5 ms·

Cofounder here. We’re surprised and flattered at the interest and discussion. For those wondering why we shut down here’s a brief summary: We created Flynn t

Cofounder here. We’re surprised and flattered at the interest and discussion. For those wondering why we shut down here’s a brief summary: We created Flynn to be Heroku that you could run on your own infrastructure (cloud or otherwise). We started Flynn as a crowdfunded project with support mainly from other startups, we imagined it would be non-commercial and community-driven. After the prototype it became clear that we would need a full time team to develop and maintain the project. When we couldn’t find anyone who wanted to fund the project long term we applied to YC and then raised a seed round which let us build a 1.0. Unfortunately we were never able to raise more VC so we spent several years trying to build a business that would allow us to keep developing the project. We spent the last four years with a skeleton team and while we were able to build a business doing “ops as a service” for other startups we ultimately couldn’t generate enough revenue to cover both development/features and the 24/7 on call team we needed. While we were able to support our paying customers we couldn’t deliver the features we wanted to build or support unpaid open source users. We also take stability and support really seriously. We were extremely uncomfortable with the fact that people were running Flynn but didn’t know enough to run it safely. So we’d get panicked emails and github issues from users who couldn’t pay us but needed help. That’s a terrible situation for everyone involved. The ecosystem has come a long way since we started (we were one of the first Docker powered projects and started about a year before kubernetes was announced). But we still feel like there’s a need for something like Flynn :( Unfortunately it’s expensive to develop full-featured platforms and we could never get VCs interested in a Series A. The 24/7 on call lifestyle got to be too much for our team, especially during COVID so with no prospects of things changing we decided to call it quits.

