A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Hardbound Update • Hacker News Board

Re: A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Hardbound Update

#41

Post by blizkreeg » Thu, Jun 29, 2017, 4:18 PM UTC

nbashaw wrote: post #30

blizkreeg wrote: post #21

To the founder: you're equating the failure of your business/idea with the failure to raise money. They're not the same. Perhaps try to delve deeper into this thinking. That thinking is toxic. You do still have the option of keeping your "vision" afloat and your business going (also, please, call it a business, not a 'startup'). Get a job, use the $2500/mo to keep producing content with the resources you can afford a…

Am I? "Now, everyone has moved on but me, and I’m trying to figure out how to move forward. For the time being, we’re not going to be able to release any new stories (it sucks, I know), but the app and website will stay up. I am not ready to quit just yet. There probably will be some big changes, but I am not finished." Also: "The second option [continuing with our same model & creating all the content myself] is tem…

I certainly don't want to be presumptuous about your thinking. You obviously know better how big a role the failure to raise money played.

Re: A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Hardbound Update

#42

Post by nbashaw » Thu, Jun 29, 2017, 4:21 PM UTC

blizkreeg wrote: post #41

nbashaw wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I? "Now, everyone has moved on but me, and I’m trying to figure out how to move forward. For the time being, we’re not going to be able to release any new stories (it sucks, I know), but the app and website will stay up. I am not ready to quit just yet. There probably will be some big changes, but I am not finished." Also: "The second option [continuing with our same model & creating all the content myself] is tem…

I certainly don't want to be presumptuous about your thinking. You obviously know better how big a role the failure to raise money played.

I appreciate that! I mean, obviously I was wrong about _some_ things, otherwise I wouldn't have had to write that post. So I'm super open to new ideas and learning. That's also why I'm replying to all these comments. I'd rather reply with more detail so people can give better feedback. I just wish more of the commenters here would start from a perspective of asking questions, than thinking the answers to all my problems are glaringly obvious. Reality is extremely nuanced, in my opinion! I would love if more people were asking more questions, rather than making strong claims based on a very small amount of information that was more intended to communicate a very important life event to friends and users, than to be a detailed diagnosis of everything that happened.

Re: A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Hardbound Update

#43

Post by ryanwaggoner » Thu, Jun 29, 2017, 4:22 PM UTC

nbashaw wrote: post #37

Semiapies wrote: post #32

I'm really wondering how VC money was supposed to make this business profitable. Sure, the idea is let them last long enough to grow their customer base, but with "millions" of pages read, they were making ramen-profitable-for-one-guy money from something that required a team of people. I imagine it didn't seem clear to investors that there was a big potential for growth, and they'd need big growth just to survive ,…

Actually we had a pretty detailed financial model for how we expected to get to profitability! We currently have ~1,200 subscribers, and about half are paying us $1.99/mo (our old price point) and the other half is paying $3.99/mo. Our growth model is based on people sharing our content, and so we can predict pretty well how many new customers we'll get every time we post something new. With a $15k monthly content bu…

Super curious about a bunch of things here:

1. Are those numbers inclusive of Apple taking a 30% cut?

2. You have a $15k per month content budget, but what about other overhead? Does the 15k subscriber number for profitability cover that too?

3. How is churn?

4. What's your CAC and LTV?

Most importantly: you talked to dozens of investors, some of them probably smart and experienced. Why did they say they didn't think it would work?

They might be wrong, obviously, but I'd be curious to hear their main objections.

Re: A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Hardbound Update

#44

Post by titanomachy » Thu, Jun 29, 2017, 4:22 PM UTC

nbashaw wrote: post #27

scandox wrote: post #13

> I see a huge range of possibilities: > 1. Try to get acqui-hired and pretend I didn’t fail to fundraise, as is the tradition in our industry (“our incredible journey!”, etc). Hint: I’m not going to do this. In the words of Oliver Cromwell: 'put your trust in God; but mind to keep your powder dry'.

