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Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

nirvdrum.com

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Re: Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

#61

Post by nirvdrum »

toddgardner wrote: post #13

Giving your customers a soft landing is really important to maintain trust. They loved your product, and proved that the market existed--but it wasn't as big as you thought. When closing down, has anyone explored not completely shuttering the company, but instead continuing to exist as a licensing entity? License the source code itself to your existing customers so that they can continue using it, without all the mes…

I did think about licensing. There are two big problems with that:

1) The costs of running a single instance of the application far exceed the plans I was selling. It requires a certain amount of amortization to become cost effective for a lot of people. Dealing with Windows and Mac licensing and the hardware required just to get the browsers going, let alone the analysis engine, is too much for most of our customers.

2) Browser vendors pump out releases every 6 weeks. Without some form of ongoing support, the app would become obsoleted in fairly short order.

As such, the licensing model only makes sense for those that are comfortable messing around with the source. While the article makes it sound like it's a coupled nightmare, most things are actually laid out very nicely. But, it's still a level of complexity a lot of people aren't going to want to tackle.

Re: Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

#62

Post by zackmorris »

Went through a similar experience with a simple puzzle game that relied on a UDP p2p networking library I was working on. I lost 2 years battling NAT and the nondeterministic nature of networking before I had to throw in the towel. I lost a similar amount, perhaps $40,000 in the form of credit card debt. Took me forever to get out from under it and it destroyed my credit, so I haven't used a credit card since 2008, other than a $500 one for medical emergencies.

This is a rough business and I'm not sure if I would want to open source the library either. For one thing, we have better replacements now like ZeroMQ and Firebase. Also the idea of giving up on all that work (that I someday may be able to still use) leaves an awful taste in my mouth.

Re: Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

#63

Post by pavel_lishin »

Kequc wrote: post #52

I'm always brought back to the time I decided to literally sell everything I had and leave the country. A few weeks before leaving I listed each item I had for extremely reasonable prices. A $400 couch for $200, table for $20, beautiful custom framed long print of an old possibly rare poster for $50. Laser printer for $20. Ridiculously reasonable prices on everything on and on. Nobody bought anything and every thing…

If someone knocked 50% off a couch, why wouldn't I try to see if they'd knock off 75%?

If you're selling a $100 laser printer for $20, then you're clearly not trying to extract the maximum value from it, so why wouldn't I try to see if you'd take $10 for it?

It seems like you implied that getting rid of the things in question was more important to you than getting a fair price for it. People simply carried that assumption further.

Re: Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

#64

Post by frandroid »

GnarfGnarf wrote: post #28

There is a real problem with the perceived value of software. The public sees Google giving everything away, not understanding the underlying business model, and assumes all software has little or no value. Software is not made of physical materials, so why should it be compensated? The public sees Apple apps for 99¢, so shouldn't all software be priced like that? I recently dealt with a customer demanding a free upg…

Ask the customer when was the last time Microsoft gave a free upgrade for Office.

Re: Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

#65

Post by unidano »

Reddito r here. I bought the full version and will gladly share the experience with my fellow intellectuals on reddit.

Bit of feedback:

* try not to use too many fonts on the landing page

* try to capture audience by utilizing Shneiderman's "Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design"

tips fedor a

Re: Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

#66

Post by xpto123 »

curun1r wrote: post #26
xpto123 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFIK, AngularJS was the result of improving and open-sourcing the code of a failed startup, after taking it to Google, adding a tone of features to the codebase and using it in internal projects before open sourcing it.

Got a source for that? That's a very different story from the one that Brad and Misko told at the ng-conf ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1A1VR0ibIQ )

In wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AngularJS is says "AngularJS was originally developed in 2009 by Miško Hevery and Adam Abrons [10] at Brat Tech LLC[11] as the software behind an online JSON storage service, that would have been priced by the megabyte, for easy-to-make applications for the enterprise. This venture was located at the web domain "GetAngular.com",[11] and had a few subscribers, before the two decided to abandon the business idea and release Angular as an open-source library"

I think here they mention it in the adventures in Angular podcast that Misko took it from a previous company which was a startup between him and another developer that did not went through -> http://devchat.tv/adventures-in-angular/001-aia-the-birth-of...

It might also have been here or one of the the Javascript Jabber Angular episodes (their search functionality seems to be down for the moment)

Re: Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

#67

Post by nirvdrum »

curun1r wrote: post #23
maaaats wrote: post #7

What I hate is that some people feel entitled to getting one's hard work for free.

The one group that I feel is somewhat entitled to the code is the customer base. Not open sourcing it is one thing, but I'd highly encourage the author to release the code as shared source with only his former customers. They're the ones that tried to help make his startup a success. They're not the freeloaders. If they end up giving the code to someone else, then so be it...he's not making any more money off it anyw…

I feel like I went above and beyond what was needed. I communicated clearly with my customers. I'm running all the servers right now with my own personal money so they had an extra month to get all their data. I found a company that could provide some of the same functionality and got them to offer my customers a discount. I open-sourced a lot of the code. And I didn't bother wasting their time with stuff that wouldn't work without significant effort.

The fact I can't easily open-source certainly could be a topic of discussion. But I don't think I was being terribly dishonest by outsourcing large pieces of functionality to software I don't have the rights to distribute. We originally used jQuery UI and it was a constant source of headaches. We switched to ExtJS, got a much richer UI up in a weekend, had paid support for any issues, and our customers were happier with the product. It was a trade-off and I was hedging on making the company work, not making it easier to give away should the company fail.

Re: Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

#68

Post by xpto123 »

curun1r wrote: post #26
xpto123 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFIK, AngularJS was the result of improving and open-sourcing the code of a failed startup, after taking it to Google, adding a tone of features to the codebase and using it in internal projects before open sourcing it.

Got a source for that? That's a very different story from the one that Brad and Misko told at the ng-conf ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1A1VR0ibIQ )

but it was just the bare bones idea, that got expanded a lot in Google.

Re: Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

#69

Post by ianlevesque »

danielweber wrote: post #56
Kequc wrote: post #52

I'm always brought back to the time I decided to literally sell everything I had and leave the country. A few weeks before leaving I listed each item I had for extremely reasonable prices. A $400 couch for $200, table for $20, beautiful custom framed long print of an old possibly rare poster for $50. Laser printer for $20. Ridiculously reasonable prices on everything on and on. Nobody bought anything and every thing…

I've sometimes experienced the opposite, where no one wants it when it's free, but put a price tag on it and suddenly they have to have it right now. Long ago I volunteered at a food pantry that "sold" food for $1 a bag, because (against what Econ 101 would say) people didn't act as entitled when they were entering a transaction.

It also often improves the chances of people taking the food at all, pride/dignity comes into play at all levels.
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