15 ms·
Shutting Down a Dream
- jaggederest 13y agoWhy not let someone else take it over for free? I don't understand killing it instead of looking at other ways to hand it off.
- rabidonrails 13y agoIn certain cases this is easier said than done. If he hands it off he'll need to teach someone else how to run the site, how to deal with each customer, how to... Shutting it down will let him breathe again without having to worry. It's like ripping off the bandaid.
- jaggederest 13y agoI don't buy it. You can give someone the keys and say 'good luck, don't call me', and have a nonzero probability of it succeeding without any further intervention than you'd have to use for shutting it down.
- unreal37 13y agoEasy to say when its not yours, I suspect. If he got to this point by thinking he was wasting his life at this thing, why would he consider giving it to someone else to waste their life? And his customers are his friends. It's like giving his friends away to a stranger and saying "don't call me".
- mistercow 13y ago>It's like giving his friends away to a stranger and saying "don't call me". Is that worse than locking your friends out in the cold, tossing them their stuff, and shutting the door?
- dquail 13y agoI buy it. It's never that clean.
- prawn 13y agoThey're not saying that it's clean, but that it beats throwing something away.
- dquail 13y agoI guess that's my point though. That "throwing it away" makes you completely unencumbered. There's value in that. Anything else comes with strings that make it really hard to move on ... even if that's emotionally.
- prawn 13y agoThen you hand it over, embarrassing warts and all, zero documentation, and walk away. I think we throw away too much. Whatever is wrong with it, this could be a good start for someone without their own project or inspiration.
- ProblemFactory 13y agoI can't speak on behalf of the author, but I have been "stuck" in similar limbo projects myself (an iOS game). Admitting to yourself that the project has failed, and "just one more push" can't rescue it, and shutting it down is emotionally difficult enough. Handing it over involves finding a suitable recipient, instructing them, transferring domains and accounts, and making sure the clients understand the ownership has changed. And refusing to answer requests for help or documentation over email can be impossible, especially if you cared about the project or its users. Without this documentation and knowledge, a code repository is of almost no use to anyone. If someone is capable of walking away with zero documentation or help, they would have shut down a limbo project much earlier.
- davorak 13y agoI the first cost of your strategy that comes to mind to the current owner is that there is a certain amount of reputation that can be lost if the next person does a bad job.
- riggins 13y agowhat's the site?
- jessepollak 13y agoI would guess that it is this one: http://www.wordchamp.com/lingua2/Home.do http://www.wordchamp.com/lingua2/Home.do.
- j2d3 13y ago"When you have children, you can have exactly one hobby. Anything else is an exercise in futility, self-deception, and ineffectiveness. Cooking healthy food is a hobby. Exercising is a hobby. Maintaining a website is a hobby. Writing a blog is a hobby. Bringing work home is a hobby. You have time to do exactly one thing after your kids go to sleep, if you want to do it well." Yes. Ugh. And I cannot pick one.
- throwit1979 13y agoRelevant to the story earlier today, John Carmack has three jobs and two children. He tweets regularly, speaks at cons, and occasionally blogs on altdev. He also reportedly lifts weights regularly. It's not impossible.
- mhartl 13y agoTo be fair, John Carmack is probably a vampire.
- x0x0 13y agoyour comparison is stupid 1 - he's a multimillionaire. He can afford to offload lots of cooking (restaurants), cleaning (cleaners), childcare (nannies), loss of income (stay at home partner), shorten his commute (purchase a house close to work, put a gym in the basement) 2 - even with all of the above, I still bet his wife does a big chunk of the household maintenance and childcare
- brymaster 13y ago
- jborden13 13y agoSounds like a very long lesson learned on product market fit. Best of luck to the op if he tries again.
- jmathai 13y agoI can't imagine the weight of shutting something down which you've spent almost a decade on. While this is a tail of not getting to product market fit it's the struggle of every entrepreneur. Knowing how long to stick it out and when to call it quits. There is no right answer. The right answer is when you reach your limits. Most people's limit is much less than 10 years. Getting to the point where shit hits the fan (out of money with a family) has to be one of the hardest experiences outside of losing loved ones. Congrats to the OP for their determination. At the same time I share my condolences at the time, energy and money that the experience cost. He has this to hold on to... > I’m glad I had the courage to try, and I’m grateful for the insight it gave me into what it takes to build a business.
- abhiv 13y agoThis is the story of too many startups in the edtech space. Slow growth, grateful users, but not enough traction to grow the company through revenue or outside funding. Very few edtech companies have managed to avoid this fate, and often come down to one or two people keeping the product going as a labor of love. There are a number of reasons for this, including the fact that sales are inherently high-touch and expensive, and that the users (teachers/kids) and payers (administrators) have different perspectives and incentives. Great article. Congrats on sticking it out so long.
