y agoYou are so 2013. Fail fast!
- stbullard 11y ago/checks date
- pbreit 11y agoWow, for a split second I thought that was real!
- staticelf 11y agoI thought it several seconds. I even thought "wow this idea must be the dumbest...." before I loaded the comments of this thread and immediately realised that it was I who were dumb.
- protomyth 11y agoActually, it tells us all a lot about the world when we think, even for the briefest moment "well, I guess, it isn't the most absurd thing I've heard".
- hullo 11y agoNot only that, but I was pretty sure I had heard of them.
- samstave 11y agoBest HN title I have read in a while.
- jsprogrammer 11y agoIs it just me or does this title keep changing?
- gpvos 11y agoIs this legit? I can't find anything about them.
- georgemcbay 11y agoThey used to be called startupify, but they pivoted earlier this week to get ahead of the bursting startup bubble. Unfortunately it looks like they ran out of runway soon after the pivot.
- mischanix 11y ago$ whois shutdownify.com Updated Date: 19-aug-2015 Creation Date: 19-aug-2015 Expiration Date: 19-aug-2016
- uptown 11y agoTheir incredible journey....
- chaostheory 11y agoI know this is meant as a joke, but as a just do some good in world service - it's not a bad idea: kind of like a hospice for startups. Shutting down your baby is not a fun process. It's exponentially worse if it involves money from people close to you, laying off employees, and / or a very public notice to the whole (startup) world. I'm pretty sure everyone involved would be exhausted in every way. It would nice if there were people who could ease the pain. It's probably not something you conquer the world with, but it would make this place suck just a little less (maybe as a non-profit).
- aerovistae 11y agoThis is fucking hilarious.
- gk1 11y agoWhile I feel bad for the companies who relied on this service and must now write their own shutdown notices, it's their own fault for trusting a SaaS and not using a self-hosted solution. Edit: Can anyone suggest alternatives?
- edvinbesic 11y agoDoes this count as dogfooding?
- bbcbasic 11y agoThey will be their own customer forever, so they can give themselves $10MM a month for the notice, and hence produces revenues of $120MM, and easily get a $6bn valuation.
- cpmsmith 11y agoHaha, brilliant. I believed it for more than a moment. The WHOIS records spill the beans, though: Creation Date: 19-aug-2015
- IkmoIkmo 11y agoHaha it's fooling virtually everyone in this thread
- stevetjoa 11y ago... in part due to some hilariously complicit Hacker News accounts that are making serious-sounding comments. Not gonna lie; I was initially fooled.
- larrys 11y agoYeah but actually would have been better if they had registered the domain some time ago,let it bake for some time, and then put up the shutdown page and watch as HN commenters questions but took them somewhat seriously.
- datashovel 11y agoBecause we all know that failed businesses have plenty of money left over to outsource their shutdown notices ;)
- zeeshanm 11y agotl;dr :: shutdownify^2
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- jliptzin 11y ago"Our board has decided that the company should shut down now and sell all remaining assets" I am floored that someone actually invested in this idea, much less an actual board of directors.
- jliptzin 11y agoWhoops, just realized this is all a joke. Thank God.
- joshrotenberg 11y agoCalling themselves shutdownly or shutdown.io probably would have saved them.
- nathancahill 11y agoshutdownjoy.com
- ZirconCode 11y agodrop the 'shut'; downly, downjoy, and eventually migrate to down.io and down.com, they would certainly have succeeded
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- api 11y agoNo way zenshutdown.com
- effie 11y agostartup-shutdown.info "We thought hard about the right label for our company, which would best convey our mission to the people in the industry. Now, I am very happy to say we came to a great final name. The idea of The Beginning and The End, expressed in a symmetrical bigram joined by a familiar and well-established TLD is just what conveys best the sense of our commitment to bring an information service that strives to stay in touch with the most recent failures on the startup scene, help the novice founders make the best informed decisions and thus contribute our little bit into making the world a better place." - CEO
- osipovas 11y agoHow about getshutdown.com?
- sukruh 11y agogetshutdownhq.io?
