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Friday.app is shutting down
- maxclark 5y agoFailure is hard, it sucks, I’m sorry you ended up here Kudos to the team for doing this the best way possible. Making a public announcement, refunding money, providing ample time to migrate is amazing. Keep your heads up
- lukethomas 5y agoThank you. Just trying to do the right thing given the circumstances.
- radicalriddler 5y agoInteresting, I just saw a physical billboard ad for this on the way to Melbourne Airport on Tuesday. I was actually surprised it was still up and running. Unfortunate that we're losing more competition in this space.
- sMarsIntruder 5y agoNot a customer, but 60 days… really?
- palerdot 5y agoHow ironic ... He interviewed at Failory[0] in successful venture section. In just 2 years, the product will be moved to the mainstream failed startup section of the website. [0] - https://www.failory.com/interview/friday https://www.failory.com/interview/friday
- SashaSirotkin 5y agoIt's not just "2 years". Two years is a really long time for a young startup given they effectively operate using dog years
- smt88 5y agoFailory (and probably a lot of the Silicon Valley-influenced business world) should stop considering a startup a success when it raises money. Success is long-term profitability.
- encoderer 5y agoThere’s an alternate reality where the founder didn’t raise money and kept the autonomy to nurture the product. Not every product can be bootstrapped but from a glance this one could be (and was!) Raising money turns a marathon into a sprint.
- sosodev 5y agoYeah, this is sad because it sounds like Friday was doing something right. It really seems like they could have had sustainable growth.
- lukethomas 5y agoI bootstrapped the company for years before raising. I raised because I felt that I had to go after the bigger vision, which required resources ($$). In short, I wanted to accelerate the pace of learning, because if I didn't, I would always kick myself for not stepping on the gas pedal. I don't regret my decision either TBH.
- mhitza 5y agoIf you're shutting it down, why not offer the source code under an OSS license for your users to be able to migrate to self hosted?
- paxys 5y agoEven if the founder wants to do that, it would involve every single investor signing off on it, which seems like an uphill battle.
- nicoburns 5y ago> Even if the founder wants to do that, it would involve every single investor signing off on it, which seems like an uphill battle. Would it? Don't owners of companies general cede day-to-day business decisions to those running the company (i.e. the CEO)?
- ghostbrainalpha 5y agoThey had an almost perfect name. I'm sure we will hear from the founder again on Hacker News.
- danpalmer 5y agoWow I'm sad I never found this while working at my previous company. I've wanted a lot of what this provides, and considered building it myself. I wonder if the emphasis on task management is a contributing factor in it not taking off. Anecdotally, most places have a task management system already, switching systems is a heavy cost, and building a good one is actually a ton of work in the long term. I'd be interested to see an app that focuses more on the culture aspects here – kudos, user profiles, events, search. Most companies don't have solutions for these, and bringing them into one place could be valuable.
- lukethomas 5y agoHey, I'm the founder. We worked really hard to not position ourselves as a task management tool, but instead, a tool that integrates with existing systems. Task management is extremely competitive and we didn't want to play in the space. With that being said, we viewed our job as an interface to "glue" the work together, no matter the source.
- gunapologist99 5y ago> we viewed our job as an interface to "glue" the work together, no matter the source. Glue and integrations with third-party systems are important, for sure, but were there any other jobs that customers were expecting more of, rather than this one?
- productceo 5y agoSeems like they had a good attempt, and the team learnt a valuable lessin on the importance of validating the business (not just the product) ASAP. I wish them luck on their next enterprises!
- m_ke 5y agoHow much longer will people continue trusting venture backed startups that are almost guaranteed to go belly up within 24 months? Instead of building on all of this work we keep blowing it up and reinventing things because VCs only want unicorn outcomes. As an example, YC startup graveyard could be full of flowers if these projects were open source and we had a better user driven funding model to keep them going after the business folds.
- dag11 5y agoWho do we trust for longevity? On the other end of the spectrum is Google which also shutters many (most?) of their products after 24-48 months.
