Readmill shuts down, team joins Dropbox | Hacker News Reader

Readmill shuts down, team joins Dropbox

readmill.com

114 pointsanthonymonori49 comments

This is an incredibly, incredibly well done shutdown statement.

It explains clearly what happened; it isn't overly congratulatory to themselves; it puts a clear emphasis on how their users can export their data; it thanks those who helped them on the journey; it beautifully summarizes everything they built and stood for, from the solid typography, to the interactive timeline, to the team photos, to the simple, clean choice of a "Epilogue" as the title. And it'll be the perfect homepage come July 1st too.

Sad to see such a high-quality product shut down. I've looked to Readmill for design inspiration a lot over the past year.

This. This should be a model for what a shutdown statement should be: forthright, empathic, free of gratuitious spin.

Readmill's story ends here. Many challenges in the world of ebooks remain unsolved, and we failed to create a sustainable platform for reading. For this, we're deeply sorry. We considered every option before making the difficult decision to end the product that brought us together.

Really nice to see them handling it straight-forwardly instead of pretending like it's an epic win for users when it's a really an acqui-hire. Props to these guys for being honest.

This feels like a huge loss. Readmill stood head and shoulders above other reading apps like Kindle and iBooks in terms of design. It was also one of the few services that would let you upload ePub books to your account through the website and then sync your library to your mobile device.

"Now cracks a noble heart.—Good night, sweet prince, And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!"

I wish the team all the best at Dropbox, and I'm sure Dropbox will benefit immensely from their remarkable talent for building amazing software. At the same time, though, I wish they would have just started charging $10 a month for the service!

> It was also one of the few services that would let you upload ePub books to your account through the website and then sync your library to your mobile device.

Or you could just toss it in your Dropbox... assuming they integrate Readmill into the mobile app, I fail to see why everyone doesn't win.

That would be better than nothing, but there's still a long road between here and there! This also sounds like more of a soft landing or "acqui-hire" for a company that was running out of money rather than a concerted effort by Dropbox to push hard into the reading app space. I hope it is, but so far Dropbox hasn't even issued a press release about the acquisition, have they?

And Readmill's design is just sexy as hell. It's sad to lose the experience of using their software.

I agree. All these acquisitions just make me want to come up with self hosted versions that I can run on my own. I know there's ShuBook but the experience just isn't there.

It would be incredible if they would opensource their iOS app at this point.

> It was also one of the few services that would let you upload ePub books to your account through the website and then sync your library to your mobile device.

Google Books does this now

Google Books is my preferred reading app for just this reason.

You can upload your own books into Google Books and syncs across devices (mobile/web).

https://play.google.com/books/uploads

As of now, it really doesn't look like a wise investment in anything Google that is not replaceable e.g. Search.

With the proliferation of Nexus tablets (or Android tablets in general) and that Play Books is stock in the OS, I feel pretty confident in it sticking around.

The point is, and I should have made it clear in my original comment, I would usually prefer one company that just does something rather than a corporation that tries to do everything. Their priorities change quickly; mainly because they have a lot of products and even if a company is useful to them and their users they might shut it down because it might be "relatively" less important to them. Whereas a company which just does that might hang on to it and try to make that very service even better.

Ditto, was/is a beautifully designed application.

Well, at least they're not pitching it as a grand success for all, and won't end up on http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/

Tip to engineers new to the startup world: If the startup you work for has any success or traction, but runs out of money, you will be sold off as a team like cattle. When startups shutdown, all assets -- servers, client contracts, software, furniture, and teams -- will be sold off to recoup losses. You won't have much say in it and it kind of sucks.

In fairness to the CEO's that broker these deals, they are probably trying to make sure that their workers land on their feet. But it still sucks to realize you and your friends are considered saleable assets.

Well, if you are an employee of an acquired startup, you always have the option of leaving. The acquirer will try to make sure that between unvested equity and retention packages you have enough incentive to stay, but it's really your choice.

And this is why I just don't get this aqui-hire craze. You can buy the founders, sure, but unless an employee has equity or you throw some real cash at them why would a rank and file employee stay? If I wanted to work at XYZ corp (especially if XYZ corp is big enough to acquire the startup), then I would have sent a resume to XYZ corp in the first place.

