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FitFu (YC W11) is shutting down

blog.fitfu.com

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Re: FitFu (YC W11) is shutting down

#21

Post by JofArnold »

juniorer wrote: post #15
JofArnold wrote: post #11

Hi, Jof from FitFu here. Firstly - wow, how did this get on Hacker News? :P Second - happy to try to answer questions. I'll try to be reasonably transparent about mistakes, reasons etc. It's maybe helpful noting we're just shutting down the project - the company itself is fairly ok. FitFu was losing us a lot of money in a overly-competitive market and in the end it was just too much to maintain both financially and i…

You mentioned in the comments "But in the end we made some bad decisions and Fate didn’t forgive us for it." What were those bad decisions ? And were the reasons you made them choices or circumstance? And if someone is relatively new in the fitness app market what would your advice/suggestions/cautions be to them?

I've posted a few things about this in reply to others, but my advice would be; don't make an app.

That sounds really jaded, but if you look at the massive players in the fitness space (e.g. BodyBuilding.com, CrossFit, LA Fitness, QVC ;) ) they are all either selling a dream or selling a sport/lifestyle... and all with large recurring revenues. At the other end, you've got millions of exercise trackers and exercise videos fighting over scraps in the app store...

I don't know what the next big opportunity is in fitness - or I'd be doing that - but I'm pretty sure it's not apps or quantified self or stuff like that. I've not yet seen anything that strikes me as "big". FitnessKeeper might get a great exit though - hope they do :)

Re: FitFu (YC W11) is shutting down

#24

Post by JofArnold »

orangethirty wrote: post #23

What is next?

Good question. We've been doing some serious (read: proper, this time!) customer development on a number of alternative projects. Ones we've rejected through extensive testing include:

- Software to replace consultants in the process of receiving government funding. Conclusion: market for this product is too small. Plus it was so boring we found it hard to motivate ourselves.

- A two-sided marketplace to match SMEs to talent in the science/technology space. Possibly an opportunity, but the dynamics of creating both sides of the marketplace are a nightmare.

- Better mobile sites/menus. We had a brief window to snap up a large number of businesses from a major SME website provider. But once we did the maths, it became very uninteresting. Weebly, Wix and soforth have this market nailed.

- Enterprise asset management. There's a lot of incumbents and we couldn't find a way of improving their offerings by a sufficient margin in order to get customers to switch (and overcome the "we need this company around in 5 years" problem). I'm fairly familiar with this area due to my long manufacturing engineering experience.

There were quite a few more.

Re: FitFu (YC W11) is shutting down

#27

Post by JofArnold »

qty899 wrote: post #26

Love your mascot. Can I ask who designed your mascot, and how much a design like that costs?

It was Despark.com. They are outstanding - it was so much fun working with them, developing the character, the design and the videos etc.

Couldn't tell you a price as we had a special arrangement with them. Their hourly rate at the time was about $600 I think (we were seed funded prior to YC, which helped with that).

Re: FitFu (YC W11) is shutting down

#28

Post by Domenic_S »

JofArnold wrote: post #17
dave1619 wrote: post #8

Would love to hear from the FitFu founders what went "wrong... - what was different from their expectations - what were the challenges - and why they weren't able to overcome the challenges they faced

Challenges --- I can't be transparent about all of these, but I'd say they were split into a few sections: personal challenges; user acquisition; crappy market/model choice; code/complexity. On the personal challenges front, both Benjie and I were pounded by one major unfortunate event after another (deaths, illness and so forth) right from the start of YC through to this year. It's hard not to get drained by that, e…

> P90X, WiiFit, exercise DVDs - those become $1b markets.

Massive margin on buy-once items + insane marketing budgets = $$$. Even Billy Blanks Jr is having a hard time with his DVDs (http://www.meettheblanks.com/, watch the Shark Tank episode if you haven't already). Fitness is fickle.

> CrossFit is a $1b company.

Gyms make so much money because they hard sell you to commit, then you sign a contract you can't get out of.

Re: FitFu (YC W11) is shutting down

#29

Post by jackylee0424 »

JofArnold wrote: post #21
juniorer wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mentioned in the comments "But in the end we made some bad decisions and Fate didn’t forgive us for it." What were those bad decisions ? And were the reasons you made them choices or circumstance? And if someone is relatively new in the fitness app market what would your advice/suggestions/cautions be to them?

I've posted a few things about this in reply to others, but my advice would be; don't make an app. That sounds really jaded, but if you look at the massive players in the fitness space (e.g. BodyBuilding.com, CrossFit, LA Fitness, QVC ;) ) they are all either selling a dream or selling a sport/lifestyle... and all with large recurring revenues. At the other end, you've got millions of exercise trackers and exercise v…

Could you elaborate on why not QS?

Re: FitFu (YC W11) is shutting down

#30

Post by FireBeyond »

camz wrote: post #4

i thought the way they handled the shutdown was pretty great. they were thorough about informing everything they could, even in the appstore.

Disagree.

"Informing everything they could"?

That's why if you go to fitfu.com it's plastered with Buy Now, "Amazing Price Right Now", and not "Will be gone in six weeks"?

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