Titanous 6y ago
Other cofounder here. I just wanted to add that we still have some t-shirts and stickers left. So if you want some defunct project/startup swag, we'd love to send it to you! https://shop.flynn.io https://shop.flynn.io
- forgotmypw17 6y ago
  I posted a question for the co-founders, it's next to your comment. Would you mind taking a look, please? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26298288 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26298288
- tylerlh 6y ago
  Nice! Picked up a shirt and some stickers :) Sorry to see you guys go. Flynn was one of the first things that made me legitimately excited about the future of Docker. Thanks for all your great work.
- jordanthoms 6y ago
  Still wear my flynn shirt from 2015 when you kindly did a YC practice interview with us! Thanks for that BTW, y'all captured the intensity of it very well :)
  - danielsiders 6y ago
    You’re welcome! Hope you’re doing well! (For those who don’t know, all the partners in a YC interview ask questions of everyone simultaneously— this is complicated at the best of times and totally nuts when you’re trying to answer technical questions about distributed systems and questions about how you’ll build the business, but it’s a great mental workout!)
    - austinjp 6y ago
      Out of curiosity, why do that? To see how people function under pressure?
      - danielsiders 6y ago
        I think that’s part of it but it’s also the natural consequence of having several people on one side of the table trying to find out everything they can from the founders in a very short period of time and being genuinely interested if you and what you’re building. Think speed dating plus lots of coffee.
    - jordanthoms 6y ago
      Thanks, we are doing well - never did get into YC but it was a valuable process every time we applied - gave us time when we're not occupied with the day-to-day operating to think about our strategy. We're back in NZ and focusing solely on the education market which really accelerated our growth. Not sure when we'll be able to travel to the US again but would be great to catch up when that happens!
- trishankkarthik 6y ago
  Sorry to hear the bad news, John and Daniel. Thanks for all your great work, especially in promoting TUF. Hope you guys have found greener pastures now.
forgotmypw17 6y ago
Just a hypothetical question I want to know as a FOSS dev, but someone who's never used Flynn before: If someone came to you right now and offered an amount to keep going, no strings attached, enough to support the applications which remain hosted on your platform after those who have already lost their confidence leave, would you consider keeping it running? What amount, in whatever currency you prefer, would make you consider it? I've no horse in this race, but I'd like to get at least one datapoint. This is not the first time I see a post like this, and it always makes me wonder if you could've gotten enough funds if youd gone out and said, "Look, Flynn is going to shut down if we don't get X amount minimum to support us. If this platform means anything to you, now is your chance to save it."
- danielsiders 6y ago
  Interesting question. I think there are two angles: 1. Having already shut down and the team gone separate ways and onto new projects how much would you need to get back on the horse so to speak 2. Are there still things you want to accomplish and what would it take to make them succeed Personally I’d happily take a check to do more development. There are a lot of Flynn 2.0 features that were in various stages of completion, if someone was willing to fund development to complete them up front that’s great. However I wouldn’t want to do sales for this/run a b2b company around this again. So if one of the companies that was using Flynn called and said they wanted to pay our development team to keep building, that’s great. But if a VC called and said “wait! Let’s finally make this company take off” there would have to be a decent sized bonus check attached. Mostly that’s just because after years on a ramen profitable startup as a founder your finances aren’t awesome so saying “yes” means turning down higher paying offers. The biggest problem we had financially was being able to develop features before our customers needed them. We knew what to build but didn’t have enough budget to ship them. Any offer would have to come with the guarantee that we could focus on development for day 6 months before starting sales back up. At the end of the day there’s work we left unfinished and if someone was willing to fund that in advance I’d generally be up for it. But if someone just wanted to keep the business wheels turning that’s not super attractive at this point, so it would need to be a https://levels.fyi https://levels.fyi salary rather than a startup founder salary.
yourapostasy 6y ago
24x7x365 is an expensive support option, and not all customers need/want it. I found that if I budget staffing for a manager and 7 employees, create "slots" for access at different tiers (segment by business hours in different time zone ranges, response time, and support contract duration), price access to 24x7x365 slots accordingly, the price-first customers will sort themselves out. Good support that performs properly as a function of the continuous development cycle is staffed by highly-technical and high-soft-touch skill sets, and it is expensive to find and retain those people. Don't shortchange them or yourself, and charge the market accordingly. 3-7 years is about the maximum I would expect an unsustainably-structured support organization to last before people burn out, so you had a good run.
mahathu 6y ago
technically illitare here, pardon the stupid question. I hear so much buzz around k8s/docker/AWS/GCP/Azure and all that but simply don't understand what they actually do. if you go with the extra effort to run your product on you own infrastructure, what do you need Heroku/Flynn et al for? isn't the idea of PaaS to take care of server/database/hardware management etc for you, so you can focus on developing your product?
a1o 6y ago
Just wanted to say thank you for answering the questions here! You gave a lot of insights! You could be a great mentor!
anurag 6y ago
Sorry to hear about the lack of VC interest. I'm the founder at Render (https://render.com https://render.com) and would love to chat and compare notes. Email in profile.
bg0 6y ago
Do you or anyone you know still provide "ops as a service"? Would love to talk to someone who does this.

Titanous 6y ago

Other cofounder here. I just wanted to add that we still have some t-shirts and stickers left. So if you want some defunct project/startup swag, we'd love to send it to you! https://shop.flynn.io https://shop.flynn.io

forgotmypw17 6y ago
I posted a question for the co-founders, it's next to your comment. Would you mind taking a look, please? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26298288 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26298288
tylerlh 6y ago
Nice! Picked up a shirt and some stickers :) Sorry to see you guys go. Flynn was one of the first things that made me legitimately excited about the future of Docker. Thanks for all your great work.
jordanthoms 6y ago
Still wear my flynn shirt from 2015 when you kindly did a YC practice interview with us! Thanks for that BTW, y'all captured the intensity of it very well :)
- danielsiders 6y ago
  You’re welcome! Hope you’re doing well! (For those who don’t know, all the partners in a YC interview ask questions of everyone simultaneously— this is complicated at the best of times and totally nuts when you’re trying to answer technical questions about distributed systems and questions about how you’ll build the business, but it’s a great mental workout!)
  - austinjp 6y ago
    Out of curiosity, why do that? To see how people function under pressure?
    - danielsiders 6y ago
      I think that’s part of it but it’s also the natural consequence of having several people on one side of the table trying to find out everything they can from the founders in a very short period of time and being genuinely interested if you and what you’re building. Think speed dating plus lots of coffee.
  - jordanthoms 6y ago
    Thanks, we are doing well - never did get into YC but it was a valuable process every time we applied - gave us time when we're not occupied with the day-to-day operating to think about our strategy. We're back in NZ and focusing solely on the education market which really accelerated our growth. Not sure when we'll be able to travel to the US again but would be great to catch up when that happens!
trishankkarthik 6y ago
Sorry to hear the bad news, John and Daniel. Thanks for all your great work, especially in promoting TUF. Hope you guys have found greener pastures now.