- yeahrightdbag 13y agoWhat's funny about EdTech is just how awful some of the software is that has funding. Especially the LMS/SIS side of things.
- noname123 13y agoSomeone save this site. It's a pretty cool site that helps people learn languages. Man, so much crap out there with new flash sales websites, new aggregators for media consumption, startup's that do home cleaning. But a website that tries to teach people something enriching without a business model, but just tries to do a good job gets tossed on the way side. We need a foundation or grant program for non-profit and NGO websites. Most startups are crap-shoots anyways, VCs and developers should waste respectively their money and time on things that do good than the usual social media crap or new online marketing channels for conventional businesses.
- lobotryas 13y ago>Someone save this site This someone can be you. Call up OP and give him an offer for all the code and IP.
- wozniacki 13y agoIs there no one that could take this (and others like this) to the notice of a Moskovitz or a Houston, in a discreet way and without much fanfare, so that a lifeline could be had? This should be chump change to any valley Mogul. http://givingpledge.org/ http://givingpledge.org/ Self-pleasuring vibrator projects seem to be able to get funded with a lot more ease, for Pete's sake. http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/29/sex-pun-goes-here/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/29/sex-pun-goes-here/
- melling 13y agoThere is funding going into language learning software. http://www.crunchbase.com/company/duolingo http://www.crunchbase.com/company/duolingo http://www.crunchbase.com/company/mindsnacks http://www.crunchbase.com/company/mindsnacks And as I mentioned below, the space is crowded with plenty of little guys... like myself. :-) Most of us will lose. That's capitalism. Hopefully, the survivors will be much better because they competed in such a crowded space, and the consumer wins big in the end.
- jmathai 13y ago
- dmcg 13y agoAs someone who can't let anything go, I found this is touching and inspiring. Thanks for having the courage to give it a go, and to stop.
- bengrunfeld 13y ago"The story of one man is the store of the entire world". I think it's easy to talk down to someone who has admitted failure, but the truth is we've all been through it, although some of us hide it better than others. My custom web-development business tanked last year after customers refused to stop asking for changes. Insomnia & anxiety were frustratingly close friends of mine too. Maybe the site is shutting down and maybe you could have done something different that would have succeeded more, but super-kudos for trying!
- coffeemug 13y agoIn case the author is reading. Kudos for finding the courage to stick with it, and the courage to quit. Those who have been in this position know what a heavy burden it can be. I hope you can find it within yourself not to turn cynical, and to use your skills and experience to make a positive change in the world. (Or, if you choose to just live your life, my hat still goes off to you)
- bratfarrar 13y ago:)
- invisible 13y agoIf it is a profitable/good idea - surely someone out there would buy it from you for some small amount of money. Or is the monthly income not worth someone buying? Wouldn't everyone win in that case?
- v2rev1 13y agoThis story resonates so much! I'm in the same space as OP and even doing something similar at http://membean.com http://membean.com . Where our story digresses is that we got paid traction quickly. Early on we decided we wouldn't be free and we'd convince schools(& parents) that we offered enough value to pay for it. We narrowed in on a very specific need, focussed obsessively on quality, provided our teachers fantastic customer service, kept our burn rate very low, bootstrapped(it was hard) and just buckled down and executed. Along the way, somehow, and this was crucial, our teachers turned into evangelists - parents, principals and administrators took note. It wasn't that they just liked what we offered -- they went to bat for it. Many of our teachers spent 8+ months convincing their principals and district officials to buy us. Private schools were crucial in the beginning to get our cash flow going, public schools took longer but we waited patiently (and nervously) The current ecosystem is not friendly to Ed startups, it's stacked in favor of the large Ed vendors who have the manpower to closely follow budget allocations, develop long term relationships across 50 states and have deep knowledge on how to work the system. OP, congrats for sticking to this for so long. I suspect that it was incredibly draining but along the way you've helped countless teachers & students and that should count for a lot.
- stevewillows 13y agoYou could probably get his contacts for a case of beer :)
- jonstjohn 13y agoPoked around the site a bit - love the word theater and the overall presentation! Beautiful work!
- Dewie 13y ago> When you have children, you can have exactly one hobby. Anything else is an exercise in futility, self-deception, and ineffectiveness. Cooking healthy food is a hobby. Exercising is a hobby. Maintaining a website is a hobby. Writing a blog is a hobby. Bringing work home is a hobby. You have time to do exactly one thing after your kids go to sleep, if you want to do it well. The pointless waste of time had to go. 21 century, the first world, and yet raising children is an almost insurmountable task. No wonder fertility rates in the West are so low.
