7 ms·
From the article: While the app was initially used primarily by individuals who made a few airport pickups per year, today Just Landed is increasingly used by
by polpo 11y ago
From the article:
While the app was initially used primarily by individuals who made a few airport pickups per year, today Just Landed is increasingly used by professional limousine and taxi drivers, airline professionals, and travel companies.
So they were seeing increasing use by commercial users. Sounds like a ripe opportunity to start charging for such access.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Eridrus 11y agoNo kidding, this was the weirdest shutdown statement I've read in a while, "we found users who derive commercial benefit from using us... so we're shutting down"
- brianwawok 11y agoCommercial people using your app vs commercial users willing to pay 500 times the current price are 2 very different things.
- pbreit 11y agoWhy "500 times"?
- mst 11y agoBecause that was how much more data they were using than the early users.
- brianwawok 11y agoExactly from the article he said they used 500x more data (which I am sure is a total broad guess, but I could easily imagine 100x or more for someone hitting an airport up every day)
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- jgrall 11y agoYou got it. To profitably support commercial power users I would have had to change the business model to a pay-as-you-go subscription model. I considered doing this in a way that wouldn't shut out my casual users (for whom I created the app in the first place, and who are still the majority), but I had serious doubts about the willingness of taxi and limo drivers to pay for Just Landed on an ongoing basis. The proliferation of half-decent free flight trackers (albeit without the unique airport pickup focus), the other systemic problems mentioned in my post, and the increasingly common cannibalization of utility apps by Apple's iOS itself, led me to the conclusion that such an endeavor was likely doomed to fail. Just because you can find passionate users doesn't mean you've found a good business, and that was the case here.
- lucio 11y agoHave you tried it? What if instead of "we're shutting down", you'll say "from now on the service will cost 5 bucks a month" (or we'll close)" and see what happens?
- IkmoIkmo 11y agoI think he did touch on that though. Essentially he's selling bread, and he's got to buy scarce flower at high prices in a convoluted system from a small number of farmers, and be forever at the mercy of the flower selling farmers. Only it's data instead of flower. Further, the data sometimes is bad and causes inaccuracy issues for customers without him knowing, this causes lots of complaints that he has no control over, something that isn't feasible when charging money to commercial users. Not just that, but the price of data is ever increasing, free data is becoming restricted and he needs to restructure as data suppliers go out of business or restructure their API. I mean there are obviously solutions, like generate his own data etc. But it really looks like he's got other opportunities to earn a living and this isn't the lowest hanging fruit for him. What I DO find strange is why he's not selling it. I just can't imagine not at least one of the company's he's buying data from wouldn't buy this at a discounted price if need be. Some money is better than nothing.
- quadrature 11y agohate to nitpick, but you might appreciate that its called "flour". good analogy !.
- jgrall 11y agoCreator of Just Landed here. Actually, I have been approached by a number of companies over the years about selling Just Landed, including some household names. The trouble is, almost none of them wanted the app – they just wanted me as an employee. These weren't companies I could get super excited about working for - especially since I love being an entrepreneur and working for myself. Of the few who did want the app or the tech, their quality bar/taste wasn't a good fit, and I worried about how they would treat my users. It was never about the money. Time is my most valuable scarce resource.
- untog 11y agoCorporate customers that are paying you money would be a lot more demanding. And it sounds like this was only ever a side project.
- mathattack 11y agoYes - charge a lot more money for a smaller user base.
- wantreprenr007 11y agoFailure to monetize such as hypertargeted/local ads/deals or freemium features. Winners tend to turn challenge into profit opportunities rather than give up and disappoint many people when they had something sizable which could be sold to someone whom can fix it or fix it themselves. Too often, when people whom are uncomfortable with uncertainty and don't know what success looks like, they give up and throw away opportunity which may never come again because of their past behavior / reputation for not finishing things. My cousin nearly had a florist shop by having tons of orders, but gave up when he didn't know what to do by feeling overwhelmed... and I was so disappointed that he didn't handle it better to come out ahead in something he had passion and opportunity that passed by. (Self-sabotage or novice mistakes, who knows.) I see these shutdown notices not as some self-deprecating contrition but as braggging about letting people down, destroying value and wasting their and all their customers' and investors' time and money... don't shutdown when you have a good team and customers, pivot or sell. (Don't squander assets: talent, social or capital.)
- girvo 11y agoWhat an entitled smug attitude. No wonder you posted it under a throwaway.
- HeyLaughingBoy 11y agoI agree that it was poorly stated, but there is some truth in there that's worth considering.
- estefan 11y agoIt's like "After 4 years we finally found our most potentially valuable users but don't want to charge them and would rather shut down..."
- zippergz 11y agoAnd then watch someone else launch a free version 3 weeks later...
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoReading the article, its clear that won't ever happen. The data sources are expensive.
- cryptoz 11y agoI've been thinking recently about crowdsourcing our own dataset of airplane data. When you get on a plane, tap a button that says 'we're delayed 5 mins'. When you land, tap a button that says you've landed. In fact, you probably don't even need users to tap those buttons. The better way would be to use the accelerometer and barometer to automatically detect takeoff and landing. Airplane data sources are ALWAYS wrong in my experience. I have been on a flight that was 2 hours late but all the flight data sources/apps would say 'On time'. Bullshit. And very often there are delays that the flight data does not account for, but are real delays. User's phones could provide a much more real-time view on where airplanes actually are than any existing flight data source. I hate sitting on a plane and knowing that I am more up-to-date on how late we are than the official data source is. That's super annoying and it seems like there's an 'easy' fix: just build a new kind of crowdsourced, real-time flight data service.
- eCa 11y ago> use the accelerometer and barometer to automatically detect takeoff and landing. Or check location with a given interval and see when they no longer travel at mach 1?
- teraflop 11y agoWould that even be possible? I know I've never been able to get GPS to work reliably on any phone I've owned while on an airplane (even holding it up to the window), and presumably cell tower location wouldn't be available either above a certain altitude.
- swagv 11y agoI hate it when commercial customers with merchant accounts start using my product