- sz4kerto 11y agoTestimonial: I've been a Shutdownify client as a CEO of many companies, and I must say it was a joy to shut down my companies using Shutdownify!
- kzhahou 11y agoTruth is, this service never quite delivered on their promise. When my last two startups closed shop, it took shutdownify over 3 days to process the first one, and the second was still a full two days to get up and running. At that point I could have just put together a page myself. It didn't help that they rewrote their tech stack from Ruby to Node even as they were trying to find customers. In the end, the user doesn't care what it's built with.
- danso 11y agoIt really is a company that is destined to fail: only during a bubble would such an idea get VC funding, but it's only after the bubble bursts that they'd have a hockey stick growth. It's an enigma wrapped up in a paradox
- quadrangle 11y agoThey got VC funding‽ craziness… I don't believe it.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- njloof 11y ago"It's the Web 2.0 version of fuckedcompany.com!"
- kazinator 11y ago> In the end, the user doesn't care what it's built with. Let alone the user who is facing a shutdown of their business.
- asavadatti 11y agoThey had to transition to Node. The UI was really counter intuitive in Ruby.
- deleted 11y ago
- fredkbloggs 11y agoThey really should have tried to find a way to keep going (longer than a day, at least!). There's going to be a lot of demand for this service in the coming year. Someone should buy their assets and wait for the coming bust^Wboom.
- jerf 11y agoUnfortunately, I regret to inform you that the sum total of their assets is already freely available and downloadable on the web. I don't think they'll be able to sell them for much after that sort of IP disaster. Another business destroyed by CTRL-S piracy. When will the browser vendors take this sort of thing seriously and put DRM on web pages?
- forgotAgain 11y agoEveryone said they were the next unicorn. What happened?
- bbcbasic 11y agoThe problem with this business model is clearly that if a company is shutting down it has severe cashflow problems and would not be willing to pay for a SaaS service for such a thing as trivial as a shutdown notice. It really is a badly formed business model and is rampant in this 'oh lets get a good team and we can always pivot if we fuck up' world. This kind of start up irks mes as a sign that we have really reached the top of the bubble. Really sell your SF real estate now. Its is going to crash. It is such a waste of developer talent to put effort into hapless startups like this. I would like to know which fools invested in this so I can avoid taking their investment too. </ Look someone has to take it seriously ;-D > Edit: Damn this backfired. The downvoterz haz spoken!
- api 11y agoDon't feel bad for taking it seriously. I can't tell satire these days. The world is too strange.
- caffeinewriter 11y agoMy thoughts went from satire, to serious, then back to satire. It's worrying how plausible it was that this was a real business at some point in time.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- BjoernKW 11y agoVery meta ...
- edgesrazor 11y agoYou just know there's a startup somewhere saying, "Dammit, that was our idea!".
- franze 11y agowhile we are chatting trivialities, does somebody know where the constant "pinterest is shutting down" rumours http://replycam.com/i/Screen_Shot_2015-08-19_at_22_50_13_1B8523A1.png http://replycam.com/i/Screen_Shot_2015-08-19_at_22_50_13_1B8... are coming from?
- nikanj 11y agoThose google results come from their app crashing and people seeking remedies
- danso 11y agoWell-done satire...having the blog run on Tumblr and using a barely modified Bootstrap template, with parallax scrolling over a background image of a Brooklyn coffee house would've made it perfect.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- beambot 11y agoBusiness model failure: Bankrupt startups couldn't swing the monthly recurring payments after shutting down. Pity. Goodbye Shutdownify.
- thatdrew 11y agocan someone actually build this service? thx.
- jimbo776655 11y agoIf they'd been able to hang in until Carly Fiorina is the U.S. President, they could have had the entire U.S. government for a client...
- jbyers 11y agoCue the press release announcing their assets have been purchased by Acquirely...
- rdl 11y agoThe funny thing is this actually could be a good idea. Big companies do source code escrow as part of on premise software purchases. A SaaS equivalent which handled data portability, ongoing legal/compliance, etc, as a 10% surcharge on invoices or something, could solve this for SaaS, making purchases happen when they might not now.
