Weave.in shutting down | Hacker News Reader

Weave.in shutting down

weave.in

42 pointsdougdonohoe42 comments

Context:

Originally "Tinder for Linkedin" (http://venturebeat.com/2014/07/25/weave-is-a-tinder-for-link...), Weave pivoted to its current incarnation of "Professional Introductions" (unsure when).

Received this email at 1:15 AM EDT:

"Hello,

We started Weave to make expanding your professional network easy, productive, and enjoyable. In the last 3 years we've created hundreds of thousands of new professional connections. Connections that became co-founders, investors, mentors, co-workers, and friends. Your stories were what made working on Weave so fun and fulfilling.

While Weave became the primary source of new professional connections for many people, we were unable to make it financially viable. As of next Monday, we will be shutting Weave down.

Thank you so much for being part of our community. You made time to meet and help complete strangers. You were what made Weave great.

The Weave Team"

I really wish these projects would post a Show HN or something a month or so before announcing their shutdown.

So many times I hear of something new and interesting I'd like to give a go through a shutdown message on HN.

Would you be willing to invest time/money into a platform you knew would likely shut down in a month or so? I like the idea of a "last chance", but I definitely would be much less likely to use a platform on its last breath. The functionality would have to be really compelling.

I'll be honest I didn't think that one through. I guess I just figured they wouldn't mention "this is a last ditch effort before we close down" without thinking of how dishonest it'd be to do so.

Is it dishonest or is it hustle? The name of the game is putting your business first. You can't let those feelings get in your way.

I didn't even think about it until I responded to the person above, I'd like to think of it as hustle rather than dishonesty that's for sure!

If it is dishonest to scramble for customers when you're worried about whether you'll make it, I suspect there are about 3 "honest" businesses in existence. :)

I think corobo was saying that if they posted a Show HN (without mentioning shutting down), maybe they wouldn't need to shut down.

I'll give the company the benefit of the doubt and assume that they've done the market research and didn't think posting a Show HN would have made a huge difference.

They didn't seem to have a monetisation strategy, so would more interest help?

From their FAQ:

> How much does Weave cost?

> The service is absolutely free. We're venture-funded and will monetize in the future via premium (even better!) services for our members.

More funding I guess?

They had two monetization strategies. I was a premium user - paying for features like being able to pick who I met with and setting a meeting point.

They also explored enterprise - helping companies create new connections throughout the organization.

I got a ton of value out of it. Never used the premium features but met a ton of great people that was worth the price of admission.

Perhaps they should be better at marketing, so they don't have to wait until right before they shutdown, to get your attention?

Closing up shop as a marketing strategy is interesting as a high-risk/high-reward last ditch effort.

If under a particular set of circumstances, the most viable path to attracting eyeballs is to go under, it could be really effective to give potential users a "last chance" and then pivot to a new name.

Sad to hear this is shutting down. I had a few Weave meetings in SF and enjoyed everyone. I was really pulling for expansion into markets like Portland where this would have been very well received.

Weave was a truly useful service. It's sad it's shutting down. Far being elitist, it helped a completely outsider like me to meet & build connections in the Valley

I enjoyed the few times I connected on Weave to meet other folks who were interested in networking with me as well. Brian, the founder, had worked with some of my colleagues at a previous startup and was gracious to offer advice and feedback when I was applying to YC a few years back.

After having read the whole FAQ, I still don't know what the product is. Where are these "meetings" held? Who attends the meetings? Why should I care? Why do I have to "apply"? How do they plan to make money?

Well, they're shutting down in a couple days, so plans to make money would be irrelevant this late in the game.

I thought the product was pretty cool. It "automated" networking with other professionals who might be good hires or potential co-founders in the future. You'd sign up for a specific time (e.g. Friday at 9am) and once a week get an email with someone to meet and a location to grab coffee.

I went on a few of these meetings and thought there were some interesting people in the network. Sad to see it shut down :( That being said, the service was free and I don't know if I would've been willing to pay Weave.

