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The Decline And Fall Of Flowtab, A Startup Story

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Re: The Decline And Fall Of Flowtab, A Startup Story

#31

Post by badclient »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #30

Vitamins and painkillers. I see a ton of small businesses around Seattle using Square, and purchase food with a small literally hole-in-the-wall restaurant with it about once a week. Square solves a very serious pain point. This seems to be more on the vitamin end of the spectrum. It doesn't solve a pressing issue I have when I walk into a bar. On a related note, this idea also seems to suffer from almost a marketpla…

Square solves a very serious pain point.

Depends. I've seen and heard multiple stories of cab drivers or business owners failing to process using Square. For them, it certainly was more of an annoyance than a painkiller. In most these cases, I ended up paying cash.

Also, here's a truth about painkillers that few talk about: painkillers are quickly commoditized. This is why you'll find vitamins to cost more than tylenol even though it's the Tylenol that helps you when you have 102 fever.

Re: The Decline And Fall Of Flowtab, A Startup Story

#32

Post by aaronbrethorst »

badclient wrote: post #31
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #30

Vitamins and painkillers. I see a ton of small businesses around Seattle using Square, and purchase food with a small literally hole-in-the-wall restaurant with it about once a week. Square solves a very serious pain point. This seems to be more on the vitamin end of the spectrum. It doesn't solve a pressing issue I have when I walk into a bar. On a related note, this idea also seems to suffer from almost a marketpla…

Square solves a very serious pain point. Depends. I've seen and heard multiple stories of cab drivers or business owners failing to process using Square. For them, it certainly was more of an annoyance than a painkiller. In most these cases, I ended up paying cash. Also, here's a truth about painkillers that few talk about: painkillers are quickly commoditized. This is why you'll find vitamins to cost more than tylen…

I think you're taking me a little too literally.

Incidentally, worldwide vitamin sales are expected to reach $3.3bn in 2015[1] while pain management drugs (ranging from OTC drugs to opiates) are expected to hit $60bn the same year[2]. So, painkillers revenue is ~20x vitamins.

[1] http://www.prweb.com/releases/vitamins/food_supplements/prwe...

[2] http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/1/prweb8052240.htm

Re: The Decline And Fall Of Flowtab, A Startup Story

#35

Post by andrewfong »

devindotcom wrote: post #8

"Flowtab wasn’t saving you enough time or energy to make it a compelling experience." Serious question - was it ever going to? It always seemed like a backend-heavy way to optimize for a trivial inconvenience. I have to say, It seems to me this was a failure because it was just plain a bad idea. That makes for a pretty short story, though, I guess.

There's a much simpler solution that solves 80% of the chaos at bars as well. If the bar ever gets crowded enough that you need at least two bartenders, put a sign that says "order here" at one end and "pick up here" at the other. Basically, make bars operate more like Starbucks.

Re: The Decline And Fall Of Flowtab, A Startup Story

#36

Post by OGC »

mtt05001 wrote: post #10

I am the founder of Flowtab, and my goal in writing this story was to share what we learned and accomplished instead of letting it rot for eternity in Dropbox. Thus, we opensourced everything from our pitchdeck to source code on Flowtab.com. Kyle Hill and I are already back at it. Together, we launched www.homehero.org a marketplace for senior caregivers, let me know your feedback! - Mike Townsend

homehero isn't going to work either. You're competing with word-of-mouth, craigslist, basically any other thing where jobs are posted. On top of that, if you have nobody posting caregiver jobs on it, you have no product, because people will check it out, find that there are no caregivers there and then never come back.

Flowtab provided a service that wasn't needed, this doesn't either.

Re: The Decline And Fall Of Flowtab, A Startup Story

#37

Post by acjohnson55 »

autarch wrote: post #24

I've noticed that there are a lot of startup ideas that fall into the general category of "if we can get businesses to adopt us and get users to adopt us then ... profit." I worked for a company called DoTheGood way back in 2001 that had a similar issue, although our problem was even worse since we really needed 3 parties to adopt us (businesses, nonprofits, and users). I think these sorts of ventures are just incred…

It's known as a two-sided market (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-sided_market). Very challenging to start, particularly if it requires upfront fixed-cost for one or both parties, as in this case.

Re: The Decline And Fall Of Flowtab, A Startup Story

#38

Post by 7Figures2Commas »

kaleazy wrote: post #28
7Figures2Commas wrote: post #4

Not all startup failures are created equal, but when it comes to true flops like this one, one of the commonalities I've noticed is a general inability of the founders to step back and see the forest for the trees. From http://alpha.flowtab.com/ : We also set a major company milestone to reach 50 "Flowtab regulars" (defined by 2 or more orders in a trailing 30 day period) by March 1st 2013. That's a really remarkable…

Frankly after 6 months we began to realize that it would be nearly impossible to earn any meaningful revenue from users or from the bars themselves. Only two of our bars in Denver actually paid for the product ($1,500 for license + hardware upfront, plus $99/month), which wasn't enough to justify the $3.5 million valuation we raised on. What got our investors excited is tapping into the $3 billion of advertising doll…

First, thanks for sharing your experience.

This seems like a good example of how investors can be a detriment. Your original concept was designed to solve a problem you thought existed with the drink ordering process. The marketing "pivot" is completely unrelated to that and assumes a completely different problem for a completely different customer.

Personally, I don't think there's much to the marketing concept. When at a bar, most people are going to order what they like, and they're going to be engaged in a social experience. Both of these things work against a mobile app that is trying to serve as a channel for delivering in-bar advertising for liquor companies.

Re: The Decline And Fall Of Flowtab, A Startup Story

#39

Post by ollieglass »

chrissnell wrote: post #7
zach wrote: post #2

Great postmortem. These kinds of high-altitude narratives, which describe the overall lifecycle and tell the key stories, are utterly fascinating, success or failure. When you're so focused on something, then discover parallel narratives to your experience, you gain perspective that's useful and even emotionally valuable. They're very common within the game development world, after becoming a regular, beloved feature…

Back in the early 2000's, it was FuckedCompany.com. It was a daily dose of layoffs and shut-downs amongst (mostly) tech startups.

There is TechCrunch's Deadpool now. Not updated nearly as frequently as FC used to be.

http://techcrunch.com/tag/deadpool/

Re: The Decline And Fall Of Flowtab, A Startup Story

#40

Post by purplelobster »

OGC wrote: post #36
mtt05001 wrote: post #10

I am the founder of Flowtab, and my goal in writing this story was to share what we learned and accomplished instead of letting it rot for eternity in Dropbox. Thus, we opensourced everything from our pitchdeck to source code on Flowtab.com. Kyle Hill and I are already back at it. Together, we launched www.homehero.org a marketplace for senior caregivers, let me know your feedback! - Mike Townsend

homehero isn't going to work either. You're competing with word-of-mouth, craigslist, basically any other thing where jobs are posted. On top of that, if you have nobody posting caregiver jobs on it, you have no product, because people will check it out, find that there are no caregivers there and then never come back. Flowtab provided a service that wasn't needed, this doesn't either.

I don't agree at all. Care-giving for elderly is definitely a growth industry. It's not easy building a marketplace, but I think this one has potential.
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