Frontback Shutting Down
frontback.me
frontback.me
No it isn't.
The problem is to accurately put a value on your company and it's future.
It isn't rare at all to find founders that are in the most literal sense of the word delusional about what the value of a company is.
I've had this with one of my co-founders who held out for a much larger buy-out offer than one that we had on the table and then subsequently ended up being extremely upset when after blocking that particular deal he could not find a better one and ended up taking much less from the company than the offer that had been on the table already.
I'm sure that his hindsight told him that maybe his valuation wasn't all that accurate after all.
Hindsight being what it is - 20/20 - if you remember that a price is never right (sell it: you're too cheap, don't sell it: you're too expensive) that there is room on both sides and overlap between the ranges is required to make a deal.
If you always hold out for better you will never make a deal. So knowing when an offer is 'good' is the key and being realistic about valuations will help you to figure out what is good.
> I suppose you also probably advised Mark Zucherburg to not sell?
Mark Zuckerberg (not Zucherburg) never intended to sell at all, that's a key difference.
Agreed. Example:
him: "Got an idea!"
me: "Let's hear it..."
him: 'splains idea
me: "neat - hold on"
me: build quick mvp to get initial users - 2 days
him: "oh but it needs xyz"
me: "not until you talk to customers"
him: weeks later, a bit of traction
me: "cool - you know, if you/we can get some more users in this area, maybe up and down the coast, this would be a nice little acquisition from someone like 4square"
him: "what?? i'd never sell"
me: "we'd probably be looking at a couple million for less than a year of work, assuming you can get the traction"
him: "this is going to be bigger than Facebook - this will be everywhere! don't you understand the value here?"
me: "you're serious, aren't you?"
Yes, he was deadly serious. Over the years, he's mellowed a bit in that intensity, but still seemed to hold on to the notion that having an idea and someone building an MVP = ownership of billion dollar marketplace. The notion that other people considered the idea and deemed it not worth pursuing, or perhaps have actually tried it and learned it's not the market that was assumed... genuinely never crossed his mind. Ever.
> The problem is to accurately put a value on your company
> and it's future.
(edit: Estimates have both accuracy and precision. Determining the precise value of a company with a high accuracy is very, very difficult. A less precise value (i.e. a range of values) for a company is much easier to do with accuracy, but a range runs contrary to the idea of finding the "correct" value.)
[1] "Accidental complexity relates to problems which [people] create and can fix... Essential complexity is caused by the problem to be solved, and nothing can remove it" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Silver_Bullet
On a more serious note: I'd say that from within a startup it's pretty hard to get an unbiased view on ones relation to competitors. So what categories would you recommend for a "realistic evaluation" of ones' company in the world?
Yikes. I always regarded Frontback as a feature, and assumed that they'd end up being acquihired. I'm astonished that they thought there was a real company to be built around it.
I don't mean this in an argumentative way, but taking a video isn't a billion dollar feature.
This was 2 years back. How can you not be working on Android version by then?
Sounds like they never quite got there.
If you're making an app where it's value heavily stems on how many of your friends use it, then only working on one platform is a great way to "never quite get there".
Even more, considering Android takes up about 80% of the market share. Focusing on iOS first is a well known strategy, but if you gain any traction - Android release should be out quickly. There is no excuse to ignore that big amount of market share.
It made me feel connected to the emotions the founders are likely going through right now.
But still probably something the founders are regretting.
If the investors didn't have a controlling stake, then the founders would be pretty damn rich.
Players who suceede in this space have either 100x the eyeballs and/or their internal ad network with better revenues.
If they rejected to better execute their vision, probably not
Image preview here:
https://pando-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2013/10/frontb...
... but it's minified and I can't hunt down the source.
Edit: after reading the shutdown notice, it was a little vague about what's happening. It says the iOS app will convert to a camera app. Does that mean they are gonna try to retain connections to all the existing users and roll out out some new concept?
In a case like this, do they ever transfer the service over to someone who might be interested in having a go at it (without any money exchanging hands)? Always seems like people would rather shut something down than hand it over which is unfortunate.
There's some sort of selfie-ish value in Frontback but otherwise looks fadish and tiring.
Edit: Ah. From what I can tell, snapchat/instagram/genericPhotoApp except it takes a picture with both cameras http://web.archive.org/web/20150715211337/http://www.frontba...
I too regarded Frontback as a feature rather than a new messaging paradigm. But I can see how you might say the same about Snapchat.
I understand it's a crushing time for the founders, but one of the things I seem to see on HN is the more respectably you wind down your startup, the more respect (and future deal flow) you seem to get.
Just 2c
I haven't used the app, but it's likely that they're stored to your Camera Roll anyways, as Instagram does? In that case, they'd be backed up with the rest of your iPhone.
otoh it's hard to justify this kind of investment in a folding company, also I don't think people who can't download photo in a month magically can given three months.
anyway if those photo were important to the owner and him used an internet startup as his sole backup well, shame on him :D
This is sadly one of the more high profile moments a start up has - Handle it well, the founders will be seen as a safe pair of hands, do the equivalent of dropping the casket into the ground and walking off, maybe not so much.
It's not great that this is a metric, it's not great that more VCs will see how they shutdown than saw how they started up - but this is just another startup. The founders have 30+ year careers ahead. Good for them for making something, good for them for trying, and good for trying to land it at all. Many just told up tents and steal away.
We as a community are trying to learn the dos and donts of startup life cycles - seems to me this is one of the more high profile and often ignored donts.