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Oyster is shutting down

blog.oysterbooks.com

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Re: Oyster is shutting down

#41

Post by tiffanyh »

I never understood Oyster business model.

My 81 year old father figured out years ago how to connect is Kindle to his local public library.

He literally checks out nearly any book, all FOR FREE and reads it on his kindle.

Maybe this is a US centric thing and Oyster was targeting international users. But local libraries have been offering this service of digitally checking out books (even current books) for free for nearly 10 years.

Don't get me wrong. I never like reading about businesses shutting down because that implies people will be losing their job. I just never understood this business to begin with, maybe someone could shed some light on what I'm missing

Re: Oyster is shutting down

#42

Post by cbhl »

nstart wrote: post #38

Can someone explain the math here? 2012 they received 3M in seed funding. 2014 they received 14M USD. The picture on that boat shows 26 (?) people. So let's assume 26 people were always in the company just for kicks. Between 2012 October and 2015 September they ran out of 17M USD. That's a burn rate of 5.67M USD per year. For 26 employees, if we stupidly assumed no other costs, that nearly 218k USD salary per year. O…

I've heard that when you factor in office space, desks, computers, benefits, etc.; the cost of hiring an employee to the company is roughly 2x their gross salary. (As for income tax, at that bracket, it's something like 40-50%?)

Re: Oyster is shutting down

#43

Post by zaroth »

nstart wrote: post #38

Can someone explain the math here? 2012 they received 3M in seed funding. 2014 they received 14M USD. The picture on that boat shows 26 (?) people. So let's assume 26 people were always in the company just for kicks. Between 2012 October and 2015 September they ran out of 17M USD. That's a burn rate of 5.67M USD per year. For 26 employees, if we stupidly assumed no other costs, that nearly 218k USD salary per year. O…

Wages are at most 70% of the cost of an employee to a business, and possibly as low as 50% of the fully burdened cost. For an employee to gross $100k on their paystub (before their own taxes), a competitive employer in NYC is likely paying a full burden (with payroll taxes, insurance, other benefits, admin overhead, office space, and supplies) not too far from $218k.

Re: Oyster is shutting down

#44

Post by detaro »

e28eta wrote: post #26
macspoofing wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Is it fair to Oyster's investors? The alternative is ... what? -- Actually it looks like Google will pay back investors some or all of their investment.

From the linked recode article: "But sources said it will end up paying investors, who put a reported $17 million into the company, for the right to hire some of its staff." That sure sounds similar to the anti-poaching agreements that Google, Apple, etc already got in trouble for. What makes this different? Why shouldn't it just be a free market for these employees (and founders), and Google is free to offer that mo…

Maybe avoid issues with non-competes or claims of "stolen" IP later.

Or maybe, if the founders negotiated a deal for the team to stay together an investor might argue that that they are acting against the best interest of the company and might try to hold them liable for that.

Re: Oyster is shutting down

#45

Post by 70seconds »

nstart wrote: post #38

Can someone explain the math here? 2012 they received 3M in seed funding. 2014 they received 14M USD. The picture on that boat shows 26 (?) people. So let's assume 26 people were always in the company just for kicks. Between 2012 October and 2015 September they ran out of 17M USD. That's a burn rate of 5.67M USD per year. For 26 employees, if we stupidly assumed no other costs, that nearly 218k USD salary per year. O…

I'm pretty sure I saw them around in 2011 so I don't understand why report wrong age of the company here? Note they did a seed round of $3 million in 2012.

Re: Oyster is shutting down

#46

Post by boling11 »

nstart wrote: post #38

Can someone explain the math here? 2012 they received 3M in seed funding. 2014 they received 14M USD. The picture on that boat shows 26 (?) people. So let's assume 26 people were always in the company just for kicks. Between 2012 October and 2015 September they ran out of 17M USD. That's a burn rate of 5.67M USD per year. For 26 employees, if we stupidly assumed no other costs, that nearly 218k USD salary per year. O…

Are you sure they ran out of cash? I haven't read that anywhere. It's possible they found the problem intractable and decided to return the remaining investor cash.

Re: Oyster is shutting down

#47

Post by lucisferre »

tiffanyh wrote: post #41

I never understood Oyster business model. My 81 year old father figured out years ago how to connect is Kindle to his local public library. He literally checks out nearly any book, all FOR FREE and reads it on his kindle. Maybe this is a US centric thing and Oyster was targeting international users. But local libraries have been offering this service of digitally checking out books (even current books) for free for n…

Actually, if I remember correctly, when Oyster came out I couldn't use it because I wasn't in the US.

Re: Oyster is shutting down

#48

Post by untog »

zzzmarcus wrote: post #13

Oyster was something that Google Play or Amazon Kindle Unlimited will almost certainly never be. The beautiful design and focus on details was just the surface. It felt like a company run by people that are passionate about reading and surfacing great books in engaging ways. There were no competing interests--it was about the books and while they weren't perfect, that passion was evident in everything they did. I, fo…

Given that Google acqui-hired them to work on Play Books, it's something Google Play certainly could be.

Re: Oyster is shutting down

#49

Post by cwyers »

zzzmarcus wrote: post #13

Oyster was something that Google Play or Amazon Kindle Unlimited will almost certainly never be. The beautiful design and focus on details was just the surface. It felt like a company run by people that are passionate about reading and surfacing great books in engaging ways. There were no competing interests--it was about the books and while they weren't perfect, that passion was evident in everything they did. I, fo…

Kindle Unlimited has a killer feature Oyster never had -- Kindles. Reading books on phones is awful. Reading them on Kindles is the closest screens can come to reading on books.

Re: Oyster is shutting down

#50

Post by rahimnathwani »

cwyers wrote: post #49
zzzmarcus wrote: post #13

Oyster was something that Google Play or Amazon Kindle Unlimited will almost certainly never be. The beautiful design and focus on details was just the surface. It felt like a company run by people that are passionate about reading and surfacing great books in engaging ways. There were no competing interests--it was about the books and while they weren't perfect, that passion was evident in everything they did. I, fo…

Kindle Unlimited has a killer feature Oyster never had -- Kindles. Reading books on phones is awful. Reading them on Kindles is the closest screens can come to reading on books.

"Kindle Unlimited has a killer feature Oyster never had -- Kindles."

That, and an enormous selection.

"Reading books on phones is awful."

It depends on the phone. Many people are perfectly happy reading for hours on a phone screen, particularly if they can choose the foreground/background colours (e.g. white on black for someone with an AMOLED screen).

"Reading them on Kindles is the closest screens can come to reading on books."

Well, in terms of display, it's the closest screens have_come, but it's unlikely to be the closest screens can come.

But, the thing which makes reading on a Kindle Paperwhite a pain for me, is that I can't flip through the book. Page turns are slower than on a paper book. I can't use my fingers to mark two different parts of the book, and move rapidly back and forth. Oh, and why can't I view images inline with the text?

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