Derek Powazek: Pixish Closing 10/31 (What He Learned About Community, User Generated Content, and Launching) | Hacker News Reader

Derek Powazek: Pixish Closing 10/31 (What He Learned About Community, User Generated Content, and Launching)

powazek.com

36 pointsbrm11 comments

Open articleView on HN

In nine months we only grew to about 5,000 members

sigh...My startup has been running for almost 2 years and I've only got 4000 members. Still, we're profitable now, so I try to focus on revenue and not think too much about raw membership.

Still, I wonder why someone would just shut it down? A site with a community of 5000 is surely worth something to someone. Sell it to a friend for a beer or two?

5000 members in SF/the Valley = 50 elsewhere. Are you actually profitable enough to support an employee? Because otherwise you're not really profitable.

Derek, if you're out there -- beer or two? I'd do that. Have some experience with crowd-sourcing, plus some experience with "specs" (since I made a living of sorts off of elance.com)

If I had to guess he's shutting it down in large majority because of the tiresome spec work debate

I agree. I know it was discussed ad nauseam all over the web but I wish he would've addressed it a little more in this post. He mentions being upset that they didn't develop "one" community but it's difficult to be surprised by that when he basically built a system that thrived on abusing the "one" community it wanted to foster (intentional or not).

Powazek mentions "We underestimated the “spec work” issue." You mention "the tiresome spec work debate". Not having followed Pixish previously, can someone give a nutshell summary of this debate/festering issue?

"Spec work" refers to speculative work. A client will ask one or more designers to each submit one or more designs with no guarantee of getting paid unless their work is selected as the winning bid.

It should not be confused with pro bono work, where the work is unpaid but the relationship between client and designer is transparent.

The practice is by no means limited to the design industry, but due to the nature of work involved, is where it is most rampant.

a good run through of the arguments is here: http://www.no-spec.com/

some of the arguments for and against can be found in the comments of this post on signal vs. noise by crowdspring http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1253-the-nospec-campaign-...

I have a community that grew to 50,000 members in the first year and still growing, but now much more slowly. Please tell me where this friend is that I can sell it to. I've made some attempts at monetizing it, made about 50cents per user. However, just lost day job pay vs. the time put into it blows away any revenue or buyout I could hope to receive.

For a while I thought that it would at least reflect well on my resume. I've had it on my resume for a while now and no one has given a damn. No one person has even clicked the link...

To advertisers it's worth dirt because it's mostly just existing members visiting again and again.

The valuation of online sites really presents a "Winner takes all" effect.

So, why would someone shut their site down? I think there is a Picasso quote to this effect. The idea is that it's an insult to the value of your time, and to your entire field to sell it at 100x less than it cost you to make.

I've never met Derek (we've exchanged emails), but I feel a certain kinship. His previous startup was http://jpgmag.com. The real lesson for me is that there's a lot of luck in every startup. You can do everything right, and still fail, or do everything wrong, and still succeed.

I have to admit, until now I hadn't heard of Pixish ... and I work in the photo/imaging space.

Out of curiousity, is Derek on HN? What is to become of Pixish's assets and IP? I know people that could leverage this platform.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com