What a company is buying in an acqui-hire is not just individual capability, but also team chemistry and cohesion. The team has proven that it can work together effectively to ship a great product. They're acquired (and given appropriate salaries + retention packages) to do the same for the acquirer.

That's certainly one version of what can happen. Another version is that none of the equity transfers to the new company. The acquiring company will offer you a modest boost in salary and similar new stock options. If you don't take the offer because they're low balling you or you don't like the new company, your old company will terminate you at the end of the week without any severance. Or the new company will offer everyone on the team 3 months consulting contracts. Either way, better start familiarizing yourself with COBRA.

Employees in the acquired company are put under heavy pressure to take whatever deal is offered. Who wouldn't want to keep working with their friends? The CEO's/senior team will keep the employees out of the loop so that rank-and-file don't move first and take any negotiating power away from the CEO.

Not every acqui-hire is a payoff for the employees in the acquired company. It can also be a face-saving gesture when money runs out to make a shutdown look semi-successful for the founders.

And you will get tired of deleting all the job offers and "let's have coffee and talk about my startup" mails for the next few days until you find something new.

Truly, having your company fail is a horrible thing, at least in Silicon Valley right now. :)

> sold off as a team like cattle

I'm not sure I can recall the last time cattle were sold off as a team because their abilities were respected; perhaps the closest team of domesticated animals we can find changing hands between companies would be the Budweiser Clydesdales, from wherever they came from; even this example is strained. Nay (neigh?), engineers should take pride in being acquired - you suddenly have a whole new world of resources and collaborators opened up to you, even if you end up having to pivot the original concept, and you have the best of both worlds in terms of having a group of people to enter a company with, and being able to talk about your achievements at the previous engagement. And if you were in a startup to begin with, did you expect that you wouldn't pivot ever?

You and your friends aren't saleable assets, you're the company. And that's something to take pride in.

I'm a huge fan of Dropbox. Here is my long-term wishful thinking of their acquisitions:

    - Audiogalaxy Dec 2012: online iTunes-like audio library, synced across/streamed to all of my devices
    - Snapjoy Dec 2012: online iPhoto-like experience, synced...
    - Mailbox Mar 2013: can Dropbox be the new Gmail? If Google search needs disruption, Gmail is no different
    - Zulip Mar 2014: online chat and team collaboration with file/screenshot/text/etc sharing integrated to a whole new level. Maybe Droplr/CloudApp on steroids
    - Readmill Mar 2014: online ezine/book library... maybe doc management?!

Bottom line: to become everyone's all-in-one cloud, synced, folder. This would be the platform, a ~/user/ in the cloud

PS: from their Sold and Endorse acquisitions I can only speculate that they might have a(n) (e)commerce play in their mind.

It's a nice thought. But as you state, they acquired Mailbox a year ago. As far as I can tell there isn't anything to show for it in terms of an e-mail product.

Readmill was without a doubt one of my favorite apps. It did one thing, and it did it very well. Like many others, I wish it was going to be absorbed into Dropbox (like Mailbox was last year) and remain operational. Perhaps there will be some level of ebook integration in the Dropbox app in the future.

Why not make Readmill part of Dropbox app ecosystem (e.g. Mailbox)? Just a read, sync and backup app without the social network features. I really hate to do all this manually with yet another service.

I'm heartbroken by the loss of Readmill. Met some incredible people in the margins of books, and have had long and thoughtful conversations with fellow readers, authors, and myself.

Readmill have done an awesome job at giving us tools to rescue our data. But where to put it? How can we keep getting value out of the time we've invested into Readmill? I personally have over 600 highlights and tens of thousands words written in the margins, now locked up in a big JSON dump.

A few of us have banded together to build a tool ( http://readshelf.co ) to rehome your Readmill library. It'll sync your Readmill highlights up until July 1 (and you can upload your dump as well.) When Readmill shuts down for good, we're hoping there'll be a nice replacement service that we can integrate with—giving you some continuity with your library.

Of course, all of your stuff will be exportable in a useful format; lest history repeat itself. In fact, we're really keen to hear suggestions on:

- a sustainable business model for something like this

- some best practices around your data: access, portability, etc.

Looks like Marvin supports Readmill cloud? http://blog.marvinapp.com/post/69175405146 (I have yet to try though, and it's an old announcement.)

