Ziptr to Discontinue Services | Hacker News Reader

Ziptr to Discontinue Services

accountingtoday.com

79 pointsnotwhyships34 comments

“It is with great regret that I am writing to inform you of the closing of Ziptr, Inc. and the discontinuation of all Ziptr products,” said Bhathena. “Your sense of innovation and willingness to believe in a solution that offered both security and ease of use was a source of energy and inspiration for our company. For that, we are immensely grateful.”

Bhathena and other Ziptr staff did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

This doesn't sound a whole lot different from any other un-graceful startup shutdowns. Did this service have a lot of users?

Also, is the characterization of Ziptr as an "encryption provider" accurate? Or were they just a secure document storage company? There are a lot of companies that do "document encryption" and "email encryption" for enterprises that are not, as HN privacy enthusiasts understand the term, really crypto products.

"You need to export all of your data from your Ziptr account by 12:00 noon Eastern on Friday, September 27, 2013. After this time, we cannot guarantee access to your data." http://www.ziptr.com/ziptr-closing-92713

That though from Ziptr's 9/24 blog post is unusual: both the ridiculously short time period of 3 days, and the phrase "cannot guarantee."

Also, I find it hard to believe that such a serious serial entrepreneur with such significant backing (approx. $7M) would close up shop so suddenly and unprofessionally. Why burn bridges like this?

That's also what you'd write if your enterprise software company was betting on last minute hail-marys to keep the lights on, didn't want to admit the bind they were in, and literally ran completely out of money.

Also, if they were concerned about complying with an NSL, why would they offer even 3 days? During those three days, their users would all be surveilled as they pulled their data off the site.

Do any of you guys have infos on what crypto they used and how? I've never heard about Ziptr.

Pretty cursory:

http://www.ziptr.com/security-and-compliance

HN upvoting can be a mystery sometimes.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6440367

On the upside, if it's really important, it tends to reappear again and again until it gets picked up.

HN: Lots of false negatives, few persistent false positives.

The timing makes all the difference. Luck, too.

A while back, I wrote a little app that tracks the relative scores of new submissions and the front page, which tries to tell you when would be a good time to post: http://hnnotify.leknarf.net/

The twitter notification part broke at some point (I haven't had time to fix it), but the main chart is surprisingly accurate. It shows that it's been a good time to post for the last hour or so, so this submission was very well timed. That other submission was sent at a particularly poor time (about 2 hours ago), when few people were upvoting on the new page.

Timing really does make a big difference.

From the other submission, a link to Ziptr's announcements: http://www.ziptr.com/ziptr-closing-92713

It's not entirely mysterious: because of the way votes are weighted, the timing of the first two or three really matters. If you manage to get them while you're still on the new page, you have a good chance of getting on the front page which is the only way to get much exposure. If you fall off the new page without that, your article is essentially forgotten.

This means the success of your article falls down to the whims of the few people browsing `new' at any given moment. If you're lucky, there are people interested in your topic there; if not, your article might easily fall through the cracks. Moreover, since `new' has a very bad signal to noise ratio, most people do not spend very much time there. I certainly don't! So this means it's even more likely for an article to fall through the cracks there.

For better or worse, this means HN misses out on good articles as they fall through `new' without getting votes. To get anywhere your article needs to be both good and lucky.

Or have friends. The first few votes matter a LOT. So as soon as you submit you ask 3 friends to vote it up (make sure they vote within a few minutes of each other).

That gives a chance. If the community doesn't like it it won't stay up, but it gives you at least a chance.

Actually, you're describing a voting ring, which is against the rules and is bannable. Luckily the software is intelligent enough that it detects people who do such things and automatically nullifies the effect of those votes.

I guess so. I should clarify I've never actually done this, just seen other people [say they] did it. And watching the vote patterns correlated with homepage position on my few submissions tells me it would work.

BTW I don't see any mention of this in the rules.

I wonder if this is governmental pressure or merely "ran out of money"/normal commercial concerns.

NSA concerns clearly.

Clearly? Really? There is nothing in the slightest clear about it.

That's exactly what makes one suspicious.

It could be anything embarrassing or that would be dangerous/costly to talk about. Government interference is only one possibility. Maybe a competitor paid them to shutdown. (probably not, but it's possible)

When in doubt, assume it was the NSA. That's a safe assumption to make any time you have no knowledge at all.

I'm going to start blaming them for the weather.

I've got no evidence that they're controlling the weather, but it seems like something they would do if they could.

actually it's provable that the weather is partly controlled, at least in Germany. http://www.br.de/themen/wissen/wetter-meteorologie-rosenheim... No need to be a conspiracy-theorist, it's simply true. They use that to avoid hail damaging the crops.

They clearly can manipulate the weather, the question is to what degree and when do they do it and with what aim: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_modification

Yes, that's my algorithm.

Company Quietly Closes - NSA Backdoor Concerns?

Concerned NSA Quietly Closes Backdoor Company

"ran out of money" wouldn't have this "we can't say anything, we are closing it now" odor.

Current "encryption" related concerns provide save-face cover for ran of money quite nicely.

True, but there's also arguably more demand for encryption now than ever. An experienced entrepreneur like Ziptr's CEO should have been able to play this to the company's advantage with customers, investors, etc. Unless of course they got shut down.

This company also seems pretty low risk, unlike, say, a consumer privacy messaging or VPN service.

Consumer privacy services have very low revenue per customer, so if you attract a few customers with huge attached legal costs, you probably just shut down. I think if you're not a dick, you shut down and offer to pay your existing customers to use an equivalent (if available) service elsewhere for some transition period, since you can't continue operating your service directly.

Nonsense. There are many reasons to shut down a service suddenly and almost none of them are things you'd want to brag about. Nobody wants to admit they failed as an entrepreneur.

I would wager that the chance of closure through financial pressures is supremely more common and likely than sneaky government intervention.

I know these guys ... I doubt they ran out of money, they're really good at executing. If the business wasn't panning out, they would've sold to someone.

The only way we will solve secure email is by implementing an open-sourced solution. Period.

It appears like this may be a space where we can't make money from the core service.

Covering a page in a 'please wait this page is loading' with an advert for 10 seconds is a sure fire way to make me leave instantly.

> Ziptr, the secure communications service predominantly targeting legal and accounting professionals, appears to be closing its doors as a ...

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