- reedlaw 13y agoMaybe this is the case in the US, but it's not so for the West as a whole, viz.: the hands-off French approach: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204740904577196931457473816.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020474090457719...
- paganel 13y agoThere's also something to be said about American suburbia and everything being so sparse. Until a kid is 16 and she can get a driver's license at least one of the parents has to be on call to drive her on/off to school, on/off to other kids' parties etc. That can consume a lot of time.
- Dewie 13y ago> Rest assured, I certainly don't suffer from a pro-France bias. Au contraire, I'm not even sure that I like living here. I certainly don't want my kids growing up to become sniffy Parisians. It's hilarious that she included a paragraph solely to excuse herself for complimenting a certain aspect of the French lifestyle, presumably in order to appease the (imaginary or not) anti-France streak in the American consciousness.
- pm90 13y agoOff topic, but:I have seen this anti-French attitude a lot (in most cases, jokingly). What is the reason for the American dislike for the French? One Frenchman I talked to said that its because France does not always support US Foreign policy....is that really the case?
- steveridout 13y agoIn case anyone is wondering, the site he is referring to is: http://www.wordchamp.com/lingua2/Home.do http://www.wordchamp.com/lingua2/Home.do Articles like this scare me. I've been working for 8 months full time now on a bootstrapped website for learning vocabulary via reading (http://readlang.com http://readlang.com). I've been advised a few times that it's extremely hard to make money with this kind of site but for now I'm ploughing ahead anyway. Reading this gives me pause for thought but as long as I've getting good feedback I'm happy to keep going and see where it might lead. Even in the worst case though, I hope that I wouldn't ever need to shut down the site, and that it could at least pay for it's hosting costs and be automated to keep running with minimal maintenance.
- djt 13y agoI would encourage you to start charging customers or to find another monetisation strategy for it, unless youre getting mmassive traction you arent a aquisition target and if its nice but free then it may never make money.
- steveridout 13y agoIt's still early days and I'm more focused on growing the user base right now. Saying that, since last month I put a daily cap on phrase translations for free users and a 'Readlang Supporter' plan at $10 / year for unlimited translations and to support development through the beta period. So far I've had 13 payments, a total of $130, which I'm pretty happy with since a) the user base is currently small (about 500 signed up since I added the payment option), b) it's validation that people are willing to pay for the service, and c) I've got a lot of ideas for improving it in future.
- sideproject 13y agoSorry for sounding like a blatant marketing. But we just launched http://sideprojectors.com http://sideprojectors.com where you can find someone else to take over your project. Hopefully we can help your project from being killed.
- patio11 13y ago100 calls to talk to 10 people to get 1 in-person demo, frequently in another state. I got in the car, put on the suit, and did the demos. I put together some signage, set up a booth at ACTFL, IALLT, and military linguist conventions. My parents saw a lot of me (they live near a lot of colleges), I stayed in a lot of cheap motels, and slowly, I built a list of customers. Not a lot, never enough. Harvard, Yale, Brown, and other top schools were among my customers, but I never made the “big score” – the state school with tens of thousands of students. This is, in a nutshell, why Bingo Card Creator has a price tag, a no-touch sales model, and no phone number. People write me, to this day, saying "I have a question about the product. Call me at 555 555-5555 between the hours of 3 PM and 4 PM." My response is a polite variant of "No." I've had this discussion with a few people who make software for teachers/students and I hate to be the Business Guy, but just like "Buy for $2, sell for $1, make it up in volume" is not a sustainable plan, you can't use enterprise sales tactics (+) at consumer price points. If sales requires a phone call, we've low-bounded the product at hundreds of dollars. If it requires an in-person meeting, the lower bound is now $50k. That isn't "Could potentially be $50k if each of your 2,000 students pays $25", that's "You will be invoiced $50k." + Absent heavy modification. There are low-touch/high-touch hybrids which can work at the $100~$500 a month mark. [Edit: The definitive article on this is Joel Spolsky's Camels and Rubber Duckies. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckies.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckie... Search for [The reason I bring this up is because software is priced three ways: free, cheap, and dear.] My only quibble is that both the pricing model and emerging standard marketing/sales model for SaaS companies have made the no-man's land he talks about a very interesting place to be in the ~10 years since this was written.]
- jitnut 13y agoDan, I admired the fact you hanged on to your dream such long. It takes lot of courage and perseverance. I have been in your shoes and have felt the pain when its time to let go of the dream. But when you clear it off, it feels great. Once i met a founder of startup who gave advice 'You should be passionate about your idea but not disproportionately passionate' All the best!
- wehadfun 13y agoReally someone needs to do a marketplace to buy and sell these projects. I'm sure a project that has customers is worth something. deadstart.com restart.com ...