When a great idea isn’t enough: Why the “Last.fm for news” died
thenextweb.com
thenextweb.com
I think it's kind of lame to disseminate why stuff failed in hindsight publically, but I'm proud that we failed with Readness so fast - it'd be easy to be so determined we continued iterating for many more years without having a fresh start to be radically new.
(I have a new startup in the works, don't worry)
As I understood Readness was somehow funded (4iP) but the funding was then cut off for some reason. They tried to get into YC but failed and then decided to kill the service/startup.
What I read from the article is that the founders weren't trying hard enough. What about other sources for funding? Sure, YC is nice, but it isn't the only place in the world to get funding. To how many other investors have the founders reached out? What about the numbers (users, pageviews)? What were they going to make money from?
> "When we returned from San Francisco, we realised that the funding and resources required to iterate Readness into something that could attract hyper-growth, were far higher than we had available."
This reads like: "We weren't abele to get the funding that easy and decided to kill the service after a half year of operation."
How about slow and steady growth in contrast to hyper-growth? More PR? (I would have been a potential user, if I knew it existed). Most startups take definitely more then 6 months to build a solid user base, features and to get funded. It's very hard work.
As long as you are somehow growing and improving the service, you're good. Don't count (on) money, build a business/service and work hard. If you need money to cover your costs of living: bootstrap, do consulting, take another job.
What I basically want to say is that while funding might an essential aspect of your startup, it's not the only one and the solution to everything. So, don't blame it always on funding!
However, in the first part of my comment, I ask questions I wish the article would have answered somehow.
In the second part (after the quote), I'm maybe a little fierce, but it's more a general statement on a common mistake (giving up too easy) that many fresh startups make, including some in which I was involved.
It was not my intention to make assumptions. So, in order to improve my writing, it would be nice if you tell me about the assumptions the you read in the comment.
That all said, I feel sympathy for the founders and wish them all the best. Too bad they shut the servie down, as I read about it here for the first time and would have been a potential user.
News is just a tremendously hard market. My suspicion, and I have scar tissue to back this up, is that it's a trap. It's one of those things everyone thinks should be sexy, but the numbers don't work.
Hard to monetize in scalable manner.
News (and even content) is percieved as small by investors.
Numerous - dozens - of failed startups, that have tried hundreds of propositions in the past decade - isn't clear what has changed to make those propositions work today.
Using someone elses content is of questionable legal grounds (EG: when you are winning, they'll knock)
Current social products like Facebook or Twitter or even Reddit do "good enough" job for vast majority.
Not everything that can be shared should be shared, people. :-)
How many of you would use a service like that?
Lastfm for tv would be the best thing since er... lastfm.