Its a self-fulfilling prophesy. You can't get big without customers, but customers won't use you because you're small.
How do we overcome this?
(Edit: I was asking a rhetorical question to counter the parent. But great discussion below.)
How do we overcome this?
(Edit: I was asking a rhetorical question to counter the parent. But great discussion below.)
The list is long. Another recent example was Sparrow. I broke my rule about buying/licensing software from small companies (unless I got the source) with Sparrow. I didn't just buy 1 copy, I (we) brought 15 (for the office). And of course, I got burned. Again.
It will not happen again. Period. Unless you tell me up front your plans - what you plan to do for me, the user, when/if you fail or sell.
Start-ups with more than one product line, sometimes sell off one product and keep the rest acting thesame way big companies do. So, Yext a start-up sold their Felix product line to IAC eg:
http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/20/iac-buys-yexts-pay-per-call...
An example of a giant doing thesame thing:
http://techland.time.com/2012/04/26/google-sells-sketchup-wa...
I have shown above, an example of start-ups and giants selling a product line. You can Google around for example of tech giants and start-ups with more than one product, killing off a product line.
That said, I'm still using Sparrow on my laptop and desktop machines as well as my iPhone. But probably not for a whole lot longer.
Not that your point is invalid talking about Grove - suddenly everyone who used it has to move in under a month. But I don't get the upset over Sparrow. If it helped you at the time, it should help you now.
Leaving with with a ridiculous "feel-good" blog post.
My point though, this isn't uncommon. And this kind of user treatment is one of the big reasons many tech start-ups have a tough time making the sale.
Now of course, if said company manages to get momentum (like a Dropbox, Github, FB - to name a few) - I guess they are no longer startups.
See Atlassian for an example.
As far as I can see, Grove.io didn't do this. They didn't have any easy means to grow quickly.
Also perhaps they're paying a lot for hosting (At rackspace). I don't know, but there's no reason they shouldn't be making some profit if they have a few paying customers. Shame they can't build on that.
Why can't traditional IRC services be used for this? I'll preemptively counter the end-user configuration side of this by saying it's increasingly easier in a managed workstation environment to deploy images with software required for that worker's tasks preconfigured. Even in a non-managed environment, an IT staff willing to build the packages and make the configuration edits can make accessible an installation candidate stored for access in an infrastructure library so users can save (after proper credentialing and auth checks have been satisfied), install and login.
Security, perhaps? That's always a valid concern to have, but if that's the case I would hope that an adequately planned and designed audit of any service not being managed internally gets the same look. Corollary: perhaps one should not be using anything not managed internally for sensitive matters to begin with; collaboration and non-secure communication where a failure of this system wont halt production or cause the company to incur significant loss however are par.
If I'm off base here, I'm willing to discuss it further. While I loved IT, I had to run for the door after getting burned on multiple opportunities to manage programs and create user friendly but secure policies. And by burned I mean hired to do exactly that, only to end up in hyper-glorified purchasing support roles. shudders
As time passes and your service stays solid more people will come on board. Something like github is a good example. I doubt many big companies would have considered relying on them early on, but their track record has changed that now.
But since we're on the topic, presenting social proof is also pretty useful. Show customers that people know, show the press that featured you, show them who you are, who your advisors/investors are, show them whose tweeted about you.
(Maybe writing this will be a catalyst to take my own advice for CircleCi)
edit (since I can't reply): logic being that social proof is good for business, but has no substance. It doesn't make it any better for users when it comes to shutting down.
I don't believe I've ever seen you do anything else on HN. I know you to be a reliable person, no reason to think you'd suddenly get fickle and take something I said seriously.
Do you mean to tell me that if somebody rolled up with a check written out for your price you wouldn't light the servers on fire and run for the hills? Realistically the only people who are cared after in any acquisition are the investors so that no bad-blood is in the water for the next acqui-hire. Customers are always left in the dark.
If you want any credibility to the contrary, you'd better start presenting your customers with an SLA that guarantees a detailed transition with a timeline in the case of company failure/acquisition.
Or you can just play PR games. Whatever bare minimum your sense of honesty necessitates.
I'd rather just sit on a happy customer base, but I never thought I'd become a millionaire anyway.
I just want to help people.
> I'd rather just sit on a happy customer base
So everyone else is just in it for the money, but not you? If you can believe it about yourself, perhaps you'd be willing to extend some of that credulity to others?