forgotmypw17 6y ago

Just a hypothetical question I want to know as a FOSS dev, but someone who's never used Flynn before: If someone came to you right now and offered an amount to keep going, no strings attached, enough to support the applications which remain hosted on your platform after those who have already lost their confidence leave, would you consider keeping it running? What amount, in whatever currency you prefer, would make you consider it? I've no horse in this race, but I'd like to get at least one datapoint. This is not the first time I see a post like this, and it always makes me wonder if you could've gotten enough funds if youd gone out and said, "Look, Flynn is going to shut down if we don't get X amount minimum to support us. If this platform means anything to you, now is your chance to save it."

danielsiders 6y ago
Interesting question. I think there are two angles: 1. Having already shut down and the team gone separate ways and onto new projects how much would you need to get back on the horse so to speak 2. Are there still things you want to accomplish and what would it take to make them succeed Personally I’d happily take a check to do more development. There are a lot of Flynn 2.0 features that were in various stages of completion, if someone was willing to fund development to complete them up front that’s great. However I wouldn’t want to do sales for this/run a b2b company around this again. So if one of the companies that was using Flynn called and said they wanted to pay our development team to keep building, that’s great. But if a VC called and said “wait! Let’s finally make this company take off” there would have to be a decent sized bonus check attached. Mostly that’s just because after years on a ramen profitable startup as a founder your finances aren’t awesome so saying “yes” means turning down higher paying offers. The biggest problem we had financially was being able to develop features before our customers needed them. We knew what to build but didn’t have enough budget to ship them. Any offer would have to come with the guarantee that we could focus on development for day 6 months before starting sales back up. At the end of the day there’s work we left unfinished and if someone was willing to fund that in advance I’d generally be up for it. But if someone just wanted to keep the business wheels turning that’s not super attractive at this point, so it would need to be a https://levels.fyi https://levels.fyi salary rather than a startup founder salary.

yourapostasy 6y ago

24x7x365 is an expensive support option, and not all customers need/want it. I found that if I budget staffing for a manager and 7 employees, create "slots" for access at different tiers (segment by business hours in different time zone ranges, response time, and support contract duration), price access to 24x7x365 slots accordingly, the price-first customers will sort themselves out. Good support that performs properly as a function of the continuous development cycle is staffed by highly-technical and high-soft-touch skill sets, and it is expensive to find and retain those people. Don't shortchange them or yourself, and charge the market accordingly. 3-7 years is about the maximum I would expect an unsustainably-structured support organization to last before people burn out, so you had a good run.

mahathu 6y ago

technically illitare here, pardon the stupid question. I hear so much buzz around k8s/docker/AWS/GCP/Azure and all that but simply don't understand what they actually do. if you go with the extra effort to run your product on you own infrastructure, what do you need Heroku/Flynn et al for? isn't the idea of PaaS to take care of server/database/hardware management etc for you, so you can focus on developing your product?

a1o 6y ago

Just wanted to say thank you for answering the questions here! You gave a lot of insights! You could be a great mentor!

anurag 6y ago

Sorry to hear about the lack of VC interest. I'm the founder at Render (https://render.com https://render.com) and would love to chat and compare notes. Email in profile.

bg0 6y ago

Do you or anyone you know still provide "ops as a service"? Would love to talk to someone who does this.