- syncerr 11y agoIf you guys don't know the author (Shaun Gallagher), he's a pretty awesome guy! He's also the author of http://www.correlated.org/ http://www.correlated.org/
- joepvd 11y ago...and http://www.experimentingwithbabies.com http://www.experimentingwithbabies.com. Awesome stuff!
- 0xCMP 11y agohttps://twitter.com/shaun_gallagher/status/634106950620352513 https://twitter.com/shaun_gallagher/status/63410695062035251...
- landtco 11y agoAs a very loyal and frequent shutdownify customer, I am willing to save the business. Offer is equity only.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- dvanduzer 11y agoFor all the satisfied clients, and the investors that just took a writedown on this year's tax return, now's a good reminder that the Internet Archive accepts donations: http://web.archive.org/web/20150819204235/http://www.shutdownify.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20150819204235/http://www.shutdow...
- taytus 11y agoThis is the Silicon Valley version of Möbius Strip.
- noonespecial 11y agoShutdownify's last meal is its own dog food. Believed it right up to this brilliant bit of snark. (re)Curse you, Shutdownify!
- dredmorbius 11y agoJMK: In the long run we're all dead. Would've made a good corporate motto.
- kazinator 11y agoI heard a legend that the Shutdownify stack detects that an entry has been created for Shutdownify itself. When that happens, it is treated like a FIN packet: the software serves up the shutdown notice, but schedules an actual shutdown of itself after a configured period.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- protomyth 11y agoSadly, my first thought was someone tried to outsource the gathering of company failures to the actual company so they could write an f'd company article for the ad revenue. Worse, this didn't sound as bad as other business concepts.
- actsasbuffoon 11y agoAre we sure they're actually shutting down? Maybe this is just a demonstration of their product, and the quality of the shutdown notice is so high that we're unable to distinguish this from the real thing. As a matter of fact, fake shutdown notices could be a great source of... === NOTICE OF COMMENT SHUTDOWN === The board has decided that this comment stopped being funny several sentences ago, and has decided to disband the whole thing and go get a sandwich. Cheers!
- ronjouch 11y agoBrilliant. Considering they can still use their own service, does the recursion mean infinite $$$, or a stack overflow?
- ryanSrich 11y agoI don't know what it says about myself or the current state of startups but I thought this was real until coming to the comments.
- kungfooman 11y agokthxbye
- StavrosK 11y agoI was in the market for such a solution and tried to use them, but the pricing was really high. I'm not sure that paying per view on a shutdown notice is the best model, I would have preferred a flat fee.
- logfromblammo 11y agoGuess they couldn't compete with ExitPlan.com . They do full shutdowns and acquisitions, as well as auctioning off the redundant employees to the highest bidder.
- erbo 11y agoFar and away, one of the great trolls of all time!
- nickpersico 11y agoThis should've been their landing page all along.
- hakcermani 11y agoI had the opportunity to meet the CEO and founding team. Brilliant guys. But they got too caught up with the how. Ruby then to Node and now to Go. The promises - from companies shutting down to pay up, didn't pan out. I wish there was a consumer version of this - I would love to set up a page to survive me after my demise and I prepay for 10 years of hosting. Demisify ?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- d2xdy2 11y agoHow does something like this even get investors? The business model banks on the fact that start-ups are going to fail-- I could imagine scenarios where potential investors also have money invested into the companies that Shutdownify would be servicing.
- bbali 11y agoIt was a perfect business that didn't get the timing right. Their business would have thrived during 2000, 2008. Now if they lasted a few more months, they would have been perfectly positioned to take major market share in the Fall 2015 recession.
- yaronn01 11y agoShutdownify github page now leads to 404. You would think they should know better than that. Stay classy, S9Y.
- hathym 11y agoThat's what you get when you bet on other startups failure
- ptman 11y agohttps://www.reddit.com/r/shutdown/ https://www.reddit.com/r/shutdown/
- pkfrank 11y agoReminds me of a 30 Rock bit where Jack is talking about Tracy's kooky investment: (S03E15) "His video game made a fortune and he invested all of it in a company that dismantles bank signs. They're doing very well."