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FitFu (YC W11) is shutting down

blog.fitfu.com

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Re: FitFu (YC W11) is shutting down

#51

Post by JofArnold »

dkarl wrote: post #43
Domenic_S wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 o…

I know this is ridiculously off-topic, but Crossfit doesn't work at all like that. To the best of my knowledge, Crossfit doesn't even sell contracts to people who haven't graduated from the six week intro class, which is a serious reality check for people who prefer to keep exercise in the realm of fantasy. Thus, they weed out the best potential absentee customers before they can even buy a contract. My instructor em…

CrossFit the company makes money from its affiliates I gather.

PS, I love CrossFit - been doing it for about a year now.

Re: FitFu (YC W11) is shutting down

#52

Post by prawn »

JofArnold wrote: post #37
prawn wrote: post #35

Has anyone made anything like this and then licensed it, unbranded, to gyms for a monthly fee?

I know someone who failed, closed the startup and joined another company if that answers your questions. Probably wrong on this, but I've not seen any tech startup execute well (at scale) in gyms. Except maybe booking services or basic trackers.

Just strikes me as likely easier to sell something to gyms for $x0-x00/mo that they then on-sell or provide as a bonus to members, than it is to grab individual users as a one-off. I pitched the idea loosely to a gym once and they liked the concept, but I've never had the time to prioritise the idea over others.

e.g., a gym might pay $x0,000 to develop their own branded solution. Put something workable in front of them at the right price and it could be a far easier decision?

Re: FitFu (YC W11) is shutting down

#53

Post by JofArnold »

prawn wrote: post #52
JofArnold wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know someone who failed, closed the startup and joined another company if that answers your questions. Probably wrong on this, but I've not seen any tech startup execute well (at scale) in gyms. Except maybe booking services or basic trackers.

Just strikes me as likely easier to sell something to gyms for $x0-x00/mo that they then on-sell or provide as a bonus to members, than it is to grab individual users as a one-off. I pitched the idea loosely to a gym once and they liked the concept, but I've never had the time to prioritise the idea over others. e.g., a gym might pay $x0,000 to develop their own branded solution. Put something workable in front of th…

If you go ahead with it, make sure you heavily investigate:

1) Will they actually use it? Will their customers use it?

2) Why they want it? Is it to add extra perceived value for marketing purposes or is it to save them money... that sort of thing.

3) What's the maximum theoretical market? What part of that market can you address if you execute perfectly (TAM, SAM, SOM...). I bet it's smaller than you think.

4) What's the sales cycle? What does it require of the gyms?

The guys I'm talking about did a pretty thorough job and the founding team had good prior experience with gym chains - they took it a long way pretty quickly. But they weren't successful. I don't want to say that it's not possible, but it's certainly full of a lot of pitfalls that are worth spending the time to discover up front.

Re: FitFu (YC W11) is shutting down

#54

Post by JofArnold »

orangethirty wrote: post #40
JofArnold wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Thanks for answering. Seems you've had time to de-compress and think things through. Isn't it wonderful? :) Something I've been itching to get into is conventional industries. There is a lot of things to do there, and companies with deep pockets to sell to. They rely on old and clunky software to operate, and it slows their productivity down. I'm working on a project to attack such problem. Let's see how it pans out.…

It really is wonderful. FitFu as a business was challenging enough, but the personal things that happened to us really took their toll! Having the opportunity to start afresh is invigorating.

FWIW, an industry where we see there's a lot of opportunities is construction. This mightn't have been the case a few years back, but smartphones really do open things up now. Lots of innovations to come from tech startups I suspect.

Re: FitFu (YC W11) is shutting down

#55

Post by JofArnold »

dave1619 wrote: post #46
JofArnold wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We spoke to a lot of people who'd done the same (either as exits or just passing it on) and ultimately we concluded: 1) Handing over in any form would require too much documentation/effort. A clean break is more cost effective 2) A small exit wouldn't cover the time, cost, lawyers, due dill etc. 3) Open sourcing it will cost too much time too. In the end we felt like many people suggested that we should cut our losse…

Just curious, how many current DAU's do you have?

It generally tails down to just a few thousand a few weeks after a major release, which is where we're at now I suspect. The drop off is pretty huge for the majority, but there's a small minority who do really stick to it - we've quite a few users who are still using it after almost 2 years.

Re: FitFu (YC W11) is shutting down

#56

Post by JofArnold »

dave1619 wrote: post #48
JofArnold wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why didn't you think you could take on P90X and/or exercise DVDs?

Apps tend to retail for just a few dollars and there's only a few exceptions. This means the max per-unit profit is just a few cents (or perhaps a dollar or two). P90X on the other hand makes several orders of magnitude more per sake. So even if we saturated the app fitness market, we'd still be far from P90X in terms of revenue. Whilst app stores do assist in acquiring users, the effect is tiny compared with having a marketing budget of potentially $100 a user.

That sort of thing. It's probably quite a long answer I'm afraid. I suppose the TL;DR would be "don't take part in a race to the bottom".

Re: FitFu (YC W11) is shutting down

#57

Post by BenjieGillam »

FireBeyond wrote: post #30
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"?

This was my fault - I had to abort the server updates to go deal with my unexpectedly and violently sick 1 year old son. By the time I was free to go back to updating the servers I was too tired and decided it would be better to wait until morning - after all the iTunes page linked from the "Buy Now" button explains that the app is being discontinued.

Re: FitFu (YC W11) is shutting down

#58

Post by orangethirty »

JofArnold wrote: post #54
orangethirty wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for answering. Seems you've had time to de-compress and think things through. Isn't it wonderful? :) Something I've been itching to get into is conventional industries. There is a lot of things to do there, and companies with deep pockets to sell to. They rely on old and clunky software to operate, and it slows their productivity down. I'm working on a project to attack such problem. Let's see how it pans out.…

It really is wonderful. FitFu as a business was challenging enough, but the personal things that happened to us really took their toll! Having the opportunity to start afresh is invigorating. FWIW, an industry where we see there's a lot of opportunities is construction. This mightn't have been the case a few years back, but smartphones really do open things up now. Lots of innovations to come from tech startups I sus…

I think one area tech can work with is in the construction inspection segment. Pushing and pulling data through an app about some construction job is something an inspector might do.

Re: FitFu (YC W11) is shutting down

#59

Post by dkarl »

JofArnold wrote: post #51
dkarl wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is ridiculously off-topic, but Crossfit doesn't work at all like that. To the best of my knowledge, Crossfit doesn't even sell contracts to people who haven't graduated from the six week intro class, which is a serious reality check for people who prefer to keep exercise in the realm of fantasy. Thus, they weed out the best potential absentee customers before they can even buy a contract. My instructor em…

CrossFit the company makes money from its affiliates I gather. PS, I love CrossFit - been doing it for about a year now.

Well, yes -- and a farmer gets corn from cornstalks :-)
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