- m_ke 5y agoBlender, Linux, VLC, Rails, Django, Numpy, etc There's really no reason why all of this software needs to be cloud based, other than vendor lock in. For collaboration software we should have a way to self host or pay for managed hosts.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- softwarebeware 5y agoWhy not? As long as we're not locked in, if a product is good and we're early adopters we're getting the benefits from it that other people who are afraid to dip their toes in the water aren't getting.
- bin_bash 5y agoI think the question we need to ask ourselves is if they would exist without VC in the first place. A bunch of bootstrapped startups able to eek out a living through a relatively small number of subscriptions sounds wonderful, but is it realistic?
- dbbk 5y agoOf course it is. Software has a very high margin. You could get by with a skeleton staff, and make a nice profit.
- Eighth 5y agoI'm suprised they're shutting down because of a lack of a buyer/investor rather than making it and keeping it as a successful business. Are the goals these days for a big buy out?
- BaseballPhysics 5y agoOnce you take seed funding you're locked into a raise and re-raise treadmill until you grow sufficiently to find an exit. VCs/seed shops aren't there to help you build a lifestyle business. They're trying to either fail fast or get a 10x multiple and move on, which means either an IPO or (far more likely these days) an acquisition.
- triyambakam 5y agoGeckoboard is an interesting opposite example of this. They took a seed round more than ten years ago and have been slowly and steadily maintaining the business, resisting further rounds. I don't know their finances but they seem to continue to be doing well.
- BaseballPhysics 5y agoAnd that does happen occasionally, but they're rare and it doesn't go on forever. Bandcamp was similarly private for 15 years after taking a few rounds of funding, but they eventually got acquired, and I guarantee you that's because those investors pushed for an exit while the projected future revenues of the company justified a higher valuation. I myself worked for a company that was private for 12 years after seed funding and five rounds of VC capital. But eventually we were pushed into a (poorly conceived) acquisition. The merry-go-round always stops. It's just a matter of time.
- nerdponx 5y agoMaybe I'm a rarity in this, but I actually prefer paying for services that are not VC funded. That way I feel like I am less likely to have the rug pulled out from under me.
- 5y ago
- paxys 5y agoQuite a week for popular startups with millions in funding and general buzz shutting down overnight.
- Nextgrid 5y agoI don't think it's fair to include this one with the other "growth & engagement" bullshit we typically see go belly up. This company only raised a reasonable amount of money (450k according to https://www.failory.com/interview/friday https://www.failory.com/interview/friday) and had a real product people were paying for.
- paxys 5y agoIt raised $2.1 million in November 2020 (https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/23/friday-app-a-remote-work-tool-raises-2-1-million-led-by-bessemer/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/23/friday-app-a-remote-work-t...), so the number is at least $2.5M if not higher.
- lukethomas 5y agoWe raised a total of $2.6m, so nothing too crazy in today's market.
- paxys 5y agoI'm curious – why couldn't you raise more? Like you said, a couple million is nothing in today's market. You have a real product, real users. Why did no one give you another round of funding?
- lukethomas 5y agoI didn't want to fleece future investors or existing/future employees. When running a startup, it's natural to have unknowns, and for the most part, that's okay and to be expected. But if you discover a new reality on the ground and continue to tell a different story, you are lying. I didn't want to do that.
- rileyphone 5y agoUnfortunate, I still think forum software for running companies is a good idea. I suppose https://threads.com/ https://threads.com/ is the main product left there - I can't help but think their pricing model makes a lot more sense than Friday's.
- hyperionplays 5y agoDamn, threads looks cool.. I wonder if there's an opensource version in the wild.
- v1l 5y agoLooks interesting. Is it popular?
- arberx 5y agoFast, now Friday. Expect to see a lot more of this. Funding is getting tight. If you're not profitable or don't have a plan to be soon, it will be tough.
- filmgirlcw 5y ago>Funding is getting tight. If you're not profitable or don't have a plan to be soon, it will be tough. Funding is NOT tight -- it just doesn't last forever and investors eventually want returns. With Fast, they raised $130m, had 400 employees, a run rate of $10m a month and made a whopping $600k in revenue. The staggering level of incompetence from every single person not just on that executive team, but of the firms who invested in Fast, is something we haven't seen in years. Friday seems to be quite different. They did $2.3m in seed based on Crunchbase and that was in 2020 and never managed to find product market fit. That's a completely different problem than simply not being profitable.
