Sorry to hear the news -- wish you both the best of luck going forward!
Thanks!
So long, and thanks for all the fish
11–20 of 100 posts
Re: So long, and thanks for all the fish
#12I know hindsight is 20/20, but would you be willing to be completely forthright and tell us what your business plan was at the beginning stages, when you were raising money? I would find that sort of insight very valuable, and appreciate it greatly.
Re: So long, and thanks for all the fish
#13Surprised to hear it. I thought you had plenty of "mindshare", around here at least. Guess that doesn't translate to actual dollars.
Good luck in your future endeavours. Hopefully it's been a positive learning experience. Look forward to seeing the next big thing!
Re: So long, and thanks for all the fish
#14I know hindsight is 20/20, but would you be willing to be completely forthright and tell us what your business plan was at the beginning stages, when you were raising money? I would find that sort of insight very valuable, and appreciate it greatly.
take a cut
Re: So long, and thanks for all the fish
#15Surprised to hear it. I thought you had plenty of "mindshare", around here at least. Guess that doesn't translate to actual dollars. Good luck in your future endeavours. Hopefully it's been a positive learning experience. Look forward to seeing the next big thing!
The learning experience has been astounding. I have a bunch of things I will do differently next time. Karma on new.yc doesn't translate to usage unfortunately. And twitter as a marketplace is about as mature as @ev's kid.
Re: So long, and thanks for all the fish
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
We weren't ramen profitable. We ran out of money and didn't have a good environment or case for raising more.
Sorry to hear about the shutdown. FWIW, I'm impressed how open you're being, about profitability as well as money-raised ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=777010 ). Btw, apparently you have a decent amount of traffic ( http://siteanalytics.compete.com/tipjoy.com/ ). Is the problem that very few of your visitors convert to tippers?
Is the problem that very few of your visitors convert to tippers?
Assume, for the sake of argument, that the highest number on that graph is accurate and sustainable. Even if it were, it is well below the level the business needs, because you need truly massive scale to make a living solely on transaction costs.
350k visitors * 1% conversion (+) * + Where a conversion actually means cash money exchanged hands. I remember there being some notion of promises/pledges which could be swapped around without actually generating an exchange of cash money. Promises are lovely things but they demonstrate interest a lot less readily than observable flows of cash money (since they're cheap and ephemeral, presumably why the system was instituted) and it is difficult to spend your 1% cut of the value of a promise.
Re: So long, and thanks for all the fish
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry to hear about the shutdown. FWIW, I'm impressed how open you're being, about profitability as well as money-raised ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=777010 ). Btw, apparently you have a decent amount of traffic ( http://siteanalytics.compete.com/tipjoy.com/ ). Is the problem that very few of your visitors convert to tippers?
Compete measures iframe includes or javascript widgets - meaning our widgets on 3rd party sites. That traffic is roughly correct in direction, but totally wrong for the volume to tipjoy.com itself. But that doesn't really matter, because it is a service - one usable almost entirely without visiting tipjoy.com. The twitter integration, for example, is completely unmeasured by compete. Finally, traffic is a poor metric…
Transaction volume is what matters
Feel free to smack me if I'm prying, but I'd be fascinated to know a rough ballpark for what transaction volume was.
Re: So long, and thanks for all the fish
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been following you guys for a bit and wonder did you guys really spend over $1m since inception? ( http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/24/tipjoy-raises-1-million... )
We were advised (in retrospect incorrectly) to be ambiguous and say "raised under $1M" when the amount we raised was actually much less. Our burn rate was slightly higher than most poor grad students, but not _that_ high.
We were advised (in retrospect incorrectly) to be ambiguous
and say "raised under $1M" when the amount we raised was
actually much less.
Re: So long, and thanks for all the fish
#19[deleted]
Re: So long, and thanks for all the fish
#20I know hindsight is 20/20, but would you be willing to be completely forthright and tell us what your business plan was at the beginning stages, when you were raising money? I would find that sort of insight very valuable, and appreciate it greatly.
take a cut
how did the math work out, taking a cut of tips (presumably small, and even smaller after payment processing fees?) how many users would you have needed to reach profitability? i actually tried doing the back-of-envelope math for your site a while back, and was perplexed. i'm curious as to your answer..