What does that quote mean in this context? I am trying to decode the meaning but am failing haha

Keep your powder dry probably refers to gunpowder... old flintlock rifles had separate gunpowder and bullets, and if the powder was really wet the gun wouldn't fire. So, have faith but do everything you can to improve your chances of success.

Re: A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Hardbound Update

#45

Post by comstock » Thu, Jun 29, 2017, 4:22 PM UTC

nbashaw wrote: post #37

Semiapies wrote: post #32

I'm really wondering how VC money was supposed to make this business profitable. Sure, the idea is let them last long enough to grow their customer base, but with "millions" of pages read, they were making ramen-profitable-for-one-guy money from something that required a team of people. I imagine it didn't seem clear to investors that there was a big potential for growth, and they'd need big growth just to survive ,…

Actually we had a pretty detailed financial model for how we expected to get to profitability! We currently have ~1,200 subscribers, and about half are paying us $1.99/mo (our old price point) and the other half is paying $3.99/mo. Our growth model is based on people sharing our content, and so we can predict pretty well how many new customers we'll get every time we post something new. With a $15k monthly content bu…

I'd assume most investors are not really interested in you reaching profitability. In fact it's probably a negative for them.

What they want of for you to reach a high valuation which allows them to get a +10x return on their investment. What they want is for you to need more money from them in order to survive, so if they believe in the play they can increase their stake.

At some point they want liquidity. But that doesn't have much to do with your profitability.

Honestly, you probably know better than me. But this has been my limited experience.

Re: A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Hardbound Update

#46

Post by nbashaw » Thu, Jun 29, 2017, 4:23 PM UTC

chongli wrote: post #39

nbashaw wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right -- it takes a long time for most media companies to get off the ground, and it's often near-impossible to raise money in the early days. But how many youtube channels that get ~7,000 weekly unique viewers are able to convert ~1,200 into paying monthly subscribers? Consider this: you might not already know everything there is to know about my business by skimming one blog post!

I'm sorry. It's all too easy to play backseat driver on an internet discussion board. It's far tougher to actually go out and build something with your real life and your relationships in the mix. I've been part of a failed business that's left my father with a mountain of debt in his late middle age. I am in the process of retooling my life to go back to school and earn a degree. I recognize what it's like to face a…

It's ok! And I am really sorry to hear about your dad's business. That must have felt terrible, far worse than I'm feeling right now.

We're all human and doing the best we can.

Re: A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Hardbound Update

#47

Post by Semiapies » Thu, Jun 29, 2017, 4:33 PM UTC

nbashaw wrote: post #24

taneq wrote: post #2

Why didn't the fundraise work? Maybe because your business model doesn't appear to be working at your current scale, you're not scaling fast enough to make it work any time soon, and you didn't seem to have any clear plan to change this. I don't mean to be harsh, it sounds like you gave it a shot and it went pretty right. But you got caught up in the unicorn-chaser Silicon Valley mindset: 1) Do something that only wo…

OP here. I'm curious, what makes you think that you know anything about what our plans were? You're absolutely right that we weren't profitable at our current scale, and that our goal was to raise funding from VCs, and since we couldn't do it we had to make really tough changes. But this was a risk that we all accepted! Would I do it exactly the same way again next time? No, of course not. I learned a lot from this e…

I think many, many more people make fun of the startup mentality. Which is harsh, but justified.

It's nice that you chased your dreams. The problem is, this is how almost all startups end up, with the last guy wondering what to do next. If you get struck by lightning, you get acquired. If you get struck twice, you get VC money.

That you "accepted" the risk just means you took a very bad bet. If you learned from that, great. No shame in that. But it's not something people are going to be impressed by, especially this late in the game.