Well , let me take a stab at explaining what the service is. I used Weave for about 5-6 months (infrequently though). Its exactly like Tinder, Once you sign up and fill out your profile - the App starts showing recommendations , and you get to swipe left or right , and then if there is a match , you start chatting.

One of the base use cases was Recruiter-Candidate connections.If I am looking for a job, and then I bump into a Recruiter's profile who is looking to Hire in my area of expertise, I hit like & if there is a mutual like - You start chatting and go for a coffee to learn more about the opportunity. Sometimes , these are directly the founders of small companies. The timing did not align all that well for me ,though I chatted with a lot of entrepreneurs , I never ended up meeting any one in person.

I suppose , this would have eventually grown into some sort of 'professional introduction' platform - And Weave would have charged you for the introduction. Unfortunately , looks like they couldn't get to that point at all.

I used Weave a few times when it was still "Tinder for Networking" and it was pretty clear it'd always be a niche product without a clear monetization strategy.

These are the kinds of startups that make me think twice about becoming a founder myself i.e. raising VC money and hiring a bunch of people only to become trapped into working on an idea for 3-4+ years that you know is not working after year 1-2 because you still have money to burn.

Since the title links only to the homepage where I didn't find an announcement (at this time), here's an article that shows the email they send out:

http://venturebeat.com/2016/07/12/weave-shutting-down-profes...

Thanks - when I posted, all I had was the email (noted in another comment).

Given it's domain name, was this an india thing?

No. I know it was available in the Bay Area but I'm not sure if it was in other cities.

Also available in London.

I believe the ".in" was a play on LinkedIn

This is a bummer. I was just looking forward to being able to take more Weave meetings next month...

> Weave had previously raised $2 million in funding from Y Combinator, Index Ventures, Vulcan Capital, Eastlink Ventures, and others.

Does anyone know if they had a solid business model when they raised? Or was it valued on mostly hype?

Did Tinder have a business model originally?

The goal of an app like this is network effect, and then you can monetize once you have a lot of users. I bet they figured if Tinder could make money, a professionally-focused app could too. I'm sure at some point they threw out a list of things they could do to make money (pro accounts, recruiting fees, etc), but likely their early focus was on getting as many users as possible.

$2mm isn't actually a huge amount to test out a potentially valuable idea without having more than a vague business model -- if successful, this would be directly hard cash valuable to a lot of people, so it's not unreasonable to hand-wave "find a way to charge people later". I've heard of plenty of projects (inside larger companies) that probably cost more than that and were unceremoniously shut down when they didn't work out.

1: at $100k, it's 20 engineers for a year, and that's without office space, desks, computers or servers

Loved weave and sad to see it go.

Such a nice domain name.

First I'd heard of it, but seems like a really effective way to apply bias filters for elitist tech folks to meet and advance careers of other elitist tech folks. Glad it's shutting down.

That's a really horrible thing to say. They presumably worked hard to help people connect. I'm sorry if you don't like their selection criteria, but people meeting and interacting in the real world is better than them not, no?

If you would like to start a competitor which helps bridge 'elitist' to 'non-elitist' please do, until then, please don't hate on someone's attempt to make their part of the world better.

It seems a perfectly reasonable criticism to me, and indeed, you aren't saying he's wrong. You're just saying that you support it.

Thanks for your comment. Lots of people work hard on things but that doesn't magically make them any good. Working hard has no value just by itself.

They were trying to make people meet over shared professional interests.

And anyway, for your assertion you would have to prove it produced elitism, not only "that you feel like it would".

> If you would like to start a competitor which helps bridge 'elitist' to 'non-elitist' please do

What an asinine attempt at censorship with a complete lack of understanding of social dynamics.

If anything, the evidence that the business model of bridging elitist to non-elitist doesn't work is that weave.in is shutting down.

In your limited world view, is anyone who isn't successful not allowed to criticize anything at all?

> make their part of the world better

Debatable and completely subjective.

Yeah, god forbid those elitists start getting together and making even more people elitists as well.

Kind of an elitist remark isn't that?

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