Damn. I'm more saddened by this than any other acquisition. Readmill is (was?) just so much better than the alternatives.

Disappointed to hear this — they've made by far the best reading app for iOS, and perhaps anywhere. The FAQ tries to preempt the "but why not implement X, Y, or Z potential revenue model?" question by saying they didn't think anything would work. But that's not satisfying; I don't want to believe that there really was absolutely no solution that would've made it viable as a business, or at least saved it from impending total shutdown. Always interesting (though difficult) to read these "we're closing up shop" notices, knowing how much history and context and problem solving went on behind the scenes that we'll just never be privy to. Hope they continue to do great things with the mobile reading experience at Dropbox!

Any more on the apparent $8 million "acqui-hire" by Dropbox? http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/27/readmill-acqui-hired/

What? Another service I start to use and shutdowns just a few days later...sad!

That's a problem with free services, and sometimes even with some paid services.

I think it's a general problem with services.

I much prefer using desktop software, even when it's discontinued, it still works.

I think the next big thing could be bringing App Stores to servers. 1 click install, zero config, etc. I recently set up my own webmail, it was a pain in the ass. It could be made a lot easier, and I think people would pay for the convenience.

>I think the next big thing could be bringing App Stores to servers

VMware Virtual Appliances and Microsoft Azure apps try to do this. They are of course strictly enterprise-focused though.

> I think the next big thing could be bringing App Stores to servers.

It doesn't get much easier than "yum install" or "apt-get install".

I'm more thinking so the average person would have their own server for their family, rather than the people who have servers now.

Sure "apt-get install" installs the software, but configuring it to do anything useful is still anything but trivial. Installing Linux, creating a user accounts, setting up an SMTP, POP & IMAP server, installing a webmail app with spam filtering, making sure they all talk to each other, is hard. Installing WordPress is the easiest I've seen, and you still need to create a DB and copy the connection details.

I'm thinking of something as simple as you see a list of Apps (WordPress, PHPBB, etc). Just click 'install' and pick the directory you want it installed in. And you pay $.99 for the convince.

I think it would be good for the industry to move away from ad supported services, and to let users pay to host the services themselves.

> I think it would be good for the industry to move away from ad supported services, and to let users pay to host the services themselves.

I somewhat agree with your perspective, but think its going to be a hard sell. People buy apps because you don't have to think about it. Configuring a service is in direct opposition of that convenience, and I don't think you'll ever have enough training wheels in the interface to fix that.

I could be wrong.

I said it 'could be' the next big thing, not it will be. I agree it's a long shot.

Web Apps have been very good to developers. Zero piracy, no installation issues, low support costs. Users like them because it's simple to get started, they aren't tied to one computer. The downsides are all long term -- and it's hard to get people to think about the future, or things like privacy.

I'm not sure where the drive would come from to make it happen. I don't see which company would put in the investment to get it started.

I bought a Synology box to use as a NAS, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that it has its own package manager, complete with web server, e-mail server, torrent downloader, etc. etc.

It's got a long way to go before everyone can use it, but I'm finding more and more uses for it.

Something like http://sandstorm.io/? Not mine, but it looks pretty cool.

Not a lot of details, but it sounds like what I'm thinking about.

> I much prefer using desktop software, even when it's discontinued, it still works.

So much this. I still fire up xvi32 to look at a binary file once or twice a month... while the latest minor version release was about 2 years ago, it haven't seen any serious changes since circa 2001.

This is why I've started migrating all of my cloud services to open-source applications running on my VPS. OwnCloud, TT-RSS, SimpleID, etc.

The SaaS model is deeply flawed, and once people start to realize the implications for security, privacy, and ongoing availability, there'll probably be a shift back to running your own software on your own system.

Whomever comes up with a good consumerized VPS platform with an app store is probably going to win big.

They mentioned no new signups were allowed but I still managed to sign up via Facebook and created a new account. Not sure how to get a hold of them but they might want to know that.

Any recommendations for a replacement?

Take a look at http://marvinapp.com. It has some fancy typographic and organizing features. I found it not to my taste, but YMMV.

jesus christ.

What I felt bad about is all the bullshit they typed instead of just saying:

>> Hey, we got acqui-hired by Dropbox and we are now shutting ReadMill down! Thanks for all the fish and hope you enjoyed ours.

That's it. That's all it would have taken.

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