Re: A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Hardbound Update

#48

Post by jaclaz » Thu, Jun 29, 2017, 4:34 PM UTC

nbashaw wrote: post #25

jaclaz wrote: post #20

Maybe it is just me, but I cannot refrain from noticing how the "layman examples" and "imagining" he makes seem a bit off in a funny way. >There’s an image in my head that helps me make sense of this: > >I’m driving towards the horizon in the desert. Wait a minute, a man can dream, but the image in your mind is driving in a Ferrari towards the horizon in the desert. And right after: >Instead, the car ran out of gas,…

The ferrari thing was definitely a little distracting, for sure, but literally it was the only good free photo I could find of a car driving towards the horizon in the desert.

Yep, I understand that, I only saw it as "funny", I am sorry, but it is stronger than me, you depicted verbally something very like the final of Terminator (1st), "a storm is coming":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C6GZQ7UNaU

and I visualized that (or any of the movies where the car is a battered old car, possibly an old jeep or a pickup) before noticing the Ferrari logo.

Maybe this one would do (not a photo, but a painting) to better explain what I visualized:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/alberto_ollo/5229651715/sizes/...

Re: A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Hardbound Update

#49

Post by nbashaw » Thu, Jun 29, 2017, 4:34 PM UTC

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #34

nbashaw wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right -- it takes a long time for most media companies to get off the ground, and it's often near-impossible to raise money in the early days. But how many youtube channels that get ~7,000 weekly unique viewers are able to convert ~1,200 into paying monthly subscribers? Consider this: you might not already know everything there is to know about my business by skimming one blog post!

A piece of friendly advice: I get that you're in a pretty low place right now, and that this is your baby, but don't take comments on HN so personally. You're coming across as pretty defensive, which is understandable, but probably not helpful. People here can see this from a perspective that you can't, and if you're defensive, you're missing out on learning something. Otherwise, why are you bothering to interact her…

I was in a really low place a couple weeks ago, but I actually honestly feel pretty fine now. I've given myself the space I need to process it. I definitely wouldn't have been able to publish this post when it first happened.

Also, I totally get that it seems like a total waste of time to engage with the comments here. A lot of people have told me the same thing on Twitter. But the thing is: I think it's really special that someone on the other side of a computer screen read this thing I wrote and is thinking about what they would do in my shoes. Even if they express it in a way that's kind of rude or condescending, it means something to me!

I'm sorry if it seems like I'm being defensive. When I think of what the word "defensive" represents, I think of someone who is totally unwilling to consider other points of view and is trying to shut out the world. I don't think that's what I'm doing. Nothing is more important to me than learning from what happened and growing into a better, smarter person. I totally appreciate the fact that I am just too close to the thing to really understand what happened. I need help from objective third parties to learn the most from this.

That's actually why I'm replying to the comments. There's the naive DHH-cheerleading reply to anyone who is "yet another dumb unicorn chaser". But I want to go one or two levels deeper than that. I don't think those replies are particularly helpful, but I think the people that write them totally could be helpful. They just need to actually have a desire to understand in more detail what my business is/was doing. I accept that most people here will never care enough to really dig in. But I think the probability is high that some people here actually might really care. So I'm engaging here while it's on the front page of Hacker News, because I won't get another opportunity like that for a long time.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to think that through more. I hope it answers your question.

Re: A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Hardbound Update

#50

Post by comstock » Thu, Jun 29, 2017, 4:35 PM UTC

Ok, here's some advice from an Internet random person.

1. Yes, if you can take some time.

2. Do some crying. You probably feel depressed, burnt out, stressed out. Crying is a great release.

3. You don't need to do anything right now it's ok not to do anything right now.

4. If you're under personal financial stress try and resolve that. Perhaps move somewhere cheaper.

5. You probably don't need to think too much about what went wrong right now, maybe take some time first?

Realize that there will be a time when the stresses of this business will be long behind you, and you won't feel it with the same intensity anymore. Maybe read some good books, it can really help you feel alive again.

All this is very biased. It's based on how I would be feeling, if I'd gone through the same process as you.

Good luck!