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Workfu is shutting down.
- mherdeg 14y agoVisiting their front page at http://workfu.com/ http://workfu.com/ yields a lightboxed "UPDATE 31/08/2012: We are currently in discussions regarding the possibilities of keeping WorkFu alive and will update as soon as we have more information."
- da_n 14y agoAnnounce imminent closure of nascent service, submit to HN Get more traffic than you ever had in 9 months previous combined ... Profit (colour me sceptic)
- robinwauters 14y agoFrom the looks of it, this announcement dates back to August 8? https://twitter.com/workfu/status/233143828503224320 https://twitter.com/workfu/status/233143828503224320 - and as mherdeg points out, their most recent update is to be found on the homepage.
- brittohalloran 14y agoIt's a beautiful site. I'm thinking someone is in the process of buying it.
- thibaut_barrere 14y agoMy thoughts exactly. It's really polished for something bootstrapped. Were there designers in the founders?
- sgdesign 14y agoI'm somewhat in the same space with Folyo (http://folyo.me http://folyo.me), and I know it's not an easy market. But Workfu was one of the competitors I was most impressed with. They had a great team and great execution, so I hope they find a way to pull through somehow. I guess this is the only time being a single founder is actually an advantage. Since I run Folyo by myself I have very few expenses, and can always feed myself by taking on client work if need be.
- mtrimpe 14y agoFYI, my corporate firewall is blocking the folyo.me domain as a 'spam-url'
- sgdesign 14y agoIs there anything I can do about it?
- znq 14y ago> Since I run Folyo by myself I have very few expenses, and can always feed myself by taking on client work if need be. I believe that's also true if you're a team. In my opinion even more, because you don't have one person being distracted by too many things, but can distribute tasks to various people, where each of them can focus on those that are related.
- wahnfrieden 14y agoShared risk is often rougher than individual risk and leads to more conservative decisions (with exceptions of course, but shared sacrifice is a distinctly different beast.)
- smoyer 14y agoOne of their blog posts states "4 wives placated" ... your life situation tends to determine what risk and austerity you can afford so this particular team might find it harder than other teams would to also do side projects to pay the bills.
- medinismo 14y agoHey Sacha - how are things in Japan! Good to see you are doing well and that you are doing whatever it takes to keep Folyo up and running. What do you think of Scoutzie? launched by not too long ago with much fanfare along w the latest YC batch. Feel free to reach out to GroupTalent if you need project flow
- sgdesign 14y ago
- yllus 14y agoIs nine months really enough time to make a determination whether a company is viable? It seems a little on the short side, and I recall reading in a number of places that you can only truly know how it's going a couple of years in. Is the issue here that resources/finances weren't adequately planned for?
- thibaut_barrere 14y agoDetermining if a company is currently viable is pretty easy maths in most cases. But most likely you could have written it "whether a company could become viable soon"?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- ovi256 14y ago>Determining if a company is currently viable is pretty easy maths in most cases. That sounds very interesting, could you care to elaborate please ?
- thibaut_barrere 14y agoIs that a real question? In this case, income and its recurrence, expenses and their recurrence, current cash reserve and trends give you a pretty good picture to figure out if you can pay the 4 families behind workfu or not. I'm not talking about complicated monster companies with heavy fiscal tactics, more about classic companies where you sell something.
- ovi256 14y agoOh, I see, I was thinking more about a startup project and expecting a thumb rule of viability à la lean startup. Of course income - expenses is easy :)
- thibaut_barrere 14y ago
- thekungfuman 14y agoOpen source the software if it's really going to just die perhaps?
- chefsurfing 14y agoI read a quote recently that "most startups get interesting around 18 months". I think you guys are giving up too soon. Workfu has enormous potential. Either way, kudos for making it as far as you have.
- wensing 14y agoWhat were they missing? Distribution?
- scott_meade 14y agoThey were missing two, directly related things: a revenue model and paying customers. (Not meant to be snarky or to point out the obvious, but simply factual.)
- noinput 14y agoWhy not spend the afternoon figuring out a freemium vs. paid model, 15 minutes to setup Stripe, a few days setting up an LLC/Inc + Banking account all the while integrating? Worst case you're out a few hundred bucks for the company formation, best case you start making money.
- thibaut_barrere 14y agoMaybe they did the maths and it turns out even with many clients, the current costs are too high (just an hypothesis)? Or it would take much more time than allowed, even with some outside funding? For sure, I find the site is really, really beautiful and polished for a bootstrapped venture. It could maybe have helped to have something less polished but focusing on selling subscriptions earlier on? (no sarcasm really here, real question). If one of the founders is reading, as a bootstrapper myself, I'd love to hear more about the underlying reasons to close.
- brackin 14y agoInteresting, I saw one of the founders talk about the company a couple of weeks before this was announced and they were heavily promoting the company, felt like things were going well for them.
- adgar 14y agoSee the other front page story about startup founders and bullshitting.
- brackin 14y agoSure but it wasn't a big startup event but a small event for teens looking to get into tech. He had little incentive to lie and put that much effort into personally conversations.
- wahnfrieden 14y agoSometimes the truth hits suddenly.
- adgar 14y agoI guess I was a bit brief. The discussion of the "bullshitting" article ended up centering around the question of whether startup founders are deliberately lying/deceiving or just paint rosy pictures for themselves and live in those pictures. Of course, the answer to that depends on the founder. I strongly suspect the latter would be the case here.
- defilade 14y agoYou never know when you might come across a person or idea that might put you back on track. Telling people you're close to closing up shop completely closes off those opportunities.
- mongrelion 14y agoWhy don't they just sell the company?
- rwhitman 14y agoHave you ever tried to sell a web app with no traction or revenue? Its not easy
- resume 14y agoNeed Resume try: http://cvpro.info http://cvpro.info
- johnmurch 14y agoWonder if they will open source the code they built
- veyron 14y agoI'm actually launching something in the same space on Labor Day (http://codewren.ch http://codewren.ch). This is not a particularly good omen ...
- callmevlad 14y agoOff topic, but I'm very curious... why did you decide to launch on Labor Day? Aside from the slight symbolic connection to your product, aren't you concerned that you'll have a much smaller audience due to the holiday?
- veyron 14y agoI literally conceived of this idea a month ago. My day job is in finance, so this break is the first contiguous block of time I could find to put it together. As far as audience is concerned, its true that the audience is smaller but that's good insofar as emergent problems can be addressed before people come back on Tuesday :)
- bdcravens 14y agoTook a look at the home page, did a double take when I saw the "FU Score". Maybe that resonates poorly with potential users? I get that we're supposed to use cutesy Web 2.0 names, but if what makes a hacker smile doesn't lead to revenue, it has no place.
- medinismo 14y agoany other insights as to why they are shutting down? did they raise anything after being featured on the TC London Web Summit in March? how were they bootstrapping?