Shutting Down a Dream
dandreamsofcoding.com
dandreamsofcoding.com
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/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.]
Yes. Ugh. And I cannot pick one.
It's not impossible.
But sparkling John Carmack is totally plausible.
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
http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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Not saying that his accomplishments aren't impressive, but being John Carmack probably helps doing the things John Carmack does.
If he wants to delay the next Quake engine by a couple days so he can speak at a conference, no problem. He can afford it, and it's up to him when his next product comes out.
Most people either answer to a boss, or are not rich enough to purposefully pass up on new business. So it's not impossible, but to do it well takes a level of means that most people don't have.
And I'd totally agree ...
I choose work, children and exercise ... but am lucky enough to be able to offload these other tasks
http://www.paulgraham.com/selfindulgence.html
I found when I had kids, I became a much better time investor, by necessity.
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.
This someone can be you. Call up OP and give him an offer for all the code and IP.
This should be chump change to any valley Mogul.
Self-pleasuring vibrator projects seem to be able to get funded with a lot more ease, for Pete's sake.
http://www.crunchbase.com/company/duolingo
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.
Have a look at http://www.shuttleworthfoundation.org/
Being a fellow I can say it's an amazing group.
Here's what I have so far: http://www.h4labs.com/design1.html
If there are any patient people who want to help me iterate more quickly, drop me an email and say that you saw me on HN and I'll give you a promo code.
I think French will be clean soon and I just got the pinyin back for my first 600 words.
Have a go with the Lite version (2.2.2 is submitted) https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/h4-spanish-lite/id388918463?...
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.
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.
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). 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.
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.
Shutting it down will let him breathe again without having to worry. It's like ripping off the bandaid.
Is that worse than locking your friends out in the cold, tossing them their stuff, and shutting the door?
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.
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.
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)
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.
Wouldn't everyone win in that case?
deadstart.com restart.com ...
21 century, the first world, and yet raising children is an almost insurmountable task. No wonder fertility rates in the West are so low.
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.
Trying to tie it to "foreign policy" or something is thinking about it much too hard.
Being a father of three, I can attest to the profundity of that statement. It makes me smile though. Because there is hope yet. I have found that as time passes, two things happen:
1. Your children grow into creatures less demanding of your immediate attention (post nappy years, post "Daaaaad, I'm done!" on the toilet years ... etc). The real problem with keeping with other tasks while raising kids is not so much that you're unable to juggle many things at once, it's just that the sort of work we do (ideas, coding, design, you know the serious! stuff) requires longer chains of time for concentration and this is what suffers when kids (or for that matter anything else) constantly interrupts your thinking. You attempt to juggle at first, but pretty soon you realise the frustration of context switching from a more cerebral world to a banal one - and then back - takes its toll mentally. So you give up your art. (For the right reason of course. I love my time with the boys.)
2. You get better at juggling the cerebral and the banal at the same time. :-)
ps. When I say banal, I don't intend to belittle the sheer fking honour of executing paternal obligations, no! But it cannot monopolise your time such that paternal obligations are all you commit to at the expense of your art. I ain't no John Lennon. :-)
The author also mentioned exercising and cooking healthy food, which for the most part does not demand long chains of deep concentration.
I don't have children at all. That might make you immediately dismiss my opinions on this, which may be justified.
> Both those activities typically take at least 30 minutes of continuity to be done right... a real challenge with a 4 and a 1 year old.
Done right? A pro sportsman might need at least 3 hours a day in order to get a decent workout out of the day, but I think that the consensus is that any activity is better than no activity. I don't see how squeezing in some sets of pushups while you have time (a set might take 30 to 60 seconds), doing some sets of (one legged) squats, etc., is insurmountable. Instead of jogging outside, you might do x hundred amounts of squats.
Cooking healthy food is just about making something simple with healthy ingredients. Making a salad doesn't take a lot of continuous activity, boiling something doesn't either, the only thing is not burning the meat or whatever.
I don't get how kids under five years of age are so spastic that you evidently can't even take your eyes off them for one minute. I guess I must have been an exceptionally well-behaved child.
> After they go to bed, great. While they are awake? If you are ok with some TV time.
What's wrong with some TV time?
Encouragingly, life phases always transition into something else at some point...so there is an end in sight. And it is so very worth it to not toss "spending time with my kids" out in place of a "hobby" like writing a blog.
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!