- arberx 5y agoCurrent market dynamics dictated the death of these startups. If this was last year, they would have gotten funding to survive. Time will tell, but not looking great for anyone trying to raise rn.
- filmgirlcw 5y ago>Current market dynamics dictated the death of these startups. If this was last year, they would have gotten funding to survive. Fast would not have received the funding to survive (if it received any additional funding it would have been predicated on probably cutting staff at least 60% if not more). People are literally raising every single day. Funding might not be at the peak frothy levels it has been at before, but these are hardly bear times right now.
- xmlninja 5y agoFriday.app, run over by monday.com
- softwarebeware 5y agoSorry to see this. In 2004, I worked for a major national non-profit in the US. We built our own internal web portal that is essentially what Friday is. Since then, I've seen a lot more interest in this space. Microsoft SharePoint is one of the main ones but, I think, only because it's from Microsoft and integrates well with Windows networks. From a product standpoint, SharePoint is just not very good. Someone is going to come in and own this space one day for sure. The need is always there.
- lukethomas 5y agoHey there, I'm the founder. Happy to answer any questions people have. This was a decision I didn't take lightly.
- victor_e 5y agoHey. Shame you have to shut it down. Great that you gave it a shot though. Do you have any plans for what is next?
- hiimshort 5y agoWhat do you plan to do with the platform that you have built? Is all of the code being thrown away?
- newusertoday 5y ago1. what is your opinion on making the code open source? 2. Selling the company so someone else can take care of customers?
- trustfundbaby 5y agoI had this question as well/
- nathancahill 5y agoI'd love to hear your response to this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30933873 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30933873
- Dangeranger 5y agoYou mentioned in your post that your primary reason for shutting down was that you didn't find sufficient evidence that your product/service was meeting the needs of your users. Was there also pressure from investors to shut down due to this lack of evidence, or was this a personal decision made based on your principles? Thank you for your consideration.
- lukethomas 5y ago
- eatonphil 5y agoHappened to randomly stumble on their launch post/Show HN [0] from two years ago. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22502308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22502308
- lukethomas 5y agoI originally called it "Friday Feedback" - you will probably see a launch post ~6 years ago with a search for that :)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- angryasian 5y agoWhat happens to all the assets in this case ? Is it possible to sell it on like flippa ?
- satvikpendem 5y agoAs someone in the productivity space [0], it's hard to build a sticky enough product since there's a lot of churn. There have been many apps that have shut down in just the last few years, such as this and Woven, that I wonder if the money is not in such consumer (or even prosumer) apps like these and instead is in firmly B2B territory, where you can charge at least $100 a month, a market that would be a lot more sustainable user base than the fickle hands of B2C. [0] https://getartemis.app https://getartemis.app (my app)
- nerdponx 5y agoSome unsolicited feedback: integrating my todo list with my calendar is something I would love. However I have no idea what Artemis actually is or does based on the homepage. Does it only work with Google, or can I bring my own CalDAV? Is it an app, or a website? Does it cost anything? What does "signing up" actually entail? Is "forgetting to add breaks" some pain point I have that I didn't realize I had?
- satvikpendem 5y agoThanks, the landing page is pretty old now, I'm working on a mobile app right now that is like a time tracker integrated with your to do list items, and eventually it'll integrate with your calendar, it'll cost some X dollars a month, where X < 20, not sure on pricing just yet. But to be honest, I don't think consumers will pay much for subscription software, while businesses will. I'm thinking of pivoting to B2B, a calendar API product that other companies can integrate into, something like that.
- mdoms 5y agoIt's a shame so many tech companies think they need to be always "seeking investment". I don't see any reason this couldn't have been a nice little lifestyle business, but no, we need to feed the investors with boundless growth.
- maomorales 5y agoI imagine how tough this decision has been - thanks for making Friday and for delighting many users with your product these years. We started building DailyBot (https://www.dailybot.com https://www.dailybot.com) some time ago, and here we always loved the Friday approach and the UX of your tool. With good will, we are here to help you